Cabinet Secretary Michael Russell recently visited and launched a Scotland wide service by Interface, a resource base working to help businesses throughout Scotland.

It matches the knowledge and expertise needs of Scottish Businesses to world class academic specialists and facilities in Scotland.

Now their Director, Dr Siobhán Jordan explains their work in more detail.

What does Interface do?
The free and impartial service we provide helps businesses to identify and collaborate with experts to develop products, services or processes while enabling our university and research sector to continue to thrive and engage with industry.

How do you tie in to academic expertise?
As well as facilitating research and development projects through business-led innovation, we are also keen supporters of industrial placements for students. These opportunities along with staff secondments and exchanges play a vital role in not only providing much-needed real world experience and networking opportunities, but offer companies the chance to tap into academic expertise relevant to their sector and specific business challenges.

Besides the specialist knowledge, are there any other benefits?
Today’s employers are looking for graduates who can apply the knowledge and theory they’ve learned at university to real life situations and Interface is helping both prospective employers and students tap into and develop each other’s skills.

Will it be successful?
It already is. Since its inception Interface has worked with almost 1000 companies resulting in over 450 projects being initiated with another 300 still being actively explored.  An independent evaluation of the Interface service in summer 2010 found that £5M of projects had been secured with Scotland’s universities and, more importantly, the economic impact for the companies was estimated to be £50M. In the last academic year alone the value of the contracts to the HEIs had risen by an additional £2M.

An example of one of the most successful projects facilitated by Interface was between Toshiba Medical Visualisation Systems Europe Ltd (TMVS) and SINAPSE, the Scottish imaging network which is at the forefront of research in the field of brain imaging (link to the case study from the Interface website).

How are you funded?
Interface has received a commitment of £750k funding from the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) for the next three years with additional support from European regional development funding. SFC have entered into an operational and funding partnership with Highlands and Islands Enterprise and Scottish Enterprise to ensure that Interface has a package of support worth £1.5 million to provide a service across all of Scotland.

Where is Interface based?
Interface are hosted by the University of Edinburgh but we also have staff providing our impartial brokerage service in Glasgow and Inverness.

Q and A with Dr Siobhán Jordan, Director of Interface.
For more information on how Interface might help you, visit their website -
http://www.interface-online.org.uk/