About Us

At Heriot-Watt University, we pride ourselves on our close links with industry, and our history of collaboration with businesses, ranging from local companies to global corporations.

We have expanded our ability to help businesses find innovative solutions.

We have focused on our areas of expertise; increased the sharing of our research; and strengthened our business development, enterprise creation and marketing teams.

In all, we have moved beyond the traditional knowledge exchange to focus on a beneficial, long-term, two-way relationship with industry.

The scope of our “Working With Industry” undertaking is vast. For example:

• We work with small businesses, even before they have a product ready for the market. Using our academic expertise and modern facilities, we are able to offer small businesses experience normally outwith their grasp in terms of cost and availability.

  For example, we are working with award-winning start-up UWI Technology with their innovative food-labelling system. This is a new technology, not ready for market yet, but we have worked with UWI to develop both their technology, and also their Intellectual Property.

• We also work with Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) to advance and enhance their products, bringing innovation to areas, thus allowing them that crucial market leading-edge.

  An example of our work with such companies include our “baking with sound” technology with bakers Macphie of Glenbervie. Here, we are developing a technology which will allow the bakers to create gluten-free food which is much more appetising and tastier than that already on the market, giving them a competitive advantage.

• Our work also covers the very largest of multi-national organisations, looking to research new technology, enhance their productivity or develop new systems.
  Current work includes a research initiative sponsored by GDF Suez, Petrobras, SSE and Vattenfall. In a bid to increase the reliability of Carbon Capture, our Joint Industry Project (JIP) is to develop an innovative and unique CO2 leak prevention technique to automatically detect and effectively seal CO2 leaks from both known and unknown leakage paths in geological reservoirs.

We also help discover, develop and promote entrepreneurs in Scottish universities and Research Institutes through the Converge Challenge. Click here to read about the challenge at its own blog. We bring our colleagues in professional industries like marketing, law, finance and design together to help develop great new ideas, and the exciting potential of entrepreneurs in Scotland.

We are always happy to speak to new companies to see if there is a way to work together. This could be to improve processes, develop a new technology or undertake research. To streamline this process, we have dedicated business development executives, experts in their field, who will act as liaison between industry professional and academic researcher.

To contact us, please email res@hw.ac.uk, or call us on 0131 451 3070 to be put in touch with your relevant executive.