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Page 1: ADVANCED MATERIALS LEADERSHIP COUNCIL NOTE … · ADVANCED MATERIALS LEADERSHIP COUNCIL NOTE OF FIRST MEETING ON 17 ... Mrs Alison Starr, Prof David Lane, Prof Steve Cowley, Dr Robert

   

   

ADVANCED MATERIALS LEADERSHIP COUNCIL

NOTE OF FIRST MEETING ON 17 DECEMBER 2014 BIS Conference Centre, 13:00-15:00

Attendance Present: Government vice-chair - Prof Sir Mark Walport (13:00-14:00), Industry vice-chair - Mr Jack Boyer, Prof Neil Alford, Prof Anthony Ryan, Prof Colin Bailey, Prof Matt Rosseinsky, Prof Alison Davenport, Prof Julie Yeomans, Prof Helen Atkinson, Prof Jon Binner, Dr Henner Wapenhaus, Mr Dick Elsy, Dr Darren Clark, Dr Debashish Bhattacharjee, Mrs Alison Starr, Prof David Lane, Prof Steve Cowley, Dr Robert Sorrell, Dr Elizabeth Rowsell, Prof Andrew Harrison, Dr Sue Armfield, Dr Faye Smith, Dr Robert Quarshie, Mr Brian Greenwood, Mrs Samantha Francis, Dr Richard Miller, Miss Natalia Davie, Dr Andrew Lawrence, Dr John Morlidge, Dr Lien Ngo. Apologies: Chairman -The Rt Hon Greg Clark MP, Prof Richard Friend, Prof Patrick Grant, Dr David Jakubovic, Dr Alison Burdett, Prof Richard Parker (represented by Dr Henner Wapenhaus). 1. Welcome and introductions

Sir Mark Walport welcomed attendees and gave apologies from the minister (who was expected to join later) and others. He highlighted the significance of Advanced Materials in the context of the UK Government’s focus on Eight Great Technologies and Industrial Strategies. The purpose of the Leadership Council is to establish a coherent and coordinated national vision and to advise government and research and innovation funders on Advanced Materials activity. He explained that “Chatham House rules” would apply and invited introductions from attendees. 2. Role of Leadership Council and Terms of Reference There was discussion of the scope and terms of reference. It was agreed to revise them to reflect that the council should seek to influence government; build capability and infrastructure (including supply chains) and help address the need for skilled people (human capital). A specific mention of linkages with catapults was suggested but it was agreed that they were covered by centres of excellence. 3. Current evidence base

There was discussion on the definition of Advanced Materials and whether a definition was necessary or helpful in promoting the aim of the council. The group agreed that a definition would be useful for any external audience. It was agreed, rather than creating an exhaustive list of examples in the proposed definition (which would be cumbersome and potentially inaccurate) that all examples should be removed, and replaced with a broad definition of:

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“Advanced materials” can be defined as materials designed for targeted properties and includes both completely new materials and those that are developments on traditional materials. Such materials show novel or improved structural and/or functional properties.

The group discussed previous experience of what had made other leadership groups effective:

a. It was important to build a strategy with clear goals and hold to them. The Robotics Special Interest Group had developed an action-oriented strategy over 18 months, which provided alignment between academic strength and industry asks.

b. The Composites Leadership Forum had taken keywords from different reports, strategies and roadmaps etc. and matched keywords from research capability to industry demands (linking academic push to industry pull).

c. EPSRC had a picture of research base capability from a previous mapping exercise1. It was noted that a list of key pieces of UK Advanced Materials Infrastructure was also being finalised; following discussion at the Science Landscape Seminar on Advanced Materials hosted by Sir Mark Walport on 10 November 2014.

d. Separate industry sector needs (for instance, for the Government’s industrial strategy areas) are already written up and members thought that industries would be willing to share their materials demands and identify gaps (with the possible exception of aerospace). These would need to be pulled together for “matchmaking”.

e. The group could map materials against different axis of property and function which should be easy to update. A combination of Mike Lynch’s machine learning facility with Mike Ashby’s earlier materials selection work could be a good way to do this.

f. International comparisons could be useful – benchmarking the UK against rest of world for both quality of science and translation. It might be worth considering the metrics of success in other countries’ strategies (eg those used in the US Materials Genome Project). The international comparisons paper (the Institute for Manufacturing roadmaps report2) provided some metrics for success and lessons learnt. The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) analysis of international patents for advanced materials3 was considered by some as potentially misleading.

