Podcasts about innovate uk

This week on Everything About Hydrogen we have Kyle Arnold, the Managing Director of HyHAUL Mobility Ltd (HML). The company is leading the largest roll out of hydrogen Heavy Goods Vehicles (HGV) refueling infrastructure in the United Kingdom, operating along the M4 with 30 trucks by Q2 2026, supported by funding from the UK Department for Transport (DfT) Zero Emission Road Freight Transport (ZERFT). ZERFT has been subsequently rebranded as Zero Emissions HGV and Infrastructure Demonstrations (ZEHID). HML plans to eventually deploy over 300 fuel cell trucks totaling 44 tonnes of gross weight, by 2030. Kyle previously developed, built and operated hydrogen refuelling infrastructure across the UK and Europe, notably the Tyseley refuelling site in Birmingham, the largest in Europe.About HML:HyHAUL is an ambitious initiative to establish the UK's first dedicated hydrogen mobility corridor, setting a new benchmark in sustainable transport by proving the feasibility and scalability of hydrogen in heavy-duty freight operations.By leveraging hydrogen's potential to power zero-emission vehicles, HyHAUL directly addresses the decarbonisation of the most challenging and emission-intensive duty cycles in road transport. This pioneering effort supports the UK's broader commitment to achieving net-zero emissions.About Kyle Arnold:HML Managing Director with over 20 years' experience in project management, innovative engineering, and delivering First-Of-A-kind (FOAK) hydrogen projects across the UK, EU, and beyond. Throughout his career, he's had the privilege of leading talented teams to ensure these groundbreaking projects are delivered safely, efficiently, and effectively. He's worked closely with local and national governments and collaborated with some of the world's most recognizable companies to drive innovation and make net-zero ambitions a reality. At the heart of everything he does, is a commitment to safety, sustainability, and pushing the boundaries of what's possible in the green hydrogen space.--Links:HML - https://hyhaul.co.uk/DfT and Innovate UK - https://www.cittimagazine.co.uk/news/infrastructure/dft-and-innovate-uk-programme-to-create-54-new-zero-emission-hgv-infrastructure-hubs-across-the-uk.html

The UK Digital Twin Centre has officially opened in Belfast, marking a major milestone in the UK's digital innovation landscape. Delivered by Digital Catapult and funded by the Belfast Region City Deal and Innovate UK, the project is set to drive the next wave of industrial transformation by accelerating the adoption of digital twin technology across the UK's critical sectors, projected to reach £62million in GVA for the economy over the next decade. A Digital Twin is a dynamic virtual representation ('twin') of a physical asset, process, or system, bridging the physical and digital worlds. They turn data into real-time insights that can optimise performance, reduce costs, and predict outcomes before they happen. Since funding for the project was announced, Digital Catapult has brought together industry and innovators to identify adoption barriers and strategic interventions. At the Centre's opening, the project's co-investing industry partners - Artemis Technologies, Spirit AeroSystems, and Thales UK - utilised the cutting-edge facilities, including the 360-degree immersive space and advanced technology lab, to demonstrate how digital twins are helping to solve complex operational challenges. These early-stage use cases emphasise the power of cross-sector collaboration to create scalable, practical solutions while building expertise that can be shared across industries, ultimately improving product design, building supply chain resilience, and decarbonising operations. Programmes delivered by the UK Digital Twin Centre will help businesses across the UK to demystify, demonstrate, and deploy digital twins. With expert support, test environments and tools to experiment and validate, combined with shared learnings from industry use cases, it offers a practical route to adoption. The Centre has convened capabilities across digital twins six enabling technology areas - intelligence, data services, immersive and UX, cyber-physical systems, integration, and security - to make this emerging technology more accessible and interoperable across sectors and suppliers. "The UK Digital Twin Centre marks a major step for Belfast, driving innovation in high-growth sectors like advanced manufacturing," said the Lord Mayor of Belfast, Councillor Micky Murray. "Through the Belfast Region City Deal and with Digital Catapult's UK-wide reach, we're connecting our SMEs to a powerful network, unlocking access to new markets, collaboration opportunities, and cutting-edge technologies. This will boost local businesses, create high-skilled jobs, and drive real economic impact for the region." The Centre's first six-month Accelerator Programme, now open for pre-application expressions of interest, will support partnerships between tech SMEs and industry to fast-track digital twin adoption in maritime, aerospace, and defence. Alongside Innovate UK funding, participants will also gain access to mentorship, workshops, and specialist support to develop proofs of concept for enabling technologies - such as IoT, data integration, and simulation tools - bringing their solutions closer to real-world deployment. "The UK Digital Twin Centre brings together our technical expertise, facilities, and networks to unlock the power of deep technologies,' said Susan Bowen, CEO of Digital Catapult. "By connecting industries with cutting-edge technology through our programmes, we are enabling businesses to harness the full potential of digital twins-driving operational efficiencies, advancing sustainability, and sharpening the competitive edge of UK businesses." Dean Cook, Executive Director for Place and Global?at Innovate UK, added, "Seeing real-world use cases coming to life at the UK Digital Twin Centre is a powerful demonstration of how digital twins can deliver tangible advances for UK industry. These cutting-edge tools will solve complex business challenges in aerospace, maritime, and defence. "It's a testament to how we are leveraging the strengths of local inno...

What do running away to a Swedish circus at age 10 and tackling one of the food industry's biggest hidden problems have in common?Dini McGrath, Co-Founder of The Wonki Collective, joins A Little Bit Radical to tell her extraordinary story. From wild childhood adventures to founding a business determined to eradicate supply chain food waste, Dini's journey is anything but ordinary.Host Rob Fawkes and Dini dig into the shocking statistic that 40% of food never even reaches supermarket shelves. They explore the power dynamics between manufacturers and retailers, and how radical thinking, resilience, and persistence are needed to fix it.Dini also shares her experiences as a female founder navigating the funding gap, her work with Innovate UK, and why risk-taking should be for everyone, not just the lucky few.In This Episode:Growing up wild: how moving into building sites and joining the Swedish circus shaped Dini's fearless mindsetThe shocking 40% food waste problem hidden deep in supply chainsHow The Wonki Collective is using AI and technology to match surplus food with where it's neededWhy selling surplus cocoa powder wasn't enough, and how Dini and her team pivoted to something biggerSecuring a major Innovate UK grant and partnering with Nestlé and FareShareThe brutal realities of raising investment as a female founderWhy we need more women not just founding businesses, but funding them tooConnect with Dini:Dini McGrath on LinkedInThe Wonki Collective on LinkedInStay Connected:Follow Rob Fawkes on LinkedIn: Rob FawkesSign up for the A Little Bit Radical newsletter: Subscribe here

INCENTIVE is the first SIF Beta project to reach completion. In this episode, members of the INCENTIVE team share their learnings and future plans with us. As the first project to complete, dissemination of their outcomes - including collaboration, continuity of the work and deployment of the technology after the SIF funding stops - provides valuable insights, especially for other Beta projects. In this episode, SIF programme director Jodie Giles speaks with energy systems innovation lead Suraj Paneru.We also welcome INCENTIVE partners Robert Keast from the Carbon Trust, Callum Henderson from SSE, and Adnan Mahmood of SSEN.For more on the Strategic Innovation Fund: www.ofgem.gov.uk/sifSee the SIF programme page on Innovate UK's Business Connect website: Ofgem Strategic Innovation Fund

Jeremy Salt, CEO of The Vaccine Group (TVG), a Frontier IP Group PLC portfolio company, talked with Proactive's Stephen Gunnion about the company's collaboration with global animal health firm Syva. Salt explained that the partnership focuses on developing a vaccine for Streptococcus suis, a major disease in pigs that also contributes significantly to the use of antibiotics in livestock farming. “One of the key aspects of this collaboration with them is that they have a significant gap in their portfolio of products for pigs,” Salt noted. He emphasised that Streptococcus suis is prevalent in around 60% of European countries and impacts pig farming worldwide, with antimicrobial resistance (AMR) being a critical concern. The zoonotic nature of the disease, particularly in Southeast Asia, adds another layer of urgency to develop effective solutions. Salt highlighted that TVG's vaccine platform provides broader protection across multiple strains, making it potentially globally applicable. The vaccine can be administered to young piglets, which is strategically important and is also expected to be more cost-effective than conventional options. He also discussed the role of UK government support, with Innovate UK and DEFRA grants contributing around £1 million in funding. The company is also progressing with 12 vaccine candidates, including developments in poultry and biotherapeutics delivery using monoclonal antibodies. For more updates, visit Proactive's YouTube channel. Don't forget to like the video, subscribe to the channel, and turn on notifications for future content. #AnimalHealth #Vaccines #SwineIndustry #AntimicrobialResistance #BiotechNews #TVG #FrontierIP #ProactiveInvestors #PigHealth #ZoonoticDiseases #LivestockFarming #VeterinaryInnovation #MonoclonalAntibodies #PoultryVaccines #Biotherapeutics

 In this episode of The SAF Podcast, Oscar sits down with Michelle Carter, Head of Transport at Innovate UK Business Connect, to explore the current state and future trajectory of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) in the UK. With over a decade of experience in SAF, Michelle offers a unique lens into the evolution of the UK's SAF ecosystem—from early-stage innovation to national mandates and public awareness. The conversation delves into the UK's position in the global SAF market, revealing that the country attracts just over 1% of global SAF investment, with a surprising 29% focused on power-to-liquid technology. Even more revealing is that domestic investment remains strikingly low compared to foreign capital pouring in from Europe and the United States. Michelle discusses the critical role of the UK SAF Clearing House in helping innovative technologies navigate regulatory landscapes and the importance of domestic versus imported production.The episode highlights interesting contrasts between UK and international investment patterns, particularly examining Spain's success with operational SAF facilities. Michelle explains how government policies like the SAF mandate and renewable certainty mechanism aim to stimulate growth in domestic production, targeting 2% sustainable jet fuel by 2025 and 10% by 2030.The conversation also covers international comparisons, such as Spain's refinery-led approach, and why the UK still imports most of its SAF. We delve into public perception, noting that 70% of UK adults still don't know what SAF is—highlighting the critical role of airlines, airports, and producers in improving consumer education. The regional variations in understanding—particularly how Wales demonstrated superior knowledge about waste-gas pathways due to local industry initiatives—highlight both the challenges and opportunities in consumer education. As Michelle notes, "If you communicate with the right narrative, people get it and they understand it."Whether you are a UK local or from another geography, understanding the challenges and work being done in the UK, and across the globe is critical to decarbonise aviation globally. You can find both reports referred to in our discussion here: https://iuk-business-connect.org.uk/knowledge-centre/perspectives/?_sft_sector=transportCheck out our previous conversation with Mac Irvine, Jet Zero Australia here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2202964/episodes/16017375

A new project which enables farmers to optimise the use of livestock manure and nutrients while reducing costs and environmental impact is underway following a collaboration of industry experts. The project, called 'Nutrient Utilisation and Recovery through Supercritical Extraction', or NURSE, is led by collaborators including Kairos Carbon Limited (lead), Cranfield University, Royal Agricultural University and the UK Agri-Tech Centre and is part of Defra's Farming Innovation Programme, delivered in partnership with Innovate UK. Nutrient Utilisation and Recovery through Supercritical Extraction to help environment It aims to develop an advanced hydrothermal technology to process livestock wastes - to recover the valuable nutrients they contain - producing carbon-negative, non-leaching fertiliser, while separating the carbon for permanent sequestration. The UK produces approximately 140 million tonnes of livestock waste annually, most of which is spread on farmland. The work of the project will help to reduce emissions by stripping out any carbon before fertiliser is applied to the land. Less than 50% of applied nutrients, such as phosphorus, are taken up by crops when livestock waste is spread on land. Meanwhile, farmers' fertiliser costs are increasing while fertiliser resources, such as phosphorus, are being depleted. By formulating non-leaching fertiliser, which enables more of the nutrients to actually be absorbed by plants, the project aims to keep farmers' costs down and reduce waste of resources. It is vital that farmers are given new tools to recover and reuse valuable nutrients, whilst also reducing their environmental impacts. What are the wider impacts? The technology directly benefits farmers and their impacts through recovering critical materials from livestock waste in condensed form for targeted use as low-leaching, sustainable fertiliser, reducing costs and improving yields. It also allows for better management and processing of waste, the destruction of organic pollutants and the extraction of carbon for capture and storage, all while being energy-neutral. These benefits directly meet UK requirements to improve the management of the tonnes of livestock waste produced, most of which is in England. Kairos' analysis demonstrates they can profitably achieve UK-wide coverage of livestock waste sources. Kairos aims to reduce emissions from UK agriculture as well as prevent pollutants and nutrients from entering water sources. It also aims to prevent air pollution from livestock waste and many other sources of agricultural pollution. In addition, Kairos' technology will support creation and safeguarding of hundreds of skilled jobs across its supply chain including farming and agronomy, such as protecting rural communities, and chemical engineering, such as fabrication and maintenance. The technology can expand to additional industries such as sewage sludge, municipal waste and hazardous chemicals, removing more emissions, pollution and making more nutrients available for agriculture. Megha Raghavan, CEO of Kairos Carbon Limited, said: "It is critical that we find ways to turn wet organic wastes from a problem into a resource. "This technology has the potential to prevent environmental contamination, fight nutrient depletion and remove billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, making it a powerful tool in the fight against climate change." Dr Stuart Wagland, Reader in Energy and Environmental Chemistry at Cranfield University, said: "Developing novel thermochemical processes to manage challenging wet wastes, dealing with emerging contaminants and recovering nutrients will have a significant impact across the UK and we are excited to be involved in this project." Dr Karen Rial-Lovera, Associate Professor in Agriculture and Dean of Agricultural Science and Practice at the Royal Agricultural University, said: "This innovation seeks to support our growing need for sustainable nutrient management in agri...

