Innovation UK > News > Innovation UK Vol4-1 > ITI Scotland

Its three divisions, ITI Energy, ITI Life Sciences and ITI Techmedia, identify future global market opportunities in which Scotland could play its part and the technology development needed to enable it. It then funds and manages R&D programmes to develop new technology and intellectual property, finally initiating their exploitation through appropriate commercial vehicles.

R&D programmes currently underway at ITI Energy include work on a composite pipeline structure, a wind turbine access system, rechargeable batteries and resonance-enhanced drilling. Future programmes envisaged may include sustainable transport fuels from algae, new wind turbine technologies and key subsystems for hybrid electric vehicles.

ITI Life Sciences has over £50 million committed to date. The programmes currently being investigated include: text mining to develop powerful new information extraction tools; the identification and application of cardiac biomarkers; transgenic screening and safety models for use in drug discovery; a programme on stem-cell technologies; and an investigation of the ubiquitin proteosome system.

ITI Techmedia?s market for digital media and communications is vast and as such the R&D activity is focused around the core technology areas of human-system interaction, security and trust, information and imaging, content creation and sensors and networks. Currently the programmes being investigated include: games-based learning; ultra-wideband wireless communications; machine-readable security tagging; online games development; biosensors; condition-based monitoring; backlighting using polymer optics; and software integrity engineering.

Five years into ITI Scotland?s initial ten-year model, it boasts a £134 million funding commitment with 25 programmes launched since September 2004. As of September 2008, 11 of these programmes are complete, eight during the financial year 2007/08, and 14 are at various stages of development. A further six programmes are planned for launch during the remainder of 2008 once diligence activities are completed.

On top of these achievements 132 patents have been filed to date and this has led to new market applications and commercial potential being developed from the generated IP. In addition, 12 commercial licensing deals have been closed with commercial vehicles, both new start-ups and existing companies, based on the intellectual assets developed by the ITI programmes.

Jim Greaves
Director of Marketing and Communications
Tel: 0141 204 8000