Blog posts

Supporting the UK’s strengths in aerospace will unlock growth

Author: Professor Rafael Palacios

The UK is one of five countries in the world with the capability to build its own aeroplanes. As an island nation we rely on aerospace more than other countries. So aviation technology here has always developed at pace. We have the third largest sector in the OECD by market share, after the US and France and a healthy pipeline of startup ranging from nanosatellites to large lighter-than-air vehicles. And the operations of companies like Rolls Royce, BAE Systems and Airbus stand as symbols of the sector’s future potential.

The pressure to accelerate development in aviation

Today, the defining challenge for the industry is net zero and producing the technical solutions and new business models to make net zero flight a reality in the second half of this century. There is no realistic future without flight. So the aviation industry is under enormous pressure to accelerate the development of sustainable fuels and more fuel-efficient aeroplanes, and to ramp up investment to support the pace of technological progress.

Transitioning to net zero will also mean defining new ways of working. To electrify road transport, consumers must shift their perspective to buy electric cars. But the way fleets are financed in aviation is business-to-business and much more complex. So transitioning to net zero flight will only happen if the UK government intervenes positively, introducing the economic incentives to create new business models, with companies reacting to that policy environment.

Aerospace regulation can drive growth and competition

In other words, the way to reduce the environmental impact of aviation is regulation. It cannot be left to the market. The UK’s Aerospace Technology Institute and industry-led Jet Zero strategy demonstrate that both government and business accept this. Defining a regulatory pathway to net zero is a key focus of work supported by the Centre for Sectoral Economic Performance, with policy recommendations that will help drive economic growth and competitiveness in the UK’s aerospace industry.[1]

Britain can make major gains in aerospace

We can be confident that the UK can make major gains in the sector in the coming decades. Aerospace engineering and innovation in the UK is thriving, whether it’s the Wing of Tomorrow made at Airbus or Rolls Royce producing the largest ever jet engine.

The UK is also pioneering new types of air travel, such as battery-powered air taxis. Imagine hopping on an air taxi from Heathrow to Gatwick to make a connecting flight or to finish your journey on the right side of London, avoiding road traffic and emissions. Vertical Airspace in Bristol is working on making that journey a reality.

Working towards new forms of sustainable aviation

The UK is rich with innovation in this area. Last November saw the flight100 project led by Virgin Atlantic, where a team of experts from Imperial and the University of Sheffield analysed a flight from London to New York to see if sustainable aviation fuel can be used with existing infrastructure while reducing carbon emissions. For these larger aircraft, it’s likely we will need to combine hydrogen with CO2 obtained from carbon capture to make e-fuels, a new form of sustainable aviation fuel.

These fuels are still very expensive, and in the medium-term we expect these fuels to be produced from biomass. Meanwhile, as we move to a hydrogen economy for uses where electric power is not possible, companies including ZeroAvia are developing hydrogen propulsion for smaller aircraft used in regional aviation. Given the UK’s expertise in AI and data science, we also need to see more innovative work applying these capabilities to accelerate development.

Partnership is essential for progress

There are also some areas with exciting potential, like the work Google and American Airlines have done to show that flying slightly different routes can reduce the climate impact of contrails. These trap large amounts of heat that would otherwise have left the earth’s atmosphere, and which might account for up to 35% of aviation’s global warming impact. Satellite analysis found the experiment reduced contrails by 54%, while only burning 2% more fuel.

We need to see more of this kind of strong partnership between academia, industry, government and finance. Our report will also show how we can put the right policy mechanisms in place to support this collaboration, from R&D and net zero to the business environment and access to investment. In the coming decade we have a golden opportunity to build, protect and capitalise on the UK’s aerospace capabilities. But we will only do this if we have a clear direction, informed by this research.

Professor Rafael Palacios is Director of The Brahmal Vasudevan Institute for Sustainable Aviation, a collaborative research centre at Imperial College for blue-sky thinking towards environmentally friendly aviation. He is a Professor in Computational Aeroelasticity as Deputy Head of the Department of Aeronautics in the Faculty of Engineering. He has been a consultant for Facebook and Airbus in the design of solar-powered aircraft. He is an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society.