A project that aims to use kelp extracts to manage nutrients more efficiently is underway with a partnership of experts funded by Innovate UK. The project, 'Assessing Sugar Kelp Extracts as a Nutrient Management Tool' (or SKE-NMT), is in its early stages and is led by Algapelago Marine Ltd in collaboration with project partners The James Hutton Institute, Atlantic Mariculture Ltd and the UK Agri-Tech Centre. This project responds to the need for more efficient nutrient management in agriculture by adopting a biological approach, valuing the importance of microbial and fungal communities in the breakdown, cycling and retention of nutrients in soil. Through application of seaweed biostimulants under reduced mineral fertiliser application, this project aims to confirm new nutrient management options through stimulating plant responses and promoting healthy soil biology. Kelp extracts to manage nutrients more efficiently Seaweed supplements (due to their uniquely rich profile of fibres, micronutrients and bioactive components) enhance the growth of specific microbiota in soil, which leads to a cascade of biological functions with beneficial impacts for productivity, resistance to abiotic stress and resistance to pathogens. This approach is relevant across a wide range of crop types including broadacre, horticulture and top fruit. As such, use of seaweed biostimulants meet multiple biotic and abiotic challenges to transition to more sustainable and resilient farming systems. This will unlock further research opportunities to explore larger-scale field trials to confirm the ability of kelp biostimulants to improve Nutrient Use Efficiency (NUE). How does it work? Rhizosphere microbiota is a collection of microorganisms that live in the soil and around plant roots and plays an essential role in the degradation of organic matter, nutrient retention and recycling. Previous work has shown seaweed extract application improves microbial diversity and community structure and benefits crop yield and quality. The SKE-NMT project builds on an ongoing Innovate UK project, called 'Optimising Low Energy Extraction of Kelp for Soil and Livestock Nutrition', and is assessing the ability of biostimulants and livestock feed additives, again derived from sugar kelp using a novel low energy extraction method, to influence feed efficiency and improve soil health. The seaweed extracts are novel, firstly because cultivated sugar kelp (a type of brown alga native to UK coastal waters) is a new species in the seaweed extract industry with a unique biochemical profile. Secondly, these extracts are produced using a novel low-energy fermentation and extraction process. Cultivated kelp offers a sustainable and scalable alternative to wild harvested marine biomass. However, the potential of novel cultivated seaweed biomass, particularly in applications like biostimulants, remains underexplored. This project aims to establish an innovative supply chain where cultivated seaweed biomass serves as a cornerstone, significantly contributing to the global transition toward sustainable agricultural practices. The new SKE-NMT project will quantify the ability of these low energy seaweed extracts to improve nutrient use efficiency in stringently designed crop trials. This will explore yield responses under reduced nitrate and phosphate conditions and correlate improved uptake of Nitrogen and Phosphorus under fertiliser limitation with impacts on microbial diversity and community structure. The project will combine the development of new technologies (novel seaweed extracts) with further means to improve nutrient use efficiency in arable and horticultural systems. Wider impacts Conventional nutrient management systems depend on high mineral fertiliser inputs, leading to high input costs and environmental issues. Incorporation of seaweed supplements can improve NUE with significant implications for carbon emissions and soil fertility. This project tests the hypothesis th...

Dr Sam Moxon, narrates his blog written for Dementia Researcher. Sam examines the impact of the UK's shifting financial priorities on dementia research funding. While government-backed funds like Innovate UK, MRC, EPSRC, and UKRI face potential budget tightening, charities such as Alzheimer's Research UK, Alzheimer's Society & Race Against Dementia continue to play a crucial role. The blog highlights uncertainties ahead, suggesting increased competition for available grants, but reassures that the overall support for dementia research remains strong despite financial pressures. Find the original text, and narration here on our website. https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-will-dementia-research-funding-weather-the-financial-storm/ #Grantfunding #Research #ResearchFunding -- Dr Sam Moxon is a biomaterials Research Fellow at University of Birmingham. His expertise falls on the interface between biology and engineering. His PhD focussed on regenerative medicine and he now works on trying to develop 3D bioprinting techniques with human stem cells, so that we better understand and treat degenerative diseases. Outside of the lab he hikes through the Lake District and is an expert on all things Disney. -- Enjoy listening and reading our blogs? We're always on the look out for new contributors, drop us a line and share your own research and careers advice dementiaresearcher@ucl.ac.uk This podcast is brought to you in association with the NIHR, Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's Research UK, Alzheimer's Society and Race Against Dementia, who we thank for their ongoing support. -- Follow us on Social Media: https://www.instagram.com/dementia_researcher/ https://www.facebook.com/Dementia.Researcher/ https://twitter.com/demrescommunity https://www.linkedin.com/company/dementia-researcher https://bsky.app/profile/dementiaresearcher.bsky.social

This month on the Cumbria Business Growth Hub podcast, we welcome Tracy Eyres, Senior Innovation and Growth Specialist at Innovate UK. In this episode, we explore how Innovate UK helps businesses drive innovation, the financial support available for Cumbrian businesses, real-world case studies of successful innovation projects, and opportunities for local businesses to expand into international markets. Tune in to discover how your business can benefit!   Learn more: https://iuk-business-connect.org.uk/

GraphEnergyTech CEO Dr Thomas Baumeler discussed a collaboration with the Taiwan Perovskite Solar Corporation, Taiwan's prestigious Industrial Technology Research Institute and the University of Cambridge. The project is supported by an Innovate UK grant worth nearly £900,000. Known as GETPSC (Graphene Electrode Technology for Perovskite Solar Cells), Baumeler explained that current solar cells rely on expensive silver electrodes, which degrade when in contact with Perovskite Solar Cells. GraphEnergyTech, a Frontier IP Group PLC (AIM:FIPP) portfolio company, aims to replace these with graphene-based electrodes, offering a more stable and cost-effective alternative. "Graphene is one of the most interesting materials out there," he said, highlighting its durability and lower cost compared to silver. Perovskite Solar Cells are considered the next major advancement in photovoltaics due to their efficiency and simpler manufacturing process. However, industrial-scale adoption has been hindered by the lack of a viable nonmetallic electrode—something GraphEnergyTech aims to solve. Baumeler also noted that GraphEnergyTech is working on replacing silver electrodes in traditional silicon-based solar cells while exploring applications for its conductive carbon-based technology in batteries, supercapacitors, and electronics. For more insights into renewable energy innovations, visit Proactive's YouTube channel. Don't forget to like this video, subscribe, and enable notifications for future updates. #GraphEnergyTech #SolarEnergy #GrapheneTech #PerovskiteSolar #RenewableEnergy #CleanEnergy #TechInnovation #SolarCells #GreenTechnology #EnergyStorage

Proponents of hydrogen say it's a crucial part of a future energy mix, and a vital tool to help achieve UK net zero. The SIF funds a range of hydrogen projects to test, assess and demonstrate their future application. For this episode of Bright Spark, SIF's Beth Foster visited FutureGrid at DNV Spadeadam, just south of Hadrian's Wall in Cumbria. FutureGrid is working to create insights into hydrogen transportation and blending – to support the full-scale conversion to hydrogen. Links:National Gas Future Grid: www.nationalgas.com/future-energy/futuregridFor more on the Strategic Innovation Fund: www.ofgem.gov.uk/sifSee the SIF programme page on Innovate UK, Business Connect website: Ofgem Strategic Innovation Fund

Business Growth Toolkit – a series from The Standards Show - developed in collaboration with Innovate UK Business Growth.Innovate UK is the UK's innovation agency. And Innovate UK Business Growth is the agencies national business growth and scaling service. It helps thousands of businesses sharpen their commercial strategies, realise the maximum value from their intellectual property (IP), raise game changing investment, and take their businesses onto the global stage every year, through tailored, one-to-one support.The series looks at the relationship between standards and some key business issues, with particular relevance for SMEs.In this episode of the series, Victoria Milne speaks to Andrew Stanton and Andrew Philips about the relationship between IP, innovation management and standards. And how organizations can use the standard ISO 56005 to effectively manage their IP within their innovation processes.Series | Business Growth ToolkitFind out more about the issues raised in this episodeIUKEDGEtoolkit@bsigroup.com Business Growth Toolkit Get involved with standardsGet in touch with The Standards Showeducation@bsigroup.comsend a voice messageFind and follow on social mediaX @StandardsShowInstagram @thestandardsshowLinkedIn | The Standards Show

To kick off 2025, we're talking "business angels": the people who take big bets investing their personal wealth into startups at their earliest stages, and without whom most companies would never get off the ground.So, how do you actually become an angel investor? How much money do you need to commit? How many investments should you be making? And how can the UK and Europe lay the groundwork for a more representative next generation of investors?Amy poses these questions to Jenny Tooth, a veteran angel who's also executive chair of the UK Business Angels Association, representing over 15k investors nationwide. Jenny shares insights from her work on Innovate UK's emerging tech steering board and her new initiative, WomenInvestEU, aimed at creating a more inclusive early-stage investment landscape.

This episode of Bright Spark looks back at the Strategic Innovation Fund's successes and lessons over 2024, and asks what's in the pipeline for 2025. Last year was a busy year; the team awarded 88 projects, and a further 12 demonstration projects, and approved over £100million in funding. SIF programme director Jodie Giles is joined for this one by Head of Delivery Kate Jones and Head of Commercial Paul Padaruth.For more on the Strategic Innovation Fund: www.ofgem.gov.uk/sifSee the SIF programme page on Innovate UK, Business Connect website: Ofgem Strategic Innovation FundSign up for regular SIF newslettersAll episodes of Bright Spark are at: https://podfollow.com/brightspark/

Today we're talking about our relationship with the land, communities and nature on our farms. We all know that farms are a place of food production, but they have so many other purposes and potential to meet the varied challenges we face as farmers and as a general population. Host Peter is joined by two farmers who alongside keeping livestock have a particular interest in wellbeing and fostering strong and positive mindsets. Eddie Rixon farms sheep and beef on 81 hectares at Lopemede Farm in Buckinghamshire. In 2017 he experienced a series of events on the farm that led to him transforming the way he managed it, with an ambitious plan focused on restoration and leveraging natural capital to bring people onto the land for nature connection, to help address both the biodiversity and mental health crises. From December 2023 to May 2024 the Roots and Rhythms Project, funded by Innovate UK, worked with Eddie to explore farm futures through nature recovery and connection. Today we'll hear Eddie's story. Peter is also joined by Ellie Sturrock who is a sheep farmer from Dorset and wellbeing coach specialising in resilience and mindfulness. She is also the West Dorset Area Lead for Steps2Wellbeing, a free NHS talking therapies service for anxiety and depression. Useful signposting for anyone impacted by this episode. Support for farmers - mental health | AHDBFarm Safety Foundation / Yellow Wellies - YellowWellies.orgfarmwell.org.uk/personal-resilience/Social prescribers at GP surgeries are excellent at signposting to agencies that can help.Farming Community Network: 03000 111 999 or help@fcn.org.ukRABI. Particularly good for financial support but also an emphasis on mental health. 0800 188 4444,MIND 0300 123 3393Steps 2Wellbeing/S2W: 0800 484 0500, NHS Talking Therapies FREESamaritans: 116123 or jo@samaritans.orgConnections 24/7 crisis line: 0800 652 0190NHS direct: 111SHOUT. Text service 85258 for mental health crisisKooth (kids and young adults, online support. www.kooth.com)See a GP especially for pain, poor sleep, depression, or long term conditions. GPs now have teams of people called social prescribers who are well networked with local initiatives. They are good signposters. REACH Addiction services 0800 043 4656 www.edp.org.ukGP for symptoms of trauma, low mood, anxiety or anything that may be indicative of illness. The GP is a good doorway to HELP.Ellie Sturrock/S2W link person: 07980 089470, ellie.sturrock@nhs.net general advice on where to signpost. NHS Talking Therapies (NHS TT) are a FREE short term psychological therapies service. Find an NHS talking therapies services - NHSTypically people can self refer or be referred b any health professional including GPs.At referral they are offered a comprehensive assessment with a trained psychological therapist which can be face to face, by phone or by video call. It is around a 45 minute session at the end of which most people will be offered a talking treatment that is based on NICE guidelined therapies.Our treatments usually last for 4-max 20 sessions and if a person is not anxious, stressed or depressed or does not want to receive an offered treatment then we signpost to other agencies best suited to need.Therapists are trained, supervised and registered with recognised professional groups such as the British Association of Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapist (BABCP) or British Association of Counselling Psychotherapists (BACP).Treatments are offered for depression, anxiety disorders such as obsessive compulsive disorder, social phobia, post traumatic stress disorder, difficult grief reactions, mental distress connected with long term health conditions such as stroke, heart disease, diabetes, fatigue, long covid, pain etcNHS TT are largely counselling and cognitive behavioural therapy based but also use mindfulness, interpersonal therapy, EMDR (a strategy for treating trauma). Most teams have developed course based treatments in order to maximise efficiencies and move into a range of more contemporary ways of delivering recovery based treatments at scale. This is a move away from couches to courses reflecting the benefits of a more modern and efficient yet efficacious way to treat people psychologically. Feedback from courses is excellent and some courses offer better recovery than 1:1 delivery. Some work is done individually especially trauma focused treatment.NHS TT services do not treat everyone and do not offer fully comprehensive therapy for more severe, enduring or acute mental illness. For more information look here NHS talking therapies for anxiety and depression - NHS and each geographical area will have its own ways of delivering that may vary from above. Find your local service using this link Find an NHS talking therapies services - NHS Farming Focus is the podcast for farmers in the South West of England, but is relevant for farmers outside of the region or indeed anyone in the wider industry or who has an interest in food and farming. For more information on Cornish Mutual visit cornishmutual.co.ukFor our podcast disclaimer click here. If you'd like to send us an email you can contact us at podcast@cornishmutual.co.ukTimestamps00:14 Peter introduces the episode.02:07 Ellie introduces herself.02:57 Eddie Rixon introduces his farm and himself. 04:54 In 2017 Eddie experienced a series of events that led to Eddie making changes.06:28 Two weeks after the breakdown other things happened.07:56 Ellie comes in.10:20 What resources are available for farmers to speak to?12:05 Eddie explains how his farm changed after the incidents.16:14 How can nature help our wellbeing?18:30 Forest bathing.19:00 Eddie's learning points from his projects. 21:05 Pocket guide - search for it on the Rots to Rhythms substack. 21:24 What else can support our mental health?26:00 Connection with nature. 28:19 'Get on our land'29:03 Final thoughts from Ellie.30:55 Showstoppers.33:36 Peter rounds up. 

