The University of Leicester’s Advanced Structural Dynamics Evaluation Centre (ASDEC) project was recently crowned Overall Winner at the Impact Awards for Knowledge Exchange & Commercialisation (KEC).
The University's KEC team established ASDEC as a globally unique facility that offers commercial structural dynamics consultancy and research to industry using 3D laser vibrometry. Located in an automotive cluster, it has created a consultancy service with a healthy pipeline of business from the companies around it. It has made it easier for knowledge exchange to happen, raised the profile of the University as a sector expert, and made working with them more attractive to external businesses.
Anjuu Trevedi was the lead Knowledge Exchange and Commercialisation Professional and worked closely with Professor Sarah Hainsworth, lead academic and Director of ASDEC. Professor Hainsworth said:
"This award recognises the efforts of many people at the University of Leicester, particularly Anjuu as the KEC professional. The KEC team has been crucial to ASDECs success and in building a lasting long-life project. Anjuu's unwavering enthusiasm and dedication over the four years of the project from the initial conception and market research, and her expertise in grant writing and knowledge of the funding environment, has been crucial. She has also played a very important part in terms of convincing the senior management team at Leicester that the project was well founded and viable.
In particular, the project has benefitted from the support of the previous Vice Chancellor, Professor Sir Robert Burgess, who was responsible for deciding to allow the project to go ahead, and Professor Kevin Schurer as the Pro Vice Chancellor for Research and Enterprise.
The project is the first university research centre at Leicester to be based off-site, and because of this it has challenged the University in many ways, not least in terms of estates in developing a superb facility at Horiba Mira and IT support from the College of Science and Engineering. Developing innovative projects requires people to take decisions that are outside of the normal framework of university processes and I was delighted that people had the confidence in us to allow ASDEC to be developed.
This project would not have been successful without the support from all of our industrial collaborators who originally backed the project to help us gain funding and then have stayed with us as we have developed the project to its implementation stage, I am very grateful for their support and very much look forward to continuing to work with them on future projects.
I would like to thank our funders; the regional growth fund, the European development fund and the University of Leicester; Horiba Mira, for their support in developing ASDEC on their technology park; Joe Armstrong from Polytec for his commitment to the project over a number of years; and I would also like to recognise and thank the ASDEC team who are developing and delivering the project - in particular Tim Stubbs and Martin Cockrill have provided a wealth of industrial experience, along with Chris Howe, Moira Cooper, David Baldwin, Max Chowanietz, Sabba Khaliq and Rhys Cowsill."