The Centre for Sectoral Economic Performance at Imperial College London investigates how to improve the competitiveness of the UK economy and drive economic growth. It is a joint initiative between Imperial’s Faculty of Engineering and the Imperial College Business School, bringing together the UK’s top engineers, scientists and economists with the UK’s science and technology industries to co-design globally competitive strategies for major global challenges such as net zero.

[1] https://www.imperial.ac.uk/sectoral-economic-performance/

 

Partnerships between universities and industry will make UK AI a success

Author: Dr. Juan Bernabé-Moreno, Director of Scientific Research in Europe, IBM

As IBM’s Director of Scientific Research in Europe, I know what a huge opportunity the AI Revolution represents for the UK economy. But translating that potential into economic growth and scientific progress requires close collaboration between technology companies and universities. That’s why I was delighted last month to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between IBM and Imperial College London, committing us to work together over the coming years on the application of AI technologies to global problems including climate change.

AI is one of the UK’s best opportunities for growth

No technology has ever advanced as quickly as AI. Already it has begun to revolutionise every sector in every country. The UK is well positioned to perform well in this incredibly competitive market, boasting some of the world’s most advanced computer technology and a great deal of high-quality, centrally-held data. Many of the world’s leading experts in AI and its applications work at British universities. In addition, the UK’s regulatory framework allows for significant space for innovation.

But the UK is not yet making the most of its strengths. Industry and academia are not working closely enough together, which slows down innovation in an area where the UK needs to move fast.

By bringing IBM and Imperial together, the MoU marks a major step towards turning the UK’s enormous potential in the field of AI into success.

To apply the power of AI we must first understand it

The MoU’s primary goal is to pool our engineering, computing, and machine learning resources to address climate and sustainability challenges. Our generative AI technologies are developing so quickly that not even we can foresee the full extent of their possible applications. That’s where we value the partnership with institutions like Imperial.

You only need to look at the number of successful spin-outs Imperial generates to see what a practically-minded institution it is. Imperial students and researchers start with problems, then work out ways to solve them. In our climate and sustainability efforts, IBM will provide cutting-edge technologies, and Imperial will provide students and postdoctoral researchers will find ways to apply them to solve specific problems.

Let’s say, for example, that we wanted to map the areas of the UK most at risk of flooding because of extreme weather events. IBM would provide Imperial with foundation models which are trained on satellite images, climate forecasting and a myriad other relevant data. An Imperial team would fine-tune that model into a specialist model for flood detection, which they would then share with IBM.

Collaborations like this are how IBM, Imperial, and the UK more broadly will make major gains in AI over the coming years, generating jobs, economic growth, and – most importantly – solutions to the existential challenges the world faces.

Collaboration beyond our partnership

But AI is too important a technology to be in just a few hands. So the MoU between IBM and Imperial also formalises a shared commitment to collaboration and openness beyond our partnership in all our future work on AI.

IBM and Imperial will work together with our AI Alliance partners to define industry-wide frameworks for everything from hardware and application to policy making and regulation. Imperial produces some of the most advanced research and policy thinking on the ethics and implications of AI, while IBM bring industry experience. Together, we will be a powerful voice for ethical practices in AI on the world stage.

To that end, the MoU also commits IBM and Imperial to participate together on EU projects. Earlier this year, the UK rejoined Horizon Europe: the EU’s key funding programme for research and innovation aimed at addressing global challenges and driving economic growth. By joining forces, IBM and Imperial can place climate, sustainability and AI at the centre of Horizon’s agenda.

I am confident that the work IBM and Imperial do together over the coming years will contribute to making Britain a true world-leader in AI. This MoU would not have been possible without the work of Imperial’s Centre for Sectoral Economic Performance to identify the sectors where the College can make the most difference. It is a testament to Imperial’s entrepreneurial problem-solving spirit, and something I would like to see embraced across higher education.

Dr. Juan Bernabé-Moreno is the Director of IBM Research in Europe. He leads three labs in Ireland and the UK, working on cutting-edge science and technologies in the areas of artificial intelligence, quantum computing, multi-cloud, and semiconductors. Dr. Bernabé-Moreno is also responsible for the Accelerated Discovery Strategy for Climate and Sustainability, leading a team of researchers across seven global research labs to explore how the convergence of AI, quantum computing and hybrid cloud can accelerate the discovery of sustainability and climate solutions. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from University of Granada and is the recipient of several patents.