An innovative project that uses birdsong as a key to unlocking the secrets of wildlife has been launched in a collaboration between the UK Agri-Tech Centre and Chirrup.ai. Chirrup.ai launched the groundbreaking technology to make nature monitoring simpler and cheaper, making it an affordable solution for measuring and managing biodiversity. The project, 'ChirrupNano', with funding from Innovate UK, uses birdsong to monitor wildlife previously unseen in nature reserves and back garden bird counts. The next-generation bio-recorder is slimline, self-locating, remotely deployed, and designed and built right here in the UK. It's delivered straight to the farm and can be deployed in sun and shade, in remote fields, and woodland - wherever it's needed. Chirrup's AI already recognises over 100 species from Great Britain and Ireland. It is already getting major retraining to recognise all the important species that the UK's pioneering non-governmental organisations have drawn to our attention, thanks to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), The Wildlife Trusts and the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT). The redesigned website app lets farms compare their species lists to others, to standard benchmarks, and even their past performance. This empowers them to make more informed decisions about sustainable practices, leading to a richer, healthier ecosystem - such as increased plant diversity, better soil, and fewer pests. Birds are ecological barometers; they're everywhere, super responsive to change and their presence tells a story about the thriving life in the places they occupy - from insects and plants to clean water and the general quality of the ecosystem. With farmland covering a huge 71% of the UK, it is the ideal testing ground for the next-generation Chirrup.ai and farmers are being asked to respond to changing government and food company policies on pro-wildlife production. The ChirrupNano project is about making it easy, fast, and affordable. One hundred farmers were invited to a farmland trial to help refine the next-generation Chirrup.ai, and will also contribute to the future of environmental monitoring in the UK. Hayley Gerry, Project Manager at the UK Agri-Tech Centre, said, "The expanse of knowledge we can gain about biodiversity in an area using the bioacoustics of bird song is extremely impressive. "To enable sustainable farming, we need to encourage multi-species habitats to enrich the areas, which in turn makes the farming of livestock and arable products sustainable," continued Gerry. "In order to do this we need to be able to measure the baseline of the current situation, and that is where this project comes in." Dr Stella Peace, Executive Director for Healthy Living and Agriculture at Innovate UK, said, "These innovations are crucial for safeguarding our natural environment. "By investing in these pioneering projects, we're helping businesses unlock innovations that make life better, ensuring that the UK leads the way in developing sustainable solutions that benefit both our economy and our communities," said Peace. Next steps The project will be put to the test in the spring of 2025 across the UK. An expert ornithologist and ecologists will analyse and validate the results whilst the UK Agri-Tech Centre will help us to link outcomes to agricultural practices. To share the findings. Chirrup.ai will host two exciting events at the end of the project. Chirrup.ai helps farmers and land managers understand their land better. By listening to birds and using smart AI technology, they create tools that track biodiversity, help farms meet environmental goals, and support sustainable agriculture. Their mission is to make it easier for farmers, land managers, food intermediaries, brand companies and retailers to measure, protect, and improve local ecosystems.

The recently-launched Net Zero Research Village (NeRV) near Gateshead is the UK's first facility for combined whole-systems research, development and demonstration – covering gas, electricity and water.In this episode of Bright Spark, Kate Jones, SIF's Head of Delivery, visits NeRV. She is given a tour by Richard Hynes Cooper, Head of Innovation at Northern Gas Networks. Also at NeRV is Joseph Davidson, Energy Systems Innovation Lead at Ofgem SIF, who catches up on recent and upcoming policy developments with Luke Ames Blackaby, Ofgem's Innovation Hub head.Links:NeRV website: https://uknerv.com/For more on the Strategic Innovation Fund: www.ofgem.gov.uk/sifSee the SIF programme page on Innovate UK, Business Connect website: Ofgem Strategic Innovation FundSign up for regular SIF newslettersAll episodes of Bright Spark are at: https://podfollow.com/brightspark/

Événements - le 7 novembre 2024 au ministère de la recherche et de l'enseignement supérieur à Paris à un séminaire de présentation du programme de “recherche à risque” lancé par l'État fin 2023.Détails dans un post de 14 pages sur https://www.oezratty.net/wordpress/2024/recherche-a-risque/ - Le Laboratoire international CNRS Majulab  organisait son premier Symposium Franco-Singapourien sur le quantique la semaine du 5 au 7 novembre. - Journées Teratec sur les algorithmes et les capteurs quantiques chez EDF à Palaiseau des 13 et 14 novembre (slides)  - Journées du GDR TEQ ont eu lieu à Jussieu des 13 au 15 novembre pour faire le point de la recherche quantique au CNRS et aussi dans les autres ONR comme Inria, avec des intervenants de renom d'autres pays comme David Awschalom de l‘Université de Chicago (lien, book of abstracts). Le prochain GDR TEQ aura lieu à Grenoble fin novembre 2025. - OVHcloud Summit, c'était le 28 novembre et le cloud provider Français fêtait ses 25 ans. Mais surtout Octave Klaba son fondateur annonçait une roadmap quantique sur 6 ans en commençant après 6 émulateurs avec une première QPU à 100 qubits dans le cloud dès 2025 avec Pasqal comme partenaire. Efforts salué par la Secrétaire d'État chargée de l'Intelligence artificielle et du Numérique Clara Chappaz. - le 8 novembre le UK National Quantum Technologies Showcase 2024 par Innovate UK, une journée dédiée aux acteurs du pays qui présentaient leurs solutions. L'événement rassemblait plus de 2000 participants dans un lieu magnifique. Le replay des conférences est disponible. Il y avait beaucoup de startups présentant leur offre dans différents segments du domaine des capteurs quantiques. - L'événement EQTC2024 (European Quantum Technologies Conference) rassemblait du 18 au 20 novembre les acteurs des projets européens quantiques à Lisbonne avec plusieurs centaines de participants. Le tout associait des talks techniques (sur les simulations quantiques, les communications quantiques, l'intégration HPC-QPU, les capteurs, le benchmarking) et plus business ou politiques. Comme sur the European Quantum Declaration (avec la participation d'Eleni Diamanti), sur la formation, le quantique dans la société (avec Raja Yehia représentant la QEI), la standardisation (avec Florent Staley du CEA). - Le second symposium Alain Aspect organisé par Quantonation et Pasqal portait sur le climat. Cela commençait avec un panel animé par Etienne Klein (CEA) avec Alain Aspect et Tim Palmer, un physicien spécialisé dans les questions climatiques. Événement à venir : - Q2B à Santa Clara du 10 au 12 décembre avec un beau programme.   - QEI Workshop à Grenoble du 6 au 10 janvier 2025. Inscriptions (gratuites) : https://qei2025.sciencesconf.org/ - Quantum Computing Scalability Conference 2025Du 2 au 4 avril 2025 à Oxford.https://www.nqcc.ac.uk/scalability-conference-2025/  Actualités : France- Début novembre, Quandela annonçait la mise en place d'une offre de cloud chez Scaleway.  - Le 21 novembre, Pasqal annonçait une nouveauté dans le cadre de son partenariat avec IBM. Pasqal s'intègre dans Qiskit pour créer des workflows de calcul hybride analogique/digital quantique (détails). I - Miles Stoudenmire (Flatiron Institute) et Xavier Waintal (CEA-IRIG) ont publié leur papier sur les limitations de l'algorithme de Grover dans PRXOpening the Black Box inside Grover's Algorithm, Stoudenmire and Waintal, PRX, November 2024. International - Qolab, un nouvelle startup créée au début de l'année 2024. Elle a été lancée entre autres par John Martinis d'UCSB, l'ancien patron du hardware de Google qui avait créé la fameuse expérience Sycamore de 2019 liée à l'annonce de « suprématie quantique ».How to Build a Quantum Supercomputer: Scaling Challenges and Opportunities by Masoud Mohseni, John M. Martinis et al, arXiv, November 2024 (64 pages). - Le lendemain de Qolab, Atom Computing sortait deux preprints sur arXiv, dont l'un avec Microsoft. Le premier papier portait sur la publication de résultats sur les fidélités de leurs qubits qui utilisent le spin de noyaux d'atomes d'ytterbium. Le second concernait la réalisation de qubits logiques avec le même système.High-fidelity universal gates in the 171Yb ground state nuclear spin qubit by J. A. Muniz, B. J. Bloom et al, arXiv, November 2024 (14 pages).Logical computation demonstrated with a neutral atom quantum processor by Ben W. Reichardt, Matthew B. Hastings, Krysta M. Svore, Benjamin J. Bloom et al, Atom Computing, Microsoft, Stanford University, USC, arXiv, November 2024 (17 pages). - D-Wavehttps://thequantuminsider.com/2024/11/06/benchmarking-results-d-waves-4400-qubit-advantage2-processor-can-tackle-materials-science-tasks-25000-times-faster/ - IQM révélait sa nouvelle roadmap le 13 novembre.  - Lors de sa conférence développeurs organisée à Yorktown Heights, IBM révélait de nouveaux éléments incrémentaux. - L'action d'IonQ se porte très bien. Elle a doublé en un mois. Probablement vu que leur carnet de commande est rempli grâce à $70M de projets financés par l'AFRL. Ils mettent le paquet sur l'IA en annonçant prévoir de créer une intelligence de type humaine. Quantum Circuit Components for Cognitive Decision-Making par Dominic Widdows et al, Entropy, Mars 2023 (22 pages) qui met en place un modèle probabiliste de décision qui gère des problèmes comme le dilemme du prisonnier. Voir

Our love affair with plastic has grown beyond all expectations since we were first introduced to the substance in the mid 20th century, and the rate at which we're using it shows no sign of slowing. But the tidal wave of plastic pollution we've unleashed is causing serious environmental problems. In this programme, Helen Czerski and Tom Heap hear how some of our plastic waste is burnt in incinerators or sent overseas, causing pollution far from our shores. In their search for solutions, they visit the Plastic Waste Innovation Hub at University College London, where Professor Mark Miodownik shows them how science is trying to keep up with the proliferation of plastic pollution. Back in the studio, they're joined by Professor Steve Fletcher from the University of Portsmouth, Sally Beken from Innovate UK, and environmental journalist Leana Hosea from Watershed Investigations, to talk about how we got here and how we can change our relationship with plastic. In the 2000s the amount of plastic waste generated rose more in a single decade than it had in the previous forty years. It's in everything - from our clothes, cars and cosmetics, to the 2.5 billion disposable drinks cups now discarded every year in the UK. It seems we can't live without it. So Helen and Tom ask: who's in charge now - us or plastic? Producer: Emma CampbellProduced in association with the Open University

In today's episode, we welcome Simon Bos, the visionary behind Mezze and Gravity Well. Simon, who has a deep understanding of both tech and food industries, discusses the pressing issue of technological inefficiencies in food manufacturing. He narrates the story of how Mezze was conceptualised during a collaboration with one of the UK's largest food manufacturers, which initially relied on a call centre in India for order management. By introducing a custom software solution, Mezze transformed the process, allowing customers to place and track orders online efficiently.Simon explains the function of an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system and why many existing systems fall short for food manufacturing needs. Mezze, as an Amazon-like B2B ordering platform, addresses these gaps by providing tailored solutions that reduce administrative burdens and enhance operational efficiency. Additionally, the episode highlights the pivotal role of AI in sustainability efforts, significantly cutting down food waste by optimising order decisions based on various factors.A significant part of the discussion revolves around the benefits of early tech integration, particularly for scaling businesses. Simon backs his argument with practical examples, demonstrating how tech investments can streamline operations and reduce future headaches. The conversation also touches on government support through Innovate UK, and Simon's aspirations to expand Mezze's reach to the US market, ensuring small manufacturers can stand toe-to-toe with industry giants.Throughout the episode, we emphasise the importance of technological evolution in the food sector and how platforms like Mezze can be game-changers. We also encourage listeners to rate and review the podcast and join our community on Facebook.Timestamps: [0:00] Introduction to the episode and guest, Simon Bos.[03:15] The technological lag in the food manufacturing industry.[07:45] Origin story of Mezze from the collaboration with Adelie Foods.[13:20] Explanation of ERP systems and their shortcomings in food manufacturing.[16:45] How Mezze addresses specific needs in the food industry.[19:30] AI's role in optimising orders and reducing waste.[23:50] Impact of government support and Innovate UK's involvement.[27:15] Benefits of early tech investment for scaling businesses.[31:05] Mezze's branding flexibility and integration capacity.[34:20] Sustainable practices and carbon counting enhancements.[38:10] Opportunities and challenges for small food brands.[42:00] Plans for US market expansion and further scale-up programs.[47:30] Engagement with other technology startups and entrepreneurial ventures.[51:10] Closing thoughts and contact information for Simon Bos.Links and Resources:Website Link: https://ohforfoodssake.co.uk/FB Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ohforfoodsakeLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/oh-for-food-s-sake/You can follow us here on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oh_forfoodssake/For industry consulting from Lucy, connect with her on Instagram or LinkedIn.Find her on Instagram or LinkedIn for further support with industry coaching and facilitation from Amy.See you next time!

What can SIF projects do to ensure they maximise their impact and influence?As we reach the Fund's midway point and award our second tranche of larger 'Beta' funding, programme director Jodie Giles speaks with SIF advisory board members Maxine Frerk (chair) and John McKiernan. Links and onward journeys: For more on the Strategic Innovation Fund: www.ofgem.gov.uk/sifSee the SIF programme page on Innovate UK, Business Connect website: OfgemStrategic Innovation FundSign up for regular SIF newsletters.All episodes of Bright Spark are at: www.podfollow.com/brightspark

About the episode: EV industry pioneer Sam Clarke, a record-holding entrepreneur with over two decades in electric mobility shares his journey from importing electric motorbikes in the early 2000s to founding a zero-emissions logistics company and advising on national EV infrastructure. We discuss debunking myths around electric vehicles and explore how the concept of 'grazing' can reset our expectations of electric vehicle charging. Guest Name: Sam Clarke Sam Clarke is a life-long entrepreneur, industry advisor, EV owner/driver for over 20 years and a multiple Guinness World Record Holder for EV driving. His EV journey started back in 2002 with electric motorbikes before founding a zero-emission logistics firm (Gnewt) which he sold to John Menzies Plc in 2017. He now works on national charging infrastructure needs for GRIDSERVE in particular leading on the £100M+ Government funded (ZEHID) eHGV Electric Freightway Project. He is also a founding member of The EV Café webinar and news channel. In 2015, Sam was a Great British Entrepreneur's Award winner. By 2022 he was made a GreenFleet EV Champion for services to the industry and in 2024 he was voted #1 in the Motor Transport Power Players 2 list and #14 in the greenfleet.net 1 top 100 most Influential list. He also holds two Guinness World Records for the longest distances ever driven in an electric car and van on a single charge 7 (569 and 311 miles respectively). In 2009 he founded the all-electric last-mile logistics business Gnewt which subsequently won multiple awards nationally and globally and was acquired by John Menzies Plc in 2017. During his tenure, he created the UK's largest fully electric commercial fleet, the largest privately-owned smart charging infrastructure and UK's most advanced private V2G (Vehicle to Grid) network. With Sam at the helm, the business was able to deliver over 10 million parcels in its first 10 years of trading 3, mainly in Central London, courtesy of a trail-blazing fully zero-emission fleet, the first of its kind anywhere in the UK. Most recently, Sam has extended his role from Board advisor at GRIDSERVE to become their Chief Vehicle Officer 4. His role is to drive forward mass uptake of electric vehicles through the creation of a net-zero EV leasing division, commercial charging infrastructure build-outs and support the nationwide roll out of high-powered Electric Forecourts and upgrade of the GRIDSERVE Electric Highway network that resides on 85% of the service stations nationally. In 2023 he led the successful bid for a £100M+ Innovate UK Government fund (ZEHID 6) whose purpose is to roll out eHGV charging infrastructure nationwide, the second largest award ever issued by Innovate UK to private enterprise. Sam is a high-profile member of the EV community, a regular public speaker for the industry and has previously been invited to speak at the Transport Select Committee in Westminster and at the European Commission in Brussels. He is also a founding member and Company Director/Shareholder of The EV Café Ltd 5. which is a popular webinar series discussing all aspects of EV adoption on regular weekly and monthly sessions. The EV Café has a number of high-profile sectoral sponsors including companies such as, but not limited to, The AA, Europcar, Bridgestone and Webfleet. Links: LinkedIn: Sam Clarke www.gridserve.com I hope you enjoy the show and if you have any comments or suggestions, please write to me at: toby@wickedproblems.fm. About Adaptavis Adaptavis is a Business Performance Management and Transformation consultancy aimed at forward-thinking leaders, based in London UK. The company specialises in helping organisations to enhance operational efficiency, drive business growth, and navigate complex transformations. From strategy to execution, they focus on providing insights and practical solutions to improve the overall performance of businesses, ensuring they can adapt to changing market conditions and achieve sustainable success. Toby Corballis is a Partner at Adaptavis. You can find out more about their work by visiting: www.adaptavis.com Enjoy, Toby Corballis

Researchers with promising technology in the UK can apply for public innovation agency Innovate UK's pre-accelerator programme ICURe, which supports them in reaching out to 100 potential customers to understand the market viability of their idea.

