The Innovate UK IC Tomorrow competition is offering up to £35,000 to small companies to work with expert partners, including QMUL, to find solutions to challenges in the wearable technologies market.
QMUL is taking part in a scheme run by the government body that encourages innovation in UK industry, Innovate UK. The competition is offering six business up to £35,000 each to develop innovative solutions in wearable technology across the themes of sport and wellbeing, entertainment, hospitality, health and safety, accessibility and design.
Each of the six winning companies will work with an expert partner to develop their ideas. QMUL will be working with one company to develop simple to use interfaces between wearable technology and textile electronics to open the field to even more potential applications.
The winning company will be invited to work closely with QMUL’s leading researchers and scientists and will be given access to advanced laboratory equipment, design, fabrication, and evaluation facilities.
Applicants are being encouraged to consider creating a simple plug and play interface so that artists, designers and creative engineers can more easily translate their ideas into the wearable textiles domain.
The Media and Arts Technology programme has established a tradition of combining cutting-edge technology with exciting creative work at QMUL, making it the ideal partner for an innovative company that wants to create innovative wearable technology.
Dr Akram Alomainy, Senior Lecturer in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at QMUL, said: “We were invited to participate as a challenge partner in this exciting new area, due to our creative and multi-disciplinary research activities around wearable technologies and their application multiple streams such as healthcare, digital media, social interactions and so on. Our recent demonstrations at the Innovate UK 2014 event and upcoming participation in the Wearable Technology Show 2015 in London, as the only university exhibitor, highlight our leading position in this innovative and fast-growing area. The competition will give the opportunity to work with SMEs and startups on new cutting edge technological solutions for efficient and better wearable systems and also will expand our networking and collaboration circles.”
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