The Centre for Sectoral Economic Performance at Imperial College London investigates how to improve the competitiveness of the UK economy and drive economic growth. It is a joint initiative between Imperial’s Faculty of Engineering and the Imperial College Business School – bringing together the UK’s top engineers, scientists and economists with the UK’s science and technology industries to co-design globally competitive strategies for major global challenges like net zero, economic competition and technological disruptions.

Unleashing the Potential of UK MedTech

Authors: Professor James Moore Jr, Yunus Kutlu

We have no shortage of innovative ideas or talented people in MedTech in this country. But in my eleven years as a professor of medical device design at Imperial, I’ve seen countless good ideas go to waste. At the Centre for Sectoral Economic Performance, we are investigating why this is and what industry, government and academia can do to change it.

MedTech’s outsize contribution to the UK economy

MedTech is any technology that a clinician might use to improve or to save a patient’s life – from pacemakers to prosthetic limbs, MRI scans to plasters. The UK sector, which is mostly SMEs, employs 163,00 people and has an annual turnover of £36 billion.[1]

Despite being half the size of Biopharmaceuticals in terms of jobs, MedTech contributes £13.5 billion to the UK economy annually, about the same as Biopharma’s £15 billion. Its annual growth rate between 2016 and 2020 was 19% – far higher than Biopharma’s 3%.[2]

But the MedTech sector’s remarkable vitality is in spite – not because – of government policy. Regulatory uncertainty, scarce funding, and ineffective NHS procurement processes make it extremely difficult for MedTech inventions to develop into viable businesses.

The Peezy: a breakthrough device now withdrawn from the UK

Forte Medical’s Peezy device, invented in the UK but now only available in the US, is a dispiritingly typical example.[3]

NHS GP Dr Vincent Forte invented the Peezy and founded Forte Medical with his sister Giovanna in 2002. The Peezy is a cheap-to-produce device which makes midstream urine samples easier to collect. Forte Medical made a prototype, secured a patent, then ran real-world trials which showed that the Peezy radically reduces the risk of contamination, and therefore the unnecessary prescription of antibiotics. The potential benefits to the NHS were enormous.

Yet twenty-two years since the invention of the Peezy, NHS doctors are still sending female patients – sometimes heavily pregnant, sometimes elderly and frail – to surgery toilets with tiny sample vials and near impossible-to-follow instructions. Due to siloed budgets, resistance to change and lack of incentives for adoption, Forte Medical has withdrawn completely from the UK NHS market.

I see similar stories time and again. In just over a decade at Imperial, I have helped ten spinout companies form out of my department. One has been highly successful at securing investment. Two or three are just about managing. The rest have foundered. This doesn’t inspire our students to pursue biomedical engineering and develop MedTech devices.

The policy solution: certainty, funding, and procurement

But it’s a story we can change. With focused industry/government interventions, the UK can unleash the full potential of UK MedTech.

First and most pressingly, MedTech companies need regulatory certainty.

Because the UK represents only 3% of the global market, UK MedTech companies prioritise exports. Post-Brexit, the UK adopted its own regulatory framework, based on the EU’s Medical Device Directive (MDD) and overseen by the MHRA. But the EU’s ongoing transition to the Medical Device Regulation (MDR) means that 70% of UK-made devices will soon be noncompliant. It may also lead to some life-saving technologies being unavailable to NHS patients.

The MHRA should align regulations with those of the MDR and the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Outside those frameworks, there are opportunities to make the UK a more desirable destination for clinical trials of cutting-edge technologies. The Treasury should increase MHRA’s budget to that end.

Second, MedTech companies need better access to funding.

While the MedTech sector produces more university spinouts than Biopharma, the underlying research funding base for MedTech is only one fifteenth the size of the funding available to Biopharma. Sources of grant funding for MedTech SMEs are limited to Innovate UK and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), where only about half of the applications determined to be viable actually get funded. Private investment is scarce and concentrated towards established companies.