Claire chatted to Jonathan Walker from Innovate UK about translating robotics research into the commercial sector. Jonathan Walker is the Innovation Lead for Robotics and Sensors at Innovate UK. He is working with government, universities, businesses and cross-sector teams to accelerate the development and uptake of robotics in the UK. Areas of particular interest are the built environment, circular economy, and helping people live independently for longer. Jonathan wants to support these themes through cluster development, funded collaborative R&D, skills programs from school outreach, apprenticeships and T-levels to CDTs, business support and leveraging private investment. Join the Robot Talk community on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ClaireAsher

Episode 48 - Inge Hunter, Cambridge-based founder of Clue Content, overcame homelessness and now leads a pioneering AI/ML startup, recognised by Innovate UK. Disclaimer: Please note that all information and content on the UK Health Radio Network, all its radio broadcasts and podcasts are provided by the authors, producers, presenters and companies themselves and is only intended as additional information to your general knowledge. As a service to our listeners/readers our programs/content are for general information and entertainment only.  The UK Health Radio Network does not recommend, endorse, or object to the views, products or topics expressed or discussed by show hosts or their guests, authors and interviewees.  We suggest you always consult with your own professional – personal, medical, financial or legal advisor. So please do not delay or disregard any professional – personal, medical, financial or legal advice received due to something you have heard or read on the UK Health Radio Network.

Inge Hunter, based in Cambridge, England, overcame significant adversity, including homelessness after aging out of the foster system, to become a successful entrepreneur. Despite financial struggles during her education, she persevered, earning a degree and later founding multiple businesses. In 2023, she won the Great British Entrepreneur Award for her work in technology. Hunter is the founder of Clue Content, a content creation agency specializing in social media. Her innovative approach includes filming three months' worth of content in just three days, making high-quality production accessible to businesses of all sizes. Clue Content, based in Newmarket, employs 14 staff and collaborates with clients across the UK. Hunter has recently been accepted into the UK government's Innovate UK program, where she is developing AI and machine learning technology, one of only 3% of women to receive funding in this category. Clue Content has also been named a finalist in two categories at the UK StartUp Awards: "Marketing Advertising & PR StartUp of the Year" and "Equity-backed StartUp of the Year." Inge's journey from hardship to entrepreneurial success highlights her resilience, creativity, and dedication to supporting other businesses through content marketing. ---- SOCIALS: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/inge.hunter/?hl=en Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@inge.hunter LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ingehunter/ Website: www.ingehunter.co.uk    

A €19.6 million partnership project, which aims to be the stepping stone towards large scale wave energy commercialisation, has received formal go-ahead from the European Union. WEDUSEA is a pioneering collaboration between 14 partners, spanning industry and academia from across the UK, Ireland, France, Germany and Spain. It is co-ordinated by the Irish company OceanEnergy. The project is co-funded by the EU Horizon Europe Programme and by Innovate UK, the UK's innovation agency. In common with all other Horizon Europe projects, WEDUSEA has undergone a comprehensive independent review by EU appointed external experts following its initial project design period to ensure the technical designs and all plans, budgets and protocols are fully in place and approved. The green light has now been received from the EU and the project can proceed to its next stage. The WEDUSEA project will demonstrate a grid connected 1MW OE35 floating wave energy converter at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) wave energy test site at Billia Croo in Orkney, Scotland. A rigorous technical and environmental demonstration will happen over a two-year period in Atlantic wave conditions. OceanEnergy has developed the OE35, which is the world's largest capacity floating wave energy device. Floating on the ocean's surface, the device incorporates a trapped air volume, with the lower part open to the sea. Wave pressures at the submerged opening cause the water to oscillate and drive the trapped air through a turbine to generate electricity. Electricity generated will be exported to the UK grid via EMEC's subsea cables. Prof Tony Lewis, Chief Technical Officer at OceanEnergy, says: "Wave energy is the world's most valuable renewable resource with around 30TWh of potential annual production waiting to be harnessed. That's almost ten times Europe's annual electricity consumption. However, this potential has yet to be fully realised. The project will demonstrate that wave technology is on a cost reduction trajectory and will thus be a stepping stone to larger commercial array scale up and further industrialisation. We predict that the natural energy of the world's oceans will one day supply much of the grid." The WEDUSEA project has three phases. The first phase is the initial design and build of a device suited to the ocean conditions at EMEC's Billia Croo wave energy test site. This will be followed by the demonstration at the site, lasting two years. The final phase will be commercialisation and dissemination which sees the capitalisation and exploitation of the results. Matthijs Soede from the European Commission said at the start of the project: "WEDUSEA is set to be a major catalyst for the wave energy industry, unlocking the full potential of this exciting renewable technology. Prof Lars Johanning of University of Plymouth says: "The WEDUSEA partnership has worked hard to ensure that all detailed designs and planning are robust, to prove that the project is viable and that the project will be delivered within budget. Now we have received the green light from the EU, it's all systems go!" The wave converter build starts in the second half of 2024 and the demonstration at EMEC is expected to begin in June 2025. More about Irish Tech News Irish Tech News are Ireland's No. 1 Online Tech Publication and often Ireland's No.1 Tech Podcast too. You can find hundreds of fantastic previous episodes and subscribe using whatever platform you like via our Anchor.fm page here: https://anchor.fm/irish-tech-news If you'd like to be featured in an upcoming Podcast email us at Simon@IrishTechNews.ie now to discuss. Irish Tech News have a range of services available to help promote your business. Why not drop us a line at Info@IrishTechNews.ie now to find out more about how we can help you reach our audience. You can also find and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat.

In this episode of Giant Robots Smashing into Other Giant Robots (On Tour!), hosts Sami Birnbaum and Svenja Schäfer are joined by Karishma Gupta, the Founder and CEO of Eslando Circular Fashion. Eslando is a fashion company dedicated to changing the clothing industry through circular economy principles and textile recycling. Its mission is to simplify recycling and ensure compliance with EU regulations by connecting brands, consumers, and recyclers, fostering transparency and efficiency in the fashion industry. In today's conversation, Karishma delves into her company's innovative Digital Product Passport and how it's revolutionizing the fashion and textile industries. We discuss how her company helps the right material get to the right recycler using data and leveraging AI to map the process. Tune in to explore how the circular economy applies to the fashion industry, the current recycling gaps, what motivates fashion brands to be more sustainable, and how Eslando is reducing the carbon footprint of the textile supply chain! Key Points From This Episode: Background on Karishma and what led her to start a tech company. How recycling in fashion differs from other industries that recycle. An outline of the biggest recycling hurdles facing the fashion industry. The complex range of materials in clothes and the problems they create. Karishma's transition from the fashion industry to founding a tech-based company. Some of the materials in clothes that are endlessly recyclable. Details about the Digital Product Passport and what it offers the supply chain. Benefits and costs of sustainable regulations and solutions for fashion brands. Ways that Eslando is monetizing its various solutions. The value proposition the Digital Product Passport offers consumers. How long it took to create and build a workable prototype. What Karishma has planned for the future of Eslando Circular Fashion. Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: Karishma Gupta on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/karishma248/) Karishma Gupta on X (https://x.com/_karishmagupta) Eslando Circular Fashion (https://www.eslando.com) Innovate UK (https://www.ukri.org/councils/innovate-uk/) Carbon13 (https://carbonthirteen.com) Sami Birnbaum (https://samibirnbaum.com) Sami Birnbaum on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/samibirnbaum/) Svenja Schäfer (svenjaschaefer.com) Svenja Schäfer on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/svenjaschaefer/) Will Larry on X (https://x.com/will23larry) Will Larry on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/william-larry/) Victoria Guido on X (https://x.com/victori_ousg) Victoria Guido on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/victorialguido/) thoughtbot (https://thoughtbot.com) thoughtbot on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/) thoughtbot on X (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast (https://podcast.thoughtbot.com/) Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Email (hosts@giantrobots.fm) Support Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots (https://github.com/sponsors/thoughtbot)

Siblings and children of people with the rare, neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis are being offered a test in the United Kingdom at no-cost to see if they carry mutations to one of more than 40 genes that would make it likely for them to develop the condition. Sano Genetics developed the test under a grant from Innovate UK. The hope is the effort will expand the understanding of the condition while allowing people who are likely to develop the disease to make informed decisions about their lives. We spoke to Paul Wicks, vice president of neuroscience for Sano, about its test for ALS-related gene mutations, how it works, and why some healthy people might want to take advantage of it.

In today's episode I speak with James Taplin, Lead Technologist for Urban Living at Innovate UK, about the benefits of a place-specific verses a place-agnostic approach in addressing the transition to net zero, and in particular about a £60m government programme called Net Zero Living working with 52 places to collaborate and accelerate the transition to net zero.  James was previously a Sustainability Advisor at Forum for the Future, and has a PhD in Biodiversity and Climate Relationships from the Uni of York He's also a writer of really beautiful and thought provoking posts on instagram and I know that I am not alone in looking forward to reading his first book one of these days. And just so you know, in the interests of full disclosure Liminal are a current delivery partner of NZL and convening the 52 places and leading on the delivery of the Community of Practice together with Urban Foresight and Forum for the Future.We discussed the following: What is Net Zero Living and how did it come about? What are no-regrets Net Zero solutions and how to scale them. What are local authorities on the front line of the net zero transition. About the co-benefits of achieving your needs/goals in a better, net-zero way. How to balance hope and despair when working on climate innovation. Here are a few links to some of the things we discussed: ⁠https://iuk.ktn-uk.org/programme/net-zero-living/⁠  ⁠https://iuk.ktn-uk.org/perspectives/accelerating-net-zero-delivery-unlocking-the-benefits-of-climate-action-in-uk-city-regions/⁠  ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamestaplin/⁠  ⁠www.weareliminal.co/ontheedge ⁠ If you enjoyed this conversation then also check out Episode 52 with Dan Thompson about the Running Out of Time Climate Relay and Episode 51 with Hannah Scott who is the co-founder of the Climate Tech Supercluster.

In today's episode I spoke with Dan Thompson who is the Founder of the Running Out of Time Climate Relay. He has a background as a successful founder and entrepreneur in several start up companies in the media industry including the likes of Renegade Software, he also has experience as an investor in companies including Gamesys and Graze. He is also a lifelong runner and his involvement in running relay races dates back more than a decade going coast to coast in America.  This conversation begins in 2022 when he co-founded the world's first and longest climate relay race called Running Out of Time.  I really liked what he said about millions of us care about climate and nature issues in this country and 83% of people in this country want the government to do more and that councils are one of the most important organisations making the net zero transition happen. Here are links to a few things we discussed: https://running-out-of-time.com/ https://gccs.iza.org/rankings https://www.weareliminal.co/ontheedge https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-thompson-a479/ If you enjoy this episode please check out Episode 51 with Hannah Scott who is the co-founder of the Climate Tech Supercluster. And also look out for episode 53 with James Taplin from Innovate UK about a hugely ambitious and exciting project working with 52 towns and cities on the transition to net zero called Net Zero Living.  ***If you are listening to this episode on 4th July 2024 then listen out for a few different ways to get involved in the final stage of the ⁠Climate Relay⁠ today.***

Salinity Solutions: An innovative water technology company specializing in batch reverse osmosis. The company focuses on improving the efficiency of conventional reverse osmosis systems, achieving higher water recovery rates while reducing energy consumption and chemical usage. Their technology is particularly applicable in industries facing water scarcity and pollution issues, such as mining, zero liquid discharge (ZLD), and vertical farming.Reverse osmosis (RO) is a widely used technology for water treatment, but it has significant drawbacks, including high energy consumption and waste production. Salinity Solutions, led by Tim Naughton, has developed a batch reverse osmosis process that addresses these issues by improving efficiency, reducing waste, and lowering chemical use. This innovative approach offers a more sustainable solution for water treatment needs.Unique Insights:Batch Process Innovation: Unlike traditional RO, batch reverse osmosis operates in a non-steady state with varying pressures, making it more efficient and easier to manage waste.Market Adaptation: The primary challenge for batch RO is market adoption due to its process innovation rather than new technology. However, it offers significant improvements, making it a viable solution for many applications.Humanitarian Roots: The technology was initially developed for humanitarian aid, utilizing solar energy for remote communities, and has evolved into a commercially viable solution addressing various industrial needs.Key Ideas:Reverse Osmosis Drawbacks: Traditional RO systems are energy-intensive, produce a lot of waste, and use significant amounts of chemicals, which limits their efficiency and sustainability.Batch Reverse Osmosis: Salinity Solutions' innovation involves a batch process that significantly improves efficiency, achieving up to 98% water recovery with half the energy consumption and reduced chemical usage.Market Penetration Challenges: Although batch RO is not a new technology but a process innovation, its market adoption is hindered by the need for industries to adjust to its non-equilibrium operation.Initial Development and Funding: The technology's development began as a volunteer project, leading to a government-funded program that helped commercialize the technology through substantial grants and investments.Crowdfunding Success: Salinity Solutions successfully raised funds through Crowdcube, attracting over 2,000 shareholders and significantly exceeding their initial funding goals.Strategic Partnerships: The company has formed key partnerships, including a joint venture in India for ZLD applications and collaborations with large companies like Suez, enhancing their market presence and credibility.Technology Applications: The batch RO system is versatile, with applications ranging from lithium extraction in mining to phosphate removal in wastewater treatment and water reuse in agriculture.Future Outlook: Salinity Solutions aims to become a leading technology in the desalination sector, with ambitions to use their technology for humanitarian aid projects, particularly in remote and water-stressed regions.Counter-Intuitive Facts:Efficiency Paradox: Achieving 98% water recovery in batch RO is not just 3% better than 95%, but twice as efficient in terms of outcomes.Market Adoption: Despite being a superior process, batch RO faces market adoption challenges because it's a process innovation, not a new technology.Humanitarian Origin: The commercial technology originated from a humanitarian project aimed at providing solar-powered water solutions for remote communities.Full Episode: https://dww.show/how-oxyle-destroys-pfas-with-the-energy-youd-actually-waste/Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

