In each issue of the Newsletter we feature an expert voice from the bio-based economy. In this issue, we talk exclusively to Dr. Celia Caulcott, executive director of Innovations and Skills at BBSRC.<\/p>\n
The BBSRC with partners has recently launched the IB Catalyst, how does this initiative change the UK landscape for funding Industrial Biotechnology?<\/p>\n
Bioscience has an immense capability to transform current industrial processes and products, and to lead to novel ones in the future. The UK has an outstanding opportunity to build on its world-leading bioscience research base to achieve this, but such transformation is highly disruptive , and needs support from funding bodies such as the Research Councils and Technology Strategy Board (TSB). The IB Catalyst offers a single, joined-up approach to supporting research and development scientists in academia and industry to work together to bring bioscience into industrial practice.<\/p>\n
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The IB Catalyst brings together three funding agencies, what are the benefits of this tripartite collaboration?<\/p>\n
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Industrial biotechnology is not just about bioscience, but is about bioscience integrated with the physical and engineering sciences. It is not just about the development of research ideas, it is also about application and demonstration in an industrial context. Bringing together the three key funders of research and demonstration in these areas – BBSRC, TSB and EPSRC \u2013 provides a funding environment that will support this collaborative approach, in particular seeking to integrate all these approaches from as early in projects as is possible<\/p>\n
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Combined how do see the Catalyst and the new Networks in Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy supporting collaboration and innovation?<\/p>\n
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Together the Networks in Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy (BBSRC NIBB) and the IB Catalyst start to build an \u2018ecosystem\u2019- an environment \u2013 that will actively bring together researchers from all areas, academic and industrial, bioscience and the physical sciences, economists and social scientists too. This is vital, because so often innovation happens at the interfaces and overlaps between subjects and disciplines, and also between purposes (such as academic research and industry). That collaborative, boundary-crossing environment is a significant contributor to supporting innovation. The IB Catalyst itself will also support collaboration and innovation: it is designed to encourage the application of exciting and new ways of doing science to solving industrial problems and challenges. I suppose we would see that as innovation in action.<\/p>\n
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Industrial Biotechnology and Synthetic Biology are closely linked: how is the BBSRC working to ensure that funding in the two areas are aligned?<\/p>\n
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Synthetic biology is a way of doing biology, a new set of tools that can be used in addressing bioscience challenges and topics wherever it is appropriate. It builds on the tremendous advances we have achieved in bioscience through systems and structural biology and, more recently, genomics. We expect to see synthetic biology approaches and tools used in IB as well as other areas of strategic importance to BBSRC. It is not so much a question of alignment as of evolution \u2013 we look to see researchers developing synthetic biology approaches and then deploying these in other research areas.<\/p>\n
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The BBSRC is placing an increasing emphasis on industrial biotechnology as key science area, how do you see IB market developing in the UK?<\/p>\n
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The Industrial Biotechnology Leadership Forum (IBLF) has set out the possibilities for the UK in growing industrial biotechnology from a value of around \u00a34bn per annum to \u00a312bn pa by 2025. BBSRC and its partners in the IB Catalyst recognise that there is real potential for such growth of the IB market in the UK, and potentially more, provided we can bring bioscience into industrial processes to transform them, rather as bioscience has already transformed the pharmaceuticals sector through the introduction of biopharmaceutical products.<\/p>\n
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Many countries are supporting IB development, how is the BBSRC supporting international collaborations in the IB area?<\/p>\n
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BBSRC has a number of approaches to supporting international collaborations in the IB area. We support a number of ERA Nets including ones in bioenergy and industrial biotechnology. We also have a programme of International Partnership Awards that support collaboration between UK researchers and overseas researchers. A number of these are focused on IB topics. We see building links between UK researchers and a number of international partners as very important, and one that we will be focusing on in coming time including countries such as India, China, Japan and Brazil.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In each issue of the Newsletter we feature an expert voice from the bio-based economy. In this issue, we talk exclusively to Dr. Celia Caulcott, executive director of Innovations and Skills at BBSRC. The BBSRC with partners has recently launched the IB Catalyst, how does this initiative change the UK landscape for funding Industrial Biotechnology? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[],"supplier":[7293,2873,5017,8781,2315],"class_list":["post-19323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","supplier-bbsrc","supplier-era-net-bioenergy","supplier-industrial-biotechnology-leadership-forum-iblf","supplier-innovate-uk","supplier-nnfcc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19323"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=19323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}