Cardiff expert supports UKRI’s ‘Strength in Places’

Professor Rick Delbridge is to sit on the assessment panel for UK Research and Innovation’s Strength in Places Fund (SIPF).

The new competitive funding scheme takes a place-based approach to research and innovation funding to support regional growth.

Professor Delbridge is the academic lead for Cardiff University’s Social Science Research Park (SPARK). Along with his academic expertise in the management of innovation, as University Dean of Research, Innovation and Enterprise, he brings to the panel a wide-ranging knowledge of putting innovation into practice across disciplines and sectors.

Chaired by economist Dame Kate Barker, a former member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, and including Sir Peter Bazalgette, executive chairman of ITV, the panel will select schemes to support across the UK.

Professor Delbridge said: “I am honoured to join such an illustrious panel in support of an important and ambitious scheme.”

The SIPF scheme will support innovation-led relative regional growth by identifying and supporting areas of R&D strengths that are driving clusters of businesses that have potential to innovate, or to adopt new technologies. The aim is to make these clusters nationally and internationally competitive.

Successful projects will undertake a flexible range of research and innovation interventions that will have a demonstrable impact on local economic growth.

The UK Government announced SIPF in the Industrial Strategy White Paper, published in November 2017, recognising large regional disparities need to be addressed in order for there to be prosperous communities across the UK.

The White Paper highlighted the important role science, research, innovation and skills provision play in driving productivity and economic growth throughout the regions and nations of the UK.