So the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) should increase funding for NIHR and Innovate UK to a sufficient level that all viable projects can receive funding.

Finally, MedTech companies need the NHS to overhaul its innovation and procurement culture. The NHS’s ineffective procurement processes make it difficult for MedTech firms to access the UK market. It also prevents UK patients from reaping the benefits of the NHS’s position as an ideal testing ground for new technologies.

Universities must push for tailored support for MedTech spinouts

The government must do more to support the UK’s special position as a market primed for MedTech innovation. There are more MedTech spinouts than any other type of university spinout.

University innovation and entrepreneurship programmes should also provide tailored support for MedTech spinouts. Imperial’s new venture fund, Science Capital, will provide Imperial’s entrepreneurs access to capital and proof-of-concept funding to realise the full potential of their businesses.

MedTech is a key research area for both the White City Deep Tech Campus and the Centre for Sectoral Economic Performance, who sponsored our analysis of the UK MedTech sector.

The detailed policy recommendations in the resulting report should form a central input to a government wishing to develop a growth strategy for the country – they show how these industries could increase the UK’s global competitiveness and value added per capita. If the recommendations are implemented, there’s almost no limit to the good that MedTech can do – not only for the UK economy but for patients all around the world.[4]

Professor James Moore is the Bagrit Chair in Medical Device Design at the Department of Bioengineering, and co-author of ‘Sectoral Systems of Innovation and the UK’s Competitiveness: The UK MedTech Sector’ published by the Centre for Sectoral Economic Performance. He does research on the lymphatic system, initiated two degree programmes in MedTech entrepreneurship and has co-founded five MedTech startup companies.

The Centre for Sectoral Economic Performance at Imperial College London investigates how to improve the competitiveness of the UK economy and drive economic growth. It is a joint initiative between Imperial’s Faculty of Engineering and the Imperial College Business School –bringing together the UK’s top engineers, scientists and economists with the UK’s science and technology industries to co-design globally competitive strategies for major global challenges: like net zero, economic competition and technological disruptions.

[1] 348-IMP-Public-Affairs-3-reports_Medtech_AW_DIGITAL_SINGLES_Sept23.pdf (imperial.ac.uk), p. 17.

[2] 348-IMP-Public-Affairs-3-reports_Medtech_AW_DIGITAL_SINGLES_Sept23.pdf (imperial.ac.uk), p. 9.

[3] Peezy Midstream UK – Forte Medical (forte-medical.co.uk)

[4] 348-IMP-Public-Affairs-3-reports_Medtech_AW_DIGITAL_SINGLES_Sept23.pdf (imperial.ac.uk)

Making Britain a global leader in telecoms regulation

Authors:
Professor Eric Yeatman, Professor Chris Tucci & Dr Marika Iivari.

Telecoms is vital national infrastructure that allows us to communicate with people virtually anywhere, whether we are on the go, at home, or at work. In Britain, the industry is well-established and a handful of major players dominate the market. The sector employs 200,000 people, double that of Germany, and provides £38 billion in GVA to the UK economy annually.[1] The industry is also changing with the arrival of 5G and ultimately 6G and the convergence of telecoms with technology such as AI. This presents an opportunity to make the British economy more productive and competitive. But we can only grasp it with the right environment for telecoms companies to succeed.

Using telecoms to drive UK competitiveness and growth

Imperial’s Centre for Sectoral Economic Performance (CSEP), which launched in January 2024, explores ways to improve Britain’s economic competitiveness and drive economic growth.[2] It looks at areas such as competition and technological disruption that demand a joint business, innovation and policy response. Telecoms is an area that we believe has the potential to transform the British economy’s growth outlook. I co-authored a report which examined the industry in detail and provided a list of policy recommendations.[3]

The value of connections a thousand times faster

When we think of telecoms we might picture home broadband boxes and mobile phones or the masts and cables that support this technology. Yet telecoms is about much more than that. It is almost impossible to run a small business without an internet connection, let alone a hospital or a government department. Telecoms is the enabler for practically every other part of an advanced economy. While it represented 20% of the digital sector’s growth between 2010 and 2019, which in turn contributed £150.6 billion to the British economy in 2019.[4]

