National Biofilms Innovation Centre Revenue and Competitors

The National Biofilms Innovation Centre (NBIC) is the central hub where academia, industry, government, and public policy come together to tackle the grand challenges biofilms present, impacting ~$5 trillion in global economic activity, from food and health to ships, clean water and energy. Funded by the BBSRC, Innovate UK and Hartree Centre, our mission is to establish a network of research and innovation capacity to catalyse partnerships with industry to achieve breakthrough innovations and impact – from industry products and solutions to services and spinouts. We aim to bring together researchers and industry to explore unmet needs and exchange ideas, problems and solutions through roadmaps, workshops and conferences. We plan to invest in future scientists through our PhD and Post-Doc programs, and entrepreneurial training, to grow their expertise, help them better understand the commercial environment and encourage new start-ups. Our approach is interdisciplinary and forward-thinking, underpinned by excellence and our key values: collaborative, transparent, innovative, flexible, responsive, and responsible. Through collaborating to advance relevant research, training future academics and investing in innovation responsibly, our activities will build the environment and mechanisms to efficiently explore and solve unmet sectoral needs, develop strong networks, build roadmaps, influence key stakeholders (regulators, funders and society), exploit emerging breakthroughs and take advantage of new, diverse market opportunities estimated to be worth >£2bn by 2020. Through all this we aim to ensure that the UK will remain a global leader in biofilms R&D. The four core partners are the University of Southampton, the University of Edinburgh, the University of Liverpool and the University of Nottingham. We have now been joined by an additional 27 universities and over 60 industry collaborators in the aim to prevent, detect, manage and engineer solutions in biofilms.