This water tech start-up turns reverse osmosis into a batch process, which divides the reject by more than two and at half the energy cost. How? Let's find out!More #water insights? Connect with me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/ #️⃣ All the Links Mentioned in this Video #️⃣ Salinity Solutions' website: https://salinitysolutions.co.uk/The crowdfunding platform they leveraged: https://www.crowdcube.com/Innovate UK: https://www.ukri.org/councils/innovate-uk/Cornish Lithium: https://cornishlithium.com/SQM Lithium Ventures: https://sqmlitio.cl/acercando-el-capital-de-riesgo-a-los-negocios-tecnologicos-del-futuro-litio-agua-y-electromovilidad/SUEZ signing with Salinity Solutions: https://smartwatermagazine.com/news/university-birmingham/suez-pilot-salinity-solutions-low-energy-reuse-technology-france

In this episode of 'Jimmy's Jobs of the Future,' Science Minister Andrew discusses the role and responsibilities of being the UK's science minister, highlighting the government's commitment to making the UK a science and technology superpower through a record funding of 20 billion pounds for research and innovation. Andrew elaborates on exciting developments in engineering biology and the strength of the UK in life sciences, mentioning the government's investment and vision for engineering biology. He also reflects on his background as the CFO of Sky, his transition into politics, and the importance of integrating business practices into government for better performance and risk management. Andrew advocates for public service and discusses the need for more business leaders in government, as well as the importance of innovation and the UK's position in the global market. 00:00 Intro 00:04 The Role and Vision of a Science Minister 01:51 Exciting Frontiers in Science and Technology 03:53 Transitioning from Business to Politics 06:26 The Challenges and Surprises of Government Work 09:21 Innovate UK and the Future of Innovation 13:09 Reflections on a Varied Career in Government 38:17 The Business Perspective on Upcoming Elections 42:24 Quick Fire Round: Space, Technology, and Personal Preferences Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The second part of this conversation with Fargro's managing director, explores drones, sustainability and fairness in the supply chain.Fargro's interest in drones is part of a number of projects on data-driven decision-making for protected horticulture "to try and give a holistic view for agronomists and growers so they actually get some actionable insights" to help them prioritise their activities.Hopkins talks about the shortage of agronomists and how they are trying to attract a new generation of 'digital natives'. But the new technology puts power and information directly into growers' hands.On robotics, he expresses a sense of "frustration" with the slow progress, especially in robotic harvesting. He talks about the funding struggles for the sector to help them bring new tech to market. He discusses how unlike in agriculture, horticulture still relies on "not cheap" manual labour. He calls for the Government to step up with Innovate UK funding but he anticipates "a long haul".On sustainability, he advocates first efficiency measures, but also discusses the need to improve plastic reduction and recyclability. "The problem is that [non plastics] nearly always cost more than the plastic alternatives" he says, though he believes often suppliers could absorb some of these extra costs.Increased use of organic and controlled-release fertilisers are yielding good results and also enjoy a cost advantage, he adds.With the ascension of King Charles III to the throne, Royal Warrant holders, including Fargro, are having to re-apply and "there's a huge emphasis on sustainability and the whole environmental social governance element of it - ethical trading as well." In the transition away from peat he percieves the change is being led by retailers and consumers, though "it's all about perception as well as the reality of sustainability".Fargro has put together a consortium of waste operatives and recyclers to work with growers to make collection and recycling of plastics easier. But above all he believes the key question is "Is there an economic benefit to it? and how can we use that to drive the sustainability agenda?"On fairness in the supply chain, he heard Rishi Sunak promise improvements for fresh produce in a very "uneven playing field", but coming behind dairy, poultry and eggs, he wonders how quickly horticultural growers can expect meaningful change. He expects ornamental growers to "be ignored entirely" and face a battle to protect or improve their margins.Hopkins talks through business changes, including consolidation in the customer base and signs that glass is being taken up by growers.Fargro itself is looking to diversify including to improve its amenity offering. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alana Kruger, Knowledge Transfer Manager for South Africa and Space Lead for Africa at Innovate UK, joins host Bruce Whitfield to explore the findings of a recent report detailing significant opportunities for UK-Africa space collaborations. The report, published by Innovate UK, underscores Africa's rapid ascent as a formidable player in space research, technology, and advancement despite its comparatively briefer history in the field compared to other global counterparts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Aston University is working with an engineering company to make industrial gas burners less environmentally damaging. The University has entered a knowledge transfer partnership (KTP) with Lanemark Combustion Engineering to enable gas or propane burners users to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing the carbon footprint of gas burners A KTP is a three-way collaboration between a business, an academic partner and a highly qualified researcher, known as a KTP associate. The UK-wide programme helps businesses to improve their competitiveness and productivity through the better use of knowledge, technology and skills. Aston University is a sector leading knowledge transfer partnership provider, with 80% of its completed projects being graded as very good or outstanding by Innovate UK, the national body. Warwickshire-based Lanemark has been supplying industrial gas burners to sectors including petrochemical, car plants, breweries and food manufacturers for more than 40 years. The overall aim of the KTP is to help transition burners to use low carbon fuels such as hydrogen or biogas to meet new environmental standards. Lanemark has developed their burner designs over several decades using different software applications. To calculate the impact of using new fuels either alone or in different mixes with propane or natural gas, Lanemark's engineers currently have to transfer data between different software applications which is time consuming and inflexible. Aston University will be sharing its expertise to create a single software package to calculate the impact of using different fuels and to integrate these into existing designs. The programme will analyse factors such as exhaust gases, flame length and heat transfer, and ensure equipment remains agile and competitive in a changing market. Aidan Lewis, technical manager at Lanemark said: "We are a relatively small company in our industry, so it's important that we aren't left behind by some of the bigger players. Having this new software will make us more agile in responding to new regulatory requirements and customer demands, which will keep us in a competitive position." Aston University will provide Lanemark with access to specialist research expertise in areas critical to low-carbon industrial heating systems, including heat transfer, heating systems, and burner design. Lanemark will gain the necessary skills and knowledge to maintain and adapt the software in the future as required, which is tailored to meet the specific needs and expectations of the company's clientele. The company is working with Aston University's Dr Muhammed Imran from the Energy and Bioproducts Research Institute and Dr Martin Rudorfer from the School of Computer Science and Digital Technologies. Dr Imran is a senior lecturer in mechanical and design engineering, whose research focuses on developing innovative thermal energy systems and improving the energy performance of existing energy systems. Dr Rudorfer is a lecturer in applied AI and robotics, who has expertise in software engineering and intelligent automation of processes. Together with KTP Associate Dr Tarun Kumar, the research team has been working to understand the requirements of the new software and how it will be used by different people within the company. This has enabled them to build the user interface for the software, which will allow design engineers, sales agents and customers to access the complex engineering that underpins the burner designs. The software is being built within a commonly used computational platform called MATLAB. Lead academic, Dr Muhammad Imran said: "With fundamental research, impact can take a long time, but with a KTP, the outcomes are far more immediate. Not only will this collaborative research help Lanemark commercially, it will also significantly improve the carbon reduction potential for their products. To contribute to that is very satisfying, particularly as we will start to see the impact i...

Business Growth Toolkit – a series from The Standards Show - developed in collaboration with Innovate UK Business Growth.Innovate UK is the UK's innovation agency. And Innovate UK Business Growth is a key part of the agency's deep investment to help innovating businesses grow and scale, supporting them with tailored advice on becoming investment ready, internationalising and managing how they innovate.The series looks at the relationship between standards and some key business issues, with particular relevance for SMEs.In this episode, Matthew speaks to Peter Stirling from deep tech start-up Delta G about how standards for quality management and innovation management are supporting their scaling up journey.Series | Business Growth ToolkitFind out more about the issues raised in this episodestandardsforgrowth@bsigroup.comBusiness Growth Toolkit Get involved with standardsGet in touch with The Standards Showeducation@bsigroup.comsend a voice messageFind and follow on social mediaX @StandardsShowInstagram @thestandardsshowLinkedIn | The Standards Show

Business Growth Toolkit – a series from The Standards Show - developed in collaboration with Innovate UK Business Growth.Innovate UK is the UK's innovation agency. And Innovate UK Business Growth is a key part of the agency's deep investment to help innovating businesses grow and scale, supporting them with tailored advice on becoming investment ready, internationalising and managing how they innovate.The series looks at the relationship between standards and some key business issues, with particular relevance for SMEs.In this episode, Matthew speaks to Nichola Bates from Boeing's Aerospace Xelerated and Martin Oughton from Plyable about managing collaboration between small and large organizations.Series | Business Growth ToolkitFind out more about the issues raised in this episodeIUKEDGEtoolkit@bsigroup.com Business Growth Toolkit Get involved with standardsGet in touch with The Standards Showeducation@bsigroup.comsend a voice messageFind and follow on social mediaX @StandardsShowInstagram @thestandardsshowLinkedIn | The Standards Show

Technology which harnesses lightning's nitrogen-fixing properties could revolutionise fertiliser production and supply, cut carbon emissions and support soil health. The Agri-Tech Centres are working with innovative start-up Debye Ltd. to trial its ground-breaking system, which simulates lightning's ability to capture nitrogen in the form of nitrates when it strikes water. Innovative Lightning-based fertiliser tech Debye envisage modular and containerised systems sited on farms or hubs, giving farmers on-the-spot or local supply of nitrate-based fertiliser using only air, water and electricity. The 18-month feasibility R&D project is taking place on lettuce crops in Agri-Tech Centre CHAP's vertical farming facility at Stockbridge, with fellow Centre Agri-EPI providing project management and life-cycle analysis, measuring the product's environmental and economical sustainability at each stage of its development. The objective is to develop a one-kilowatt proof-of-concept prototype, to quantify and compare crop yields and post-harvest properties for standard nitrogen fertiliser and fertiliser produced by Debye Ltd.'s machine and to determine its commercial viability. If the trial is successful, Debye could undertake small-scale pilot projects on a farm setting within three years, subject to funding. The project is funded by Innovate UK and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council's Novel low-emission food production systems: Feasibility studies competition. The Agri-Tech Centres help innovative start-ups throughout their journey; securing funding, providing access to research facilities to test, demonstrate and validate new ideas to overcome the agri-industry's critical challenges, such as climate change and environmental sustainability. Burak Karadag, who developed the technology, was originally a space engineer, working on satellite propulsion, when he became interested in the properties of lightning and realised that he would like to see how he could apply space technology to grand challenges on earth. Dr. Burak Karadag, chief technical officer, Debye Ltd said: "Fertiliser is critical to global food security, but current production methods cause environmental harm and are subject to market disruption. "Our technology harnesses nature's own elegant solution: lightning strikes water with such energy that it breaks apart atmospheric nitrogen molecules, creating nitrogen dioxide, which is soluble in water and readily absorbed by plants. Our technology replicates these principles using only air, water and electricity. "Farmers rely mostly on ammonia-based fertiliser, whose economic model relies on mid- to large-scale production using natural gas and with well-documented negative effects on air, soil and water quality. Manufacturers are trying to move to green hydrogen reduce the fertiliser's carbon footprint, but local, renewably powered direct nitrogen capture technology could make it a near zero-emission process, locally and securely available and with far better soil health outcomes. "Today's synthetic fertiliser production accounts for five per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, equivalent to half the total emissions produced by the EU27 in 2021. Just imagine if we could remove those emissions! Being a rocket scientist was undeniably exciting, but I was so motivated by the challenge of tackling climate change and enhancing food security through innovation that I was glad to make the career shift to agriculture." Dr. Harry Langford, Innovation Network Lead at CHAP, said: "Fertilisers are critical to secure food production, but economic and environmental concerns are driving a renewed focus on both diversification in practice, towards alternative fertiliser types, and technological innovation, to enhance production and application efficiency. The Agri-Tech Centres are delighted to be working with Debye Ltd. to test the feasibility of this exciting technology and help to determine its value proposition....

E-scooters provoke a 'Marmite' love or hate response in many of us. Still being piloted across UK cities, they straddle an uncertain legislative space, with concerns around safety not far from the headlines. Yet there are other important questions raised by this still-emergent form of transport. In this episode, we speak with Dr Daniel Oviedo about the multifaceted dimensions of transport-related social exclusion: from affordability, to fear, discrimination and more. We discuss the conditions that may allow or prohibit people from using E-scooters – a form of transport important to social development, connection, and Daniel argues wellbeing. We explore how working with researchers from sociology, behaviour change, sustainable transport and industrial engineering – and various stakeholders with local authorities, TFL, and Innovate UK, helped to conceptualise a more inclusive policy approach for E-scooters. Daniel Oviedo is an Associate Professor at UCL's Bartlett Development and Planning Unit. He specialises in the social, economic, and spatial analysis of inequalities related to urban transport and policy evaluation, with projects situated across Latin America, Africa, and Asia, as well as here in the UK. For the podcast transcript, details of our other podcasts and activities visit: http://tinyurl.com/mubmxu4n Date of episode recording: 2024-01-25T00:00:00Z Duration: 00:25:28 Language of episode: English Presenter: Lili Golmohammadi Guests: Daniel Oviedo Producer: Matt Aucott, Cerys Bradley

Aston University is to help one of the world's largest cassava processers develop a sustainable and faster way to dry its crops. The University has entered a knowledge transfer partnership (KTP) with the Tropical Starch Company, Ghana's leading cassava processing business. According to The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the country is the second biggest consumer of cassava and contributes to almost a quarter of the country's agricultural gross domestic product. More sustainable tech to dry cassava Despite its popularity cassava is difficult to process as it needs to be thoroughly cleaned, mashed, sieved, dried and packaged. Currently the Tropical Starch Company uses industrial uses bin dryers which need electricity or fossil fuels to generate heat and can only dry one crop per production line. They are expensive to run and as it is hard to regulate their temperatures sometimes products are overcooked or discoloured. A KTP is a three-way collaboration between a business, an academic partner and a highly qualified researcher, known as a KTP associate. The UK-wide programme helps businesses to improve their competitiveness and productivity through the better use of knowledge, technology and skills. Aston University is a sector leading KTP provider, with 80% of its completed projects being graded as very good or outstanding by Innovate UK, the national body. The aim of the KTP is to develop an integrated drying device which can operate off-grid, using several different technologies. Aston University will develop an off-grid, solar-powered drying device that is faster, temperature-controllable, uses less energy and can process bigger volumes of raw cassava. Augustine Fiifi Amoah, who is a supervisor at the company said: "We already have the customers demanding it and so we are praying that we will be able to meet demand. "If we could produce 20 tons a day we would be so happy. We have the market, we just need the product!" Although some of these technologies are already developed individually, the way they will be integrated will be new. In particular, data needs to be collected to design and optimise the system which will be completed with computer simulation modelling. This will require expertise in several fields including modular design, desiccant drying techniques (where desiccant materials are used in a piece of industrial equipment to eliminate water) energy systems, post-harvest technology and food engineering. The project is supervised by Dr Ahmed Rezk, senior lecturer in mechanical engineering from Aston University's College of Engineering and Physical Sciences, an expert in thermal systems, whose mainstream research is in sustainable and zero-carbon heating and cooling technologies, in collaboration with Dr Tabbi Wilberforce Awotwe, a lecturer in engineering, who specialises in design optimisation of mechanical systems and energy storage modelling. Dr Rezk said: "The main goal of our research is to find more efficient and green ways of heating and cooling. They are two sides of the same problem, both requiring energy. "If we devise a good heating method through this project it could have implications for cooling methods in other countries as well." Dr Wilberforce Awotwe who is based at Kings College London, has previously conducted research at Aston University. He said "I'm a Ghanaian myself and my vision for this project goes beyond delivering work packages. "If we can get this done we will support many companies in this field, not just one, and address the issue of young people leaving the countryside in search of employment. "The long-term impact on the community is the most important thing." The project will also involve Professor Robert Sarpong Amoah and Dr Fatimah Abubakar Von from the University of Cape Coast, Ghana. In addition a KTP associate will be recruited to work at the company's main site in Abura-Dunkwa, Ghana. Once the system has been agreed, the Tropical Starch Company will ...

Business Growth Toolkit – a series from The Standards Show - developed in collaboration with Innovate UK EDGE.Innovate UK is the UK's innovation agency. And Innovate UK EDGE is a key part of the agency's deep investment to help innovating businesses grow and scale, supporting them with tailored advice on becoming investment ready, internationalising and managing how they innovate.The series looks at the relationship between standards and some key business issues, with particular relevance for SMEs.In this episode of the series Matthew speaks to Adrian Miller from The Institute of Collaborative Working about ISO 44001 – the international standard for collaborative business relationships.Series | Business Growth ToolkitFind out moreIUKEDGEtoolkit@bsigroup.com Business Growth Toolkit Get involved with standardsFind and follow The Standards Show on social mediaX @standardsshowInstagram @thestandardsshow Get in touch with The Standards ShowSend a voice messageeducation@bsigroup.comSubscribe wherever you get your podcastsSubscribe to The Standards ShowCheck out the websitethe-standards-show

Today, we're happy to be joined by Edwina Johnson, Head of Global at Alloy, leading company strategy to expand their product into key markets worldwide and launch a GTM team in the UK/EMEA.Previously Head of Global at Alloy, leading company strategy to expand our product into key markets worldwide and launch a GTM team in the UK/EMEA. Before that, COO at Alloy in NYC, taking the team from Seed to Series C and $1.55B valuation. Edwina is also an active angel investor, primarily through Ada Ventures, under the Economic Empowerment thesis, a mentor through Innovate UK's Women in Innovation program, and an Expert in Residence for Sie Ventures. We invite you to listen to this discussion below for some wonderful stories; besides the actionable advice, you can have a sneak peek at the below.Go to eu.vc for our core learnings and the full video interview

Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, Founder of Rubber Cheese.Download the Rubber Cheese 2023 Visitor Attraction Website Report - the annual benchmark statistics for the attractions sector.If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcastCompetition ends on 29th March 2024. The winner will be contacted via Twitter.  Show references: David Green | LinkedInhttps://www.blenheimpalace.com/Head of Innovation at Blenheim PalaceDavid Green is responsible for driving innovation at Blenheim to deliver value from the implementation of novel business methods and new concepts. His role involves building a culture of continual improvement and innovation, bringing together and contextualising novel datasets through a data and IoT network infrastructure, and identifying opportunities to enhance customer experiences.David leads the research and development at Blenheim, cultivating university partnerships, that helps fuse specialised knowledge with Blenheim's diverse landscape and practical challenges. Moreover, he initiated the Innovation and Continual Improvement network, fostering collaboration among sector leads to share expertise and address common challenges. Joseph Paul | LinkedInhttps://vennersys.co.uk/Associate Director – Key Account ManagerWith 10 years of experience in SaaS Account Management and 6 years at Vennersys, Joe works closely with visitor attractions to optimise system performance and internal processes. He acts as a conduit between attraction managers and Vennersys, helping facilitate constructive communication to further develop and improve Vennersys' own services based on customer needs or industry trends.In his personal life, Joe can either be found playing hockey for his local club or taking long, refreshing walks in the hills and fields near his home. Transcriptions:  Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip The Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Kelly Molson. On today's episode I speak with David Green, Head of Innovation at Blenheim Palace and Joseph Paul, Associate Director - Key Account Manager at Vennersys.We're talking about data - but not just the importance of it (we all know that right?). David and Joe share the exciting data and AI reporting systems that Blenheim have created, allowing them to predict, and not just report on past performance. This is a really interesting episode and if you're been a little bit put off or a little bit scared about AI up until this point, this might be the episode that changes your mind.If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on all the usual channels by searching Skip The Queue. Kelly Molson: David, Joe, it is lovely to have you both on the podcast today. Thank you for joining me on Skip the Queue. David Green: It's great to be here. Joseph Paul: Thanks for having us. Kelly Molson: That sounded very positive, guys. Thanks. Feel the enthusiasm. David Green: Let's see how the first question goes, shall we? Kelly Molson: Listen, everyone worries about these icebreaker questions. It's just we're just in a pub, in a coffee shop having a little chat. That's all it is. Right, I want to know. We'll start with you, Joe. What was the last thing you binge watched on your streaming service of choice? Joseph Paul: Gosh, that's a very good question. The last series we binge watch was a series called Bodies on Netflix, which is about a murder that happens in four different time periods and four detectives are trying to solve the murder. Very good if you haven't watched it.  Kelly Molson: I have seen this and Joe, it hurt my head a little bit.Joseph Paul: Yeah. It is hard to keep track of some of the plots through the different times, but there's a very good ending worth watching if you haven't, David? David Green:  I don't think I have. I didn't get a chance to watch TV. Kelly Molson: So same question to you, David. That's a really good series as well, Joe. I thoroughly enjoyed that, although it did hurt the backwards forwards bit a little bit, was a bit mind blowing. Same question to you, David. What was the last thing that you binge watched? David Green: Well, the last thing I probably binge watched was probably Breaking Bad. That just sort of shows you how long ago it was. I binge watched anything, but I'm desperate to watch it again. It was so good. I was just hooked on the first episode. I just loved every single minute of that. Kelly Molson: Have you seen that, Joe? Joseph Paul: Yes. Very good series. Probably one of the best of all time. And the question back would be, have you watched Better Call Saul? David Green: Yeah, but I didn't find it as good. I say I didn't find as good. It was still great. I'm very fussy in the Greenhouse song. Kelly Molson: I feel like I'm the only person in the whole world who's not watched Breaking Bad, which is this is quite controversial, isn't it? Everybody says that I would love it and I should watch it, but I feel overwhelmed that there's so many series to it and it would take up all of my TV viewing time for months and months. It would be the only thing that I could probably watch for the entire year and that feels too much. Joseph Paul: It's well worth it. Absolutely. You should do it.Kelly Molson: Dedicate 2024 as the year for Breaking Bad. David Green: I'm going to own up. I've not watched a single episode of The Crown either and some of it was filmed at Blenheim. So I'm really embarrassed to admit that on this podcast.Kelly Molson: That is a statement in a half, David. See, this is why I do the icebreakers. You never know what dirt you're going to get out. David, we're going to start with you with this one. What is the one food or drink that you cannot eat and you can't even think about without feeling a little bit queasy? David Green: That's cheese pastry straight away. I remember when I was at school, we had a home economics club. I remember making these cheese straws and I took them home and I was so environmentally ill after these cheese straws ever since, I just can't even look at cheese pastry. All these nibbles that people without for drinks can't bear it. Cheese and pastry together is wrong. Kelly Molson: This is really sad. I love a little cheese straw. I feel sad for you that you can't eat a cheese straw, David. I feel sad for you. Joe, what about you? Joseph Paul: I can pretty much eat anything and I'm not overly put off by much. I think the one thing that turns me away from food is horseradish and any sauce. That's probably my only sort of food that I won't go to and puts me off eating anything that has.Kelly Molson: Just horseradish or sauce in general. Are we talking like, sweet chilli dip? No?Joseph Paul: Just horseradish. So anything that has that in it, I will stay away from. But apart from that, I'll pretty much eat anything anyone puts on my plate. David Green: I think you're missing out, Joe. Kelly Molson: Do you know what's probably really nice as well? Is a cheese straw with horseradish.Joseph Paul: But cheese straws are the best. David Green: I'm going to have to leave the room in a minute. We could talk about cheese straw. Kelly Molson: Sorry. All right, let's move on from that. Right, I want to know I was quite kind to those ones. I want to know what your unpopular opinions are. Joe, let's start with you. Joseph Paul: Not sure this is going to go down too well, but my unpopular opinion is Harry Potter is an overrated film series. Kelly Molson: Books or films or both? Joseph Paul: Films, predominantly. Kelly Molson: Wow. I mean, my husband would absolutely agree with you. So I got him to watch the first one and then we got halfway through the second one and he paused it and looked at me and said, "Kelly, I just can't do this. Sorry." And left the room. That was it. Done. Joseph Paul: I can understand. So in our household, we alternate between Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. So we compromise. We have a Harry Potter, then a Lord of the Rings, then go through. Kelly Molson: Is your partner Harry Potter, then? Joseph Paul: My wife is very much a Harry Potter fan. Kelly Molson: Interesting. That is quite controversial. How do you feel about that, David? David Green: Very disappointing. Joe, actually. Joseph Paul: Sorry to let you down. David Green: We might have to end this now, Joe.Kelly Molson: This beautiful relationship that we're going to talk about. End over Harry Potter.  David Green: Harry Potter and cheese straws. Kelly Molson: David, same question to you. What is your unpopular opinion? David Green: Didn't think I had any unpopular opinions until I started really thinking about it, but I have to say, my original this is really good either, really was dancing, non professional dancing. I mean, I'm not a dancer, I've got a body of a dad. I am a dad and my wife and my daughter are very good dancers and I think it's just years of standing by a bar at a wedding with that person, go, "Come on, get on the dance floor, come on." And they drag you up and then busting moves is probably the wrong description, but it's just looking around the room on the floor with other people sort of bobbing around awkwardly looking, and all the blokes tipped you looking at each other going, "Oh, get me home." It's that awkwardness, I find really difficult and I'm going to be cheeky. And another one, because I just remembered that concerts is another one, so you spend a fortune going to a concert. David Green: I took my daughter once to Ariana Grande and I'd just been dragged to Arctic Monkeys and we drove hours and hours to this place and my wife had got Rose lead, I think, which was I needed binoculars to even see the stage. I was absolutely freezing, completely freezing. I didn't dress appropriately, I was dressed in a shirt and tied, typically, because that was Arctic Monkeys. Kelly Molson: You went through a shirt and tied Arctic Monkeys? God said, "Well".David Green: I remember walking down to the bottom of the stadium, I'm freezing, I have to go and get some clothes, and they let me out and I had to buy Arctic Monkeys merchandise and I came up the steps wearing an Arctic Monkeys hoodie. Number one fan to my wife and daughter, absolutely laughing hilariously.  David Green: And I had to listen to the music for 2 hours and then I got home about three in the morning and my wife had promised me dinner out, went to Wild Bean Cafe at 01:00 A.M. on the way home. Kelly Molson: What a treat.David Green: Dancing and concert. Laura just sneaking next to one in. Kelly Molson: Well, no, I love this. I mean, it's like an elongation of it, isn't it? They go hand in hand.  I would be that person at a wedding, they're trying to get you on the dancefloor. Which made me start laughing and then I lost it. Shirt and tie at an Arctic Monkeys gig. What were you thinking? David Green: I don't know. Kelly Molson: I think that's my favourite unpopular opinion yet. Amazing. Thank you both for sharing. Shall we talk about some serious stuff? David Green: Have you cried on a podcast before?Kelly Molson: Before I've had a cry, I've definitely had a cry on the podcast, but a cry of laughter, I'm not sure that's really got me today. Right, serious stuff. We're going to talk about data today, which is very serious stuff. We all know the importance of data. We've talked about data hundreds and hundreds of times in various different guyses. On this podcast, however, we're going to talk about reporting today, but with a twist. So reporting is often usually about things that have already happened. We're looking at past visitor numbers, we're looking at how many visitors came and how much they spent in the cafe on a particular day, what the weather was like on a past particular day. So we can predict whether it might be like that this year. Kelly Molson: But Blenheim are doing something completely different with reporting, which, when we had a chat about it prior to this episode, it blew my mind a little bit. And it's such a brilliant case study. You need to share this with the world. Firstly, though, I want you to just, both of us, tell us a little bit about your role and your background. So, Joe, can you start first? Tell us a little bit about your role and how you came into it. Joseph Paul: Yeah, of course. So I've been in the industry for six years now within the visitor attraction industry, working at Vennersys, and my role is a Key Account Manager. So I work closely with our clients throughout the lifetime of their contracts, so making sure they are getting the most out of the system and that sort of return on investment they've put into the software they've purchased. So I've worked closely with David and the Blenheim team for about six years now, and prior to that, I was also in account management as well, within a software business. Kelly Molson: Great. David, over to you. David Green: Variable history with Blenheim. I think next year will be the 30th year when I first walked through the doors. So when I was studying at college, it was my first sort of part time weekend Christmas job, and I was a bubble up for the 11th Duke and Duchess, and that was great. If I got I know stuff. Kelly Molson: I feel like there's a podcast episode on its own about that part of your career. David Green: I'm not sure I could speak too much about that, but I remember when I finished college, my mother said, "What are you going to get a proper job?" And the phone rang and I ended up working at Blenheim. Moved into the clock tower at Blenheim. That was my first flat. It was quite incredible, I have to say. But after leaving when I was 21, I just changed direction. So I became a developer, so I learned to programme and I worked for a little agency in Abingdon for two doctors who were both very bright guys. Yeah, I just put the hours in and learned to programme and really, that probably led to where I am today. I learned very quickly to problem solve and learned very quickly how to develop things. David Green: So when I finally joined Blenheim again, full time enabled me to sort of trial new things very quickly, fail fast. And that kind of led to our first real time reporting platform, which I developed myself. Kelly Molson: Amazing. David Green: This was really a combination of seeing that the business had lots of data and seeing that a lot of the data was inputted in manually. So being able to develop something that could contextualise data in a better way, but get people looking at the data in a much faster way, I think that's where it started from. Kelly Molson: And that is what we're going to talk about today. You've got a really interesting job title. So you're Head of Innovation at Blenheim Palace. Are there many other heads of innovation in the sector? Because there's lots of kind of I mean, ALVA, for instance, brilliant organisation, they do lots of kind of individual meetups. So heads of marketing meetups, CEO meetups, head of visitor service meetups. I haven't seen them do a Head of Innovation meetup yet, so I question how many of you are there? David Green: I don't think there's very many at all, but the title is becoming more and more known, I think, across multiple sectors. And it was really the sort of creation I was Head of Digital at Lent for eight or nine years, and it was really the creation of Dominic Hare, our CEO, who saw the need for research development. The role is really about hunting for problems, and as much as we're well known for our visitor business, we have a thriving land business and a thriving real estate business. And I get to work across those three tiers, which is really exciting, hunting for problems. I get to work with universities, so we have a really strong university partnership, both at Oxford Brookes and the Oxford University. David Green: And this really allows us to bring in the latest research academics into a real world environment to solve problems together. So that's really exciting. But then the sort of second thing I work on as Head of Innovation is live data, so I have a data background, so it meant that very quickly I could bring all of our data into one place to drive greater insight. And then the third tier is looking at sort of customer experience changes. So if anyone sees my post on LinkedIn, you'll see we've brought in a new returnable cup scheme of all of our cups are RFID enabled. So looking at eradicating single use cups right the way through to a transformation project around implementing digital wallets and pulses. David Green: So there's lots of different things right the way through to encouraging our visas to come by green transport, which is very much tied into our 2027 pledge to become carbon neutral. Kelly Molson: That's lovely. Yeah. That's really interesting that you sit across so many different facets and it's not just about data and reporting and digital, really. So what we're going to talk about today is a particular project that you've both been involved in, and I'm going to kind of split this into two, because there's two areas that I kind of want to focus on. I want to hear about what the project is and all of the things and benefits that it's brought to Blenheim, which David's going to talk about. Kelly Molson: And then, Joe, I want to then come over to you and talk about how you kind of made this happen from a supplier perspective and the things that you need to work through together with your client and maybe some of the things that you've had to change and implement to be able to support your client, to do the things that they want to do with your system. So, David, I'm going to start with you. Can you give us kind of an overview of what this project is like, the background to it and then what led to that project happening? David Green: Background is like many organisations in this sector, we have lots and lots of data. Often we report out of proprietary systems, we then contextualise our data very well and I wanted to bring all the information to one area so we could really apply context but also look at in that data. So this sort of built off our first real time reporting platform that were able to get data into the hands of the operations teams, other teams, really quickly. But it wasn't really supportable just by me here at Blenheim. So were looking at one, finding a platform that we could utilise to allow us to get data out to feedball in a much more secure way. I was handling all the visualisations and things and there's better tools for that. So that's one of the reasons. David Green: The second thing is looking at data, I wanted to try out using AI to identify patterns. So what's the correlation between certain data sources? There's one, a group of visitors wearing wet coats. Does that have an impact on the environmental conditions? What's the optimal number of people that retail space to maximise their understand all those sorts of things were unanswered questions. So I engaged one of our Oxford Brookes relationships that we already had and we applied for what's called a Knowledge Transfer Partnership. So a KTP, which is match funded, that's Innovate UK match funded, and I highly recommend them as a starting point. And what that does, it brings in an associate who works full time. David Green: This project was, I think, 32 months, but also you get access to different parts of the university and in our case, we had access to the technical faculty as well as the business faculty. So you've got real experts in the field working with an associate that's embedded here, Lennon, that can help us solve that problem. And we're fortunate enough to win the application and the grant money and then we cloud on. So we called it a Smart Visitor Management System. That's the headline and really the two key subsystems of that was the customer insight and prediction. So we wanted to look at how we could predict business numbers. We know all of the knock on impacts of that in terms of better planning, reducing food waste, all those sorts of things. But then we also want to look at the visitor flow. David Green: So that's almost saying, "Well, where are visitors right now and where are they going to go next?" But they're the two sort of component parts. Kelly Molson: Such a brilliant introduction to AI as well, because I think it is such a current topic right now. And I was at a recent ALVA meeting where there was a phenomenal speaker talking about the implications of AI and the opportunities that it could bring. And I think there was a 50 - 50 split of the audience of 50% of them were terrified about this new technology and what it might potentially mean. And then 50% were really inspired by it and see these huge opportunities from it. But I think this is such a brilliant case study to show how it can be used to your advantage in a very non-scary way. David Green: I think with AI can be scary, but actually it's all about governance at the end of the day. And actually what we're doing is using machine learning to identify the patterns in large data sets to help us be better informed. Kelly Molson: What have been the benefits of implementing this kind of level of data reporting? So what have you been able to do that you couldn't previously do? David Green: Well, predictions is one. So ultimately we all budget. The first thing to probably say is that when we do contextual reporting, normally we access our data from a proprietary system and then bring it into some sort of spreadsheet and then try and tie it into a budget. That's sort of the first thing. It's really getting all of your data sets in a early. So we had budget, we had weather, we had advanced bookings, we had ticketing from different sort of platforms. And the starting point, before we talk too much about end benefits, were developing a data strategy in this centralised concept of a DataHub. So all of our data is in one place, and we're using APIs and direct connections and data signature Vennersys to bring data into one place. David Green: We also looked at platforms, environments, so were looking at Azure, we're a Microsoft business. So actually we decided Azure was the right sort of plan for us and we came up with a very broad strategy that said anything else we procure in the future has to best in class or it talks to the DataHub and often if it's best in class as an API. So you can get that information into one place. So that's the first thing. The joy of using something like Microsoft and other platforms are available, I would say, is to access the power platform. And the Power platform sort of answered the problem around how do we visualise our data, how do we automate some of our data and what data is missing and how can we collect it? David Green: So using things like Power BI and PowerApps, I think was really crucial. Once we had all of our sort of data organised, we had the pandemic and of course, one of the sort of big issues around predicting, certainly when you've got lots of data sets, you're trying to look at patterns in data and your data is finely structured, then you get hit by something like this and where are the patterns? What's changed? The business model completely changed. We were a 10% advanced booking business. Suddenly were either zero or 80 or 100 and then sort of now about 65. So that was a bit of a challenge as well. In terms of then looking at the missing data. And we'll talk a little bit maybe about sort of the centre network and how do we measure things in remote places. David Green: But ultimately the core of this project was the DataHub, the ability to bring everything into one place, ability to push that data out. So answering your question in a long winded way is really about getting the data into hands of people, to allow them to plan better, to be prepared for the day, what is likely to happen today, what are the patterns in that day? And this is where we develop things like a concept of similar day. So a similar day might be one that has similar number of pre bookings, has similar weather. We look at weather in terms of temperature, wind and rain. It might have a similarity in terms of an event day or a weekend or similar budget. And that concept allows us to look forward, which is great. The predictions tend to look at other things. David Green: So we have one naive prediction that looks at previous performance in terms of pre booking to predict forward. And then another one, we have what we call an adaptive prediction, which allows us to look at advanced bookings and then see the change in advanced bookings over time against budget, to then alert us to the fact that we might experience more visitors than expected on that particular day. Kelly Molson: Gosh, that's really powerful, isn't it? Does that mean that your team have access to kind of a dashboard that they can look at any given time and be like, “Okay, we can model next week based on these predictions?”David Green: Data is pretty much everywhere, so we have one really nice thing and we have this. When I built search platform was TV screens across all of our staff areas. We have a ten OD voltwim across Blenheim. Everyone has access to that data. And that could be how traffic is flowing on the driveway. We use ADPR to look at how busy traffic is outside of our park walls. We look at car park capacity. We look at how happy our staff are using what we call a mood metric. So we put those smiley buttons in staff areas to determine how well they think the day is going. So we have access to all of this sort of information, but also then sort of more business reporting through Power BI. David Green: So we have a series of what I've called sort of visual representations of activity, but also sort of data that we can export into Excel. So we do a lot of finance reporting as well through Power BI. Again, all reporting from that single source of the truth, which is the DataHub. And if anyone's going down this route, I always describe it, I call it the product hierarchy. I always describe it as the giant coin sorting machine, which means that we're comparing apples with apples. So if you've got a particular product type, let's say annual park or House park and gardens, or park and gardens, you budget against that item, against adult, child, concession, family, young adult, whatever, you create a product hierarchy that matches that to your actual ticketing sales. David Green: And it doesn't matter then who sells your ticket, you're matching to that same product hierarchy. So think of it as a giant column sourcing machine that then every five minutes builds that single source of the truth in a database, then can be report out either through digital screens locations or Power BI. So, lots of tunes. Kelly Molson: It's incredible that level of access that you can give people now that must have improved how the team feel about their working day. It must have really helped with kind of like team culture and team morale. David Green: Absolutely. One, it's about engaging. Our teams are really important. People are the most important commodity we have at Blenheim. So having a series of management accounts, they never see their impact of engaging our businesses and giving our business a really good time, focusing on that Net Promoter Score, giving them access to that information. So, well done, look at the impact is really important. So, yeah, it's been fairly transformational here at Blenheim. Kelly Molson: Wow. What do you think has been the biggest impact? David Green: I think access to the data, better planning, there's more to do. We're embedding these tools, people that trust these tools. It's no mean feat. So getting good. What's nice to see when things aren't coming through quite right or car park speeds and we say it is, it might be data pipeline that's got awry. People very quickly come to us and say, "It's missing." So, seven days a week our team is sort of monitoring and seeing people use it. Moodmetric is great. Our cleaners now, they clean our facilities based on usage because they can see how many people have used the loo's by using our sensor data. So that's again, it all impacts that Net Promoter Score. And I will say on Net Promoter, love it or hate it, Net Promoter Score is all about looking backwards. David Green: Typically what we try to do is to create the equivalent to on the day. What can we do about it right now? How busy is traffic flowing on a drive? Do we need to open another kiosk? How busy will the cafe get? Will we run out sandwiches? So we've got alerting looking at that comparison to similar day and are we trading above or below that? So again, we can send an alert to say, “Make some more sandwiches or do something else. The loos need a clean.” All of these sorts of things are built into the visitor management system to allow us to really optimise not just the visitor experience, but our staff engagement and experience as well. Kelly Molson: So you've got this really proactive approach to it, which actually makes you reactive on the day because you can move quicker, because you can make easier decisions about things. That's phenomenal. I love that the team have taken real ownership of that as well. I think embedding something like this, it can be quite challenging, right. People don't like change and these things feel a bit scary, but it feels like your team have really engaged with them and taken ownership of the system. David Green: Absolutely. It's no mean feat. Two challenges embedding something new like this. Absolutely. That's change management. The second thing is data pipelines, ensuring all of your sensors and everything is online and working. And when you're dealing with such high volume of data sets coming in, you really need to be absolutely on it. Second to the sort of broader and maybe more granular reporting, one other thing we've devised is a series of KPIs, which pretty much any attraction. David Green: Most might already have a series of KPIs, but KPIs to look forward. So actually in this moment in time, are we trading ahead or behind versus this time last year? So if you start comparing apples with apples at this moment in time, what was RMR's booking? We share these KPIs across the whole site and that could be relation to bookings or even spend per head versus budget spend per head for the next 30 days. David Green: Visually, we put these on all of our digital screens very quickly can identify when we need to do something, be driving that by marketing activity or celebrating success. We've got a very clear picture and that means everyone's along for the ride. Everyone gets access to this information. Kelly Molson: That's absolutely phenomenal. Joe, I'm going to come over to you now because I can only imagine what you were thinking when David came to you and said, "Right, we've got this idea, this is what we want to do." And you're one of the platforms. Vennersys is one of the platforms that has been working with him. I think it's quite a long relationship. Is it? It's about 16 years.Joseph Paul: 16, 17 years now, I think. Long relationship.David Green: Yeah. I was five. How old were you? Joseph Paul: Wasn't conceived yet. Kelly Molson: Wowzers. That is a long relationship. Okay, so I kind of want to know from you, Joe, to make this happen, what have you had to do differently as a supplier? So how have you had to interact with your clients' needs and what steps did you have to go to kind of understand what the outcome was going to be? Joseph Paul: Yeah, so I think firstly that the system has an enormous amount of data in it and I think the first step for us was to understand exactly what Blenheim were looking to get out of the system and plug into the sort of the DataHub that David was talking about. So that kind of comprised of some initial conversations of what they were trying to achieve. And then following that it was all about workshopping and making sure were going to present the data in the format that David and the team at Blenheim Palace required. Joseph Paul: Yeah, I think fundamentally it was just working closely with the team there and getting those requirements in detail and making sure weren't missing anything and really understanding everything they were trying to achieve and pushing that in a simple and easy format for the team to then push into their views and into their KPIs that they required. Really the main focus for us was pushing that data out to David and the team into that DataHub in that format that was easily accessible and sort of manipulated for them. Kelly Molson: I guess there's so much it's understanding what are the key know, what are the variables here, what are the key points that we need to do this and how do we go about doing this for you? Joseph Paul: Absolutely. Because there's a number of options and a number of different ways that data can be pushed to clients. So it's understanding what the best is for that client and their resource because that's also important. Not every attraction has unlimited resource or the expertise in house to sort of obtain that data, but also, even if they can obtain that data, they might not have that sort of resource to then create their own dashboards and create their own reporting tools from a repository. So it's really understanding every kind of asset and every level to that sort of client and then working closely with them to achieve their goal. So it might be more resource from our side or working closely with the expertise that they might have in house. Kelly Molson: Or suggesting that they might need to get extra expertise. So this is something that we talk about in terms of API integration all the time, is that it absolutely can be done with any of the systems that you have. If they have an API, yes, you can integrate it into whatever other system that you want. But who takes ownership of that internally? And do they have the capability and do they have the resource and do they have the capacity to do that? And if that's a no, who can be trained to do those things? And how do we facilitate that as well? Joseph Paul: Yeah, absolutely. And in this case, as David highlighted, he's clearly got the expertise himself and others around him to produce all these fantastic sort of views and dashboards that are displayed all around Blenheim Palace. So in this sort of example with Blenheim Palace, it was all about getting the data to them and making sure it was in a format that they could work with easily. Kelly Molson: And you've worked together, Joe, you said about six years. You've been at Vennersys now, but the organisation has worked with Blenheim for over 16 years, which is testament to the relationship and the product that you have. Has this process that you've been through together, has this changed or strengthened the kind of relationship between supplier and client? Joseph Paul: Yes, I think from our point of view, we like to see it as a partnership. I think David would agree, and we want to be a part of their journey, but also Blenheim and want to be a part of our journey. So we're helping one another to achieve our individual goals as a partnership. So that relationship goes from strength to strength and we continue to have those conversations, whether that's myself or others within the business, to Blenheim and pass around things that we're coming up against in the industry, but also vice versa. So if David's got his ear to the ground and has a suggestion around how our platform could be improved, that's fed back to us. Joseph Paul: And we have that back and forth between client and supplier, but we like to see it as a partnership and work closely with them to achieve their goals and also our goals together.David Green: I don't want to make Joe cry, because I've already made you cry, Kelly, but seriously, over that course of 17 years, and I'm sure lots of people listening to this podcast will realise that it's always challenging working with other suppliers. You have your ups and you have your downs, but we've had way more ups than we've had downs and our business has changed massively. We went through a process of becoming a charity, so suddenly gifted all the admissions was really important and Joe and the team really helped us achieve that. David Green: Vanbrugh was not a very good forward planner in terms of he was a great architect, but actually, we have a single point of entry and to try and gift aid so many visitors, we have a million visitors a year coming to them to try and gift aid such a large number on a driveway is really difficult. So actually, working through that gift aid at the gate process, we're looking at that gift aid opportunity was one of the key projects, really, that we work with Vennersys on. Kelly Molson: But that's where the good things come out of client supplier relationships, is that you're both challenging each other on what the objectives are and what the outcomes potentially could be. So you work in partnership together and then everybody gets the better outcome. When we first spoke about this topic, what I thought was brilliant is that you have such a great case study, you have such a great showcase piece here, both of you, for how you've worked together and what you've been able to develop. I've absolutely said that you need to pitch this as a talk at the Museum and Heritage Show because I think it's an absolutely brilliant topic for it. It's so current and something that other organisations can go away and kind of model on. Kelly Molson: I don't know if you saw, we had Nik Wyness on from the Tank Museum last season who came on and basically just he gives away his kind of process as to how they've developed their YouTube following and how they've developed kind of a sales strategy from it. And it's brilliant. He's great at kind of coming on and going, "Yeah, this is what I did, and this is what we did, and this is the process and here you go. Go and do it." And I think you have an opportunity to do that together, which I think is lovely. David Green: Isn't it nice though, that we don't feel in competition and we can work together? We created what we call The Continually Improvement and Innovation Group which we have lots of members who have joined from all different places, from Chatsworth to Be Lee to Hatfield Outs and so on and all that is a slack channel. It's a six monthly meeting where we all come together and we discuss our challenges. You talked about are there many head of innovations? Well, may not be, but actually sharing our insights and sharing our lessons learned is incredibly important and that's not just Blenheim, lots of other attractions are doing lots of brilliant things as well and we can learn from them. So really exciting, I think, to do that. David Green: And again, very open, I will say, and I'm not going to plug a gift aid company, but there's something called Swift Aid that we're just looking at and wow, can we do retrospective gift aiding? Is it worth lots of money for lots of attractions that have gift aid on their admissions? Yes, it is well worth looking that up. Ultimately they have a database of 8 million centralised gift aid declarations that you can utilise there's commission but it's well worth looking at. If anyone wants information, please just LinkedIn with me and we'll discuss them. Kelly Molson: Oh, I love that. Again, this comes back to what we've always said about how collaborative and open to sharing information this sector is. What we'll do is in the show notes listeners, we will link to both David and Joe's LinkedIn profiles. If you want to connect with them, feel free and then actually David, Joe, if there's anything you want to share that we can add into those as well that would be useful for listeners. Then we'll pop them in there as. Kelly Molson: Actually, David, I've got one more question for you on that Slack channel, which I think is really interesting. It's great that you've set that up. I think those kind of platforms are really good at just facilitating conversation and it's really good to understand what people are doing from a supplier perspective. Do you have suppliers as part of that conversation as well, or is it purely attractions? David Green: I've kept it, I'd say non commercial, but we have invited speakers into the group to come and talk about it. But at the moment it's a closed environment. I think most people are more comfortable having sort of open conversations, but what it's really good at doing is it could be a question about compliance or sustainability or returnable cuts is a good one. It could be varying topics and we can just provide access to the right people here at Blenheim and vice versa, and other organisations if we've got questions. So, yeah, it works, it's growing, it's open, it's not ours, it's everyone's. So if anyone wants to join it, then we'll stick a link at LinkedIn maybe on the plot cups at the end of this. Kelly Molson: Oh, Fab, that's brilliant. Yeah, great. I think that's a really nice way of doing it with suppliers as well. It's difficult, I think Joe and I would probably say all of these conversations are really interesting for us because it helps us understand the challenges that the sector has and it helps us understand how we can make the things that we do so much better. So it's hard sometimes when there's closed environments like that, but the sector does so brilliantly at putting on conferences and organisations that we can all be part of as well. And again, platforms like this where we can come on and share the things that we're doing.Kelly Molson: That brings me back to the last question for you, Joe, is about has this process between the two of you and what you've been able to build together, has that helped Vennersys  as a supplier build out other services that you can then offer to kind of the wider sector? Joseph Paul: Yeah, so I think through this journey we've realised that data is really critical, but we also realised, as we kind of mentioned before, that not everyone has the resource to build their own visualisations of data and linking those to their sort of key performance indicators. So we work with Power BI as well on behalf of our clients, so we can also visualise that data that's within our systems. And that's really to help them get the most out of the data that is in our system, but also in that sort of more real time scenario, rather than having to extract a report, put it that into an Excel and get that information out. Joseph Paul: So that's one service that's kind of come out of that relationship, but also expanding on our sort of open API as well. So additional endpoints so that clients can also extract that data in real time and that continues to grow with other clients as well as we sort of go down that journey with some other clients. So, absolutely. It's helped us sort of open up another avenue which has benefited other clients in the past couple of years, but also moving forward as we sort of expand on it.Kelly Molson: Brilliant. And that's the sign of true partnership, isn't it? There's been some incredible wins for both of you involved and it's brought new opportunities to both of the organisations. Thank you both for coming on and sharing this today. So we always end the podcast with book recommendations from our guests. So I wondered if you've both been able to pick a book that you'd like to share with our listeners today. What have you got for us? Joe, we'll start with you. Joseph Paul: Mine's a little bit out there. David Green: We know it's not Harry Potter, Joe. Kelly Molson: Absolutely not. Joseph Paul: Well, that would be a curveball if I started to plug the Harry Potter series. Hey. So recently, I was in Albania in Tirana and I was on a guided tour. And they were talking about the Ottoman period. And I realised I know nothing about the Ottoman history and I was interested about it more. Joseph Paul: So my in laws purchased a book called Lord Of The Horizons, which is all about the history of the Ottoman empire. So that's my current read at the moment. And if you're into your history and into your sort of empires, it's definitely worth a read. So that's my recommendation. The Lord of Horizons. Kelly Molson: Nice. Joe, we just got a little insight into some of your hobbies there and your likes that we didn't know about. Good. Okay. Thank you. David, what about you? David Green: Mine is The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wallaban. It's an incredible book. Now, I read lots of strategy books, data books. My wife thinks I'm really sad. This book is not any of that. This is about how trees communicate and I was absolutely enthralled with it. So this talks about them like arousal networks, how trees communicate through their roots, the noises and the sounds that trees make when they're struggling, when they're thirsty. It led to a lot of laughter on holiday with my daughter drawing pictures of trees with ears, but trees can actually hear. And from that, I was able to come back and look at one of our land projects where we're building a small solar farm at the moment, actually looking at the sort of benefits to soil health while we're putting solar on sort of fed degraded farmland. David Green: So we're using something called soil ecoacoustics that will allow us to listen to the sound of soil. So listen to soil for ultimately to index how healthy that soil is. So this one book has led to me reading a number of different research papers, cooking up with the universities to then test and trial something completely brilliant around identifying health through acoustics. So book is absolutely brilliant. There's a follow on book, but if you look at Peter Wallabin, he's written a number of books. Absolutely fascinating. Kelly Molson: Okay, wow. One, what an incredible book. I had no idea that trees could hear or talk. That's blown my mind a little bit, especially as someone who's a bit of a tree hugger. I'm not going to lie, I made a statement. I was with a client yesterday and were talking about AI. And I said, sometimes the conversations around AI just make me want to go outside and hug the tree in my back garden, take my shoes and socks off and just put my feet on the grass because I just want to connect with nature again and just get out of a tech world. So there's that. So I'm definitely going to buy that book. But two, how your mind works as well, how that book has taken you on a journey of innovation again into something connected but completely different.David Green: Again, it's really data. So you're welcome. We'll happily show you that site and put some headphones on you and we'll make this public as well, so hopefully we can share the secret sound of soil and other things as well. But really fascinating. Kelly Molson: That to me sounds like a David Attenborough show. Maybe we'll make it another podcast episode at some point. I'd love that. Thank you both for coming on and sharing today. As ever, if you want to win a copy of Joe and David's books, go over to our Twitter account, retweet this episode announcement with the words, I want Joe and David's books and you'll be in with a chance of winning them. Wow. Thank you for sharing. It's been an absolutely insightful podcast. There's lots of things that we're going to put in the show notes for you all. And as Joe and David said, please do. If you've got questions around what they've talked about today, feel free to connect and we'll pop a link to that Slack group in the show notes too, so you can join in with these conversations. Thank you both. David Green: Thank you. Joseph Paul: Thanks, Kelly. Kelly Molson:  Thanks for listening to Skip The Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. Skip the queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast. The 2023 Visitor Attraction Website Report is now LIVE! Dive into groundbreaking benchmarks for the industryGain a better understanding of how to achieve the highest conversion ratesExplore the "why" behind visitor attraction site performanceLearn the impact of website optimisation and visitor engagement on conversion ratesUncover key steps to enhance user experience for greater conversionsDownload the report now for invaluable insights and actionable recommendations!