Telecoms, then, should not be measured by its GVA alone. As 5G is adopted as the next generation technology standard for cellular networks, and more things come online, this will be even more the case. 5G offers speeds 100 times greater than 4G and downloads much faster than WIFI, but also provides other advantages including support for real-time applications such as autonomous vehicles and virtual reality. Its speed, reliability and new capabilities will mean that for a growing number of systems, such as energy grids, transport networks and hospitals,  the internet will  not just be a means of communication but will be a core part of how they are controlled and managed. 5G adoption will go hand in hand with AI adoption and these technologies will converge to create a new, more powerful, kind of internet.

Productivity gains of £159 billion but an unbalanced investment burden

The rewards are potentially vast. The Department for Science Innovation and Technology predicts productivity gains of £159 billion between now and 2035 on account of 5G.[5] This technology will have other significant uses in Britain, too, whether in reducing carbon emissions or making public services more efficient. This is before we consider 6G, a technology that is expected to come online by the next decade.

None of this is achievable without telecoms companies, but the long-term profitability of the industry is the concern of our report. While companies have invested billions in infrastructure, such as 5G base stations, they can struggle to generate a return on their investment. Meanwhile companies that depend on this infrastructure, such as Amazon, Meta and Google, generate vast profits. Telecoms operators provide the investment burden, but it is non-UK based big tech companies that take the lion’s share of the rewards, with only a handful of major customer-facing content providers based in Britain.

The UK can grasp the rewards with the right regulation

That is not to say British telecoms companies haven’t explored other avenues for growth. In 2022, for instance, BT invested nearly £100 million in the development of business-to-business and business-to-government products that bring together 5G and the internet of things, cloud and edge computing, and AI. The same year, Vodafone and Ericsson partnered in a trial to experiment with virtual reality and network slicing which provided users with an enhanced cloud gaming experience. Yet telecoms companies will not fully grasp opportunities like these without the right regulatory environment. Nor will Britain. It is incumbent, then, on policymakers to change this.

Our report contains thirteen recommendations. Broadly speaking, they refer to deeper collaboration between industry, academia and government to support business innovation; new regulations that include both an international role for Britain in new standard setting and measures to protect the country’s vital telecoms infrastructure and guarantee its strategic autonomy; and the need to consider the broader social and environmental applications of new technologies, particularly where regulation is concerned. The recommendations are spelled out in detail in the report.

The telecoms industry is changing, with the potential to unlock billions for the British economy. Our approach to collaboration and regulation must change too.

Professor Eric Yeatman is a Professor of Electrical Engineering at Imperial College London and co-author of ‘Sectoral Systems of Innovation and the UK’s Competitiveness: The UK Telecommunications Sector’. He is an expert in micro-technologies for sensing, communications and other applications, and has published over 350 papers and patents in these and related areas.   He is Chair and co-founder of I-X, Imperial College’s multi-faculty initiative in AI, and was the co-founder and Chairman of Microsaic Systems. He was awarded the Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal in 2011, and was made a Fellow of the Academy in 2012.

The Centre for Sectoral Economic Performance at Imperial College London investigates how to improve the competitiveness and productivity of the UK economy and drive economic growth. It is a joint initiative between Imperial’s Faculty of Engineering and the Imperial College Business School – bringing together the UK’s top engineers, scientists and economists with the UK’s science and technology industries to address the major global challenges facing economies such as net zero, economic competition, and technological disruptions.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/dcms-sectors-economic-estimates-monthly-gva-to-december-2022/using-annual-estimates-from-summed-monthly-gva-data-digital

[2] https://www.imperial.ac.uk/sectoral-economic-performance/

[3] https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/research-and-innovation/the-forum/public/Sectoral-Systems-of-Innovation_Telecommunications_June-2023.pdf

[4] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/dcms-economic-estimates-2019-gross-value-added/dcms-economic-estimates-2019-provisional-gross-value-added

[5] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-wireless-infrastructure-strategy/uk-wireless-infrastructure-strategy#:~:text=By%20transforming%20our%20economy%2C%20widespread,every%20corner%20of%20the%20country.