                                                                                                                         1 http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/newsevents/pubs/materiallybetterphysicalsciences/ http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/newsevents/pubs/materialsresearchexchangereports2014/  

2  www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/resources/government/a-review-of-international-public-sector-roadmaps-advanced-materials/  

3  www.gov.uk/government/publications/eight-great-technologies-advanced-materials  

 

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g. Industry demand is country-agnostic.

h. Technology maturity should be considered.

i. The innovation environment around advanced materials should be considered. For instance, barriers may not be technological. They could be cultural, political, standardization, supply chain and capacity etc. Looking at generic outputs from other Councils may be useful in identifying common issues.

As a first step towards developing a strategy, it was agreed that the Council needed to map out the people, infrastructure and research capability in the UK and compare it with the “pull” demand from industry. This initial analysis could then be analysed to find areas of UK excellence, intersections, gaps, barriers and opportunities. These would then inform the council’s activity. Benchmarking the quality of UK science and translation could be achieved through an opportunity map in contrast to a road map. 4. Future priorities and ways of working The purpose and timing of the mapping activity agreed on under Item 3 was considered. It needed to be ambitious and propelled through quickly whilst carrying the community with it. Outputs should be action-oriented and timed to feed into the Spending Review expected after the May election. It was agreed that two working groups should be established to pull together evidence and information from the academic and industry perspectives to produce opportunity maps. In particular:

a. EPSRC will supply raw material and data from their previous mapping study on the academic environment.

b. Innovate UK will pull together data from industry and Research and Technology Organisations (RTOs). The Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN) work is also relevant here.

c. Neil Alford and Richard Miller volunteered to liaise with EPSRC and Innovate UK respectively and lead for the Council on the academic and industry work.

d. The resulting data will be circulated to the whole Council by late January to allow time for consideration in advance of a workshop on the morning of the next meeting (24 Feb) which would pull together the academic and industry sides.

The Council discussed success measures for the group, which suggested the following:

i. Supporting an environment for the UK to be a successful knowledge and technology leader in advanced materials.

ii. Developing a list of possible “asks” for consideration by funders. If funding, then the next Spending Review would be a natural opportunity but this would require a well-defined and well-defended (evidence-based) ask.

iii. Acting as an integrator to simplify the complex landscape that exists; through mapping and production of a strategy.

iv. Ensuring the UK has the human capacity to respond to challenges (eg develop, support and attract leaders in the field).

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v. Equip UKTI with what it needs to attract overseas investment and enable international collaborations to gap fill UK capability.

It was agreed that any vision for Advanced Materials for the UK needs to be both ambitious and clearly communicated to stakeholders. Using “what if”/“I wish” statements4 could be the best way forward to illustrate what the impact of addressing particular problems would be on industry. The group acknowledged that quality science without clear linkage to future translation is unlikely to be favorable with government. However, the group felt strongly that translation cannot happen without underpinning high quality basic research. This was a key message to advocate. 5. Membership Bearing in mind the need to try to keep the group to a manageable size and ideally with a 40:60 academia:industry balance, there was discussion of whether additional members were required. The following areas were identified as missing: food sector, defence (DSTL suggested), other facilities (in addition to Diamond), energy and renewable, construction, rail and transport and possibly someone with an international perspective. 6. Next steps – including date of next meeting It was agreed that the next meeting would be on 24 February 2015 in central London (venue to be confirmed). The morning will be used for a workshop (start time 11:00) to synthesise the information gathered from the mapping exercise with the formal AMLC meeting chaired by the Minister from 14:00-16:00. IOM3 had offered to host a future meeting and other venues would be welcome. Liz Rowsell offered to host visits to a Johnson Matthey facility for Council members. Actions 1.1 Secretariat to confirm details of next meeting as soon as possible. 1.2 Secretariat to circulate success factors to the Council for further comments. Aim to

agree at February meeting. 1.3 All members to make suggestions for site visits for the minister to showcase UK

advanced materials work. 1.4 All members (in anticipation of public announcement of AMLC) to send 2-3 sentence

biography to Secretariat. 1.5 Secretariat to amend definition of “Advanced Materials” and recirculate. 1.6 All to send details of relevant studies that could feed into the landscape work to

Secretariat to compile a full list. 1.7 Secretariat to work with Neil Alford and Richard Miller on pulling together

background information for the workshop – with a view to circulating it by the end of January.

1.8 All to send recommendations for additional members in the areas identified above (ideally with contact details) to Secretariat.

7. Any other business – none.

                                                                                                                         4  eg What if we could stop metal corrosion? It would save £x billion.