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ .   There is a global teacher shortage, and Pauldy Otermans and Dev Aditya, founders of the Otermans Institute, are addressing that with #AI through creating a digital human AI teacher, called Beatrice. Their mission is to upskill 750- million underserved students globally by 2030. Beatrice appears as an on-screen avatar that converses with students. Pauldy is a neuroscientist and psychologist with a PhD in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience from Brunel University. She was named one of the “22 most influential women in the UK of 2022” by Start-Up Magazine UK. Dev is a Young Global Innovator and under 30 Social Entrepreneur, recognized by Innovate UK with research experience at the Alan Turing Institute and Brunel University, London. In the conclusion of the interview they describe how the AI teachers work, and their definitions of Teaching and Learning 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ .   There is a global teacher shortage, and Pauldy Otermans and Dev Aditya, founders of the Otermans Institute, are addressing that with #AI through creating a digital human AI teacher, called Beatrice. Their mission is to upskill 750- million underserved students globally by 2030. Beatrice appears as an on-screen avatar that converses with students. Pauldy is a neuroscientist and psychologist with a PhD in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience from Brunel University. She was named one of the “22 most influential women in the UK of 2022” by Start-Up Magazine UK. Dev is a Young Global Innovator and under 30 Social Entrepreneur, recognized by Innovate UK with research experience at the Alan Turing Institute and Brunel University, London. In this first half of the interview we talk about the teacher shortage and the socioeconomic consequences of addressing it via an AI teacher. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          

There must be closer collaboration between industries and more efficient use of resources to achieve more sustainable industry for the future. Industrial symbiosis brings organisations together to find ways to use the waste from one as raw materials for another. In this episode, learn about the benefits of industrial symbiosis, some examples of where it has been successfully applied and why we need to encourage its practice more widely. This episode was sponsored by UKRI's Transforming Foundation Industries Challenge delivered by Innovate UK. This challenge is providing funding and support to create a cleaner, more efficient and more competitive sector that is fit for our future. Find out more by searching ‘Transforming Foundation Industries'. Guests: Dr Anne Velenturf – Senior Research Fellow in Circular Economy – University of Leeds Chris Holcroft – Energy & Environment Lead – Glass Technology Services Thanks to Kolobyte and Alphabot for letting us use their music in the show! If you have questions or feedback please send us emails at materialism.podcast@gmail.com or connect with us on social media: Instagram, Twitter. Materialism Team: Taylor Sparks (co-creator,co-host), Andrew Falkowski (co-creator,editing assistance), Jared Duffy (production, marketing, and editing).

Do we need to worry about extinction from AI?! After 4 jam-packed conversations with some of the biggest thought leaders in the AI space, what better way to conclude our epic series than with someone who can give us the low-down on all things AI ethics. Sara El-Hanfy, Head of AI and Machine Learning at Innovate UK joins Gareth and Kerensa to conclude our A-list line up and discuss the importance of handling AI with care.  From entering the tech space through an unconventional route (proving that it's possible to study a STEM subject at university even without an A-Level in Maths!), Sara has been on a quest to ensure both AI accessibility and safety for businesses nationwide. Being an Advisory Board Member for UK Parliament on the complexities of AI adoption, Sara offers her expert opinion on the ethics of AI tools like ChatGPT and tells us the major AI risks we should all be aware of. This final episode is the perfect conclusion to our TTLP AI Series. After numerous conversations about all of the exciting prospects AI is awarding us, Sara reminds that we must approach this unprecedented technology with a degree of caution. As this series comes to an end, one thing remains certain: even AI experts cannot predict what the future holds.  Time stamps What excites Sara most about the AI revolution? (02:04) What is Innovate UK? (06:00) A day in the life of Sara (07:41) The BridgeAI programme (09:34) Is AI going to overrun your business? (16:45) Breaking tradition to get into tech (19:40) Is using ChatGPT cheating? (28:53) Investing in entrepreneurs (34:47) Is the UK government scared of AI? (39:10) Sara's favourite AI tool (41:00) Advice to her 21-year-old self (42:29) Kerensa's favourite moment of the AI series (41:10)