Successfully managing projects and programmes throughout their lifecycle.
The Research Project Management team help Imperial's academics apply their knowledge to a plethora of challenges faced by industry - and society in general - to generate substantial impact.
The team ensure the success of each project by managing it throughout its life-cycle and...
- Ensuring the project meets its key deliverables and stays on budget.
- Disseminating results and showcasing the project's impact via websites, social media, conferences, workshops and news articles.
- Managing the finances from invoicing and