The University of Aberdeen has been announced as one of the winners in a new programme to help accelerate the commercialisation of great ideas from British universities.
The Transport Systems Catapult (TSC) has awarded £1 million for activities across 14 UK universities to improve collaboration with business, both major companies and SMEs.
The projects will focus on developing products and solutions that make transport more seamless and connected, aimed at the global Intelligent Mobility market, estimated to be worth £900bn per year by 2025.
The Centre for Transport Research at the University will form a partnership with the Centre for Sustainable Road Freight at Heriot-Watt to establish a Scottish Centre of Excellence for TSC.
Chair in Transport Studies, Professor John Nelson, said: “By officially bringing together two centres dedicated to research encompassing intelligent mobility expertise in passenger (Aberdeen) and freight (Heriot Watt) transport we will push forward with a vision of intelligent mobility which draws upon components from passengers, freight, and the transport network, held together by an underlying framework of data and information technology.
“This is a unique opportunity to align TSC and University Partner Program with Scottish Enterprise’s mobility integration challenge. We aim to create a regional network, with strong support from Scottish Enterprise, for hosting outreach activities to more fully engage industry and government partners in the development of an integrated intelligent mobility framework that builds upon existing synergies in the research and application of novel IT in the transport sector.
Overall funding for the partnership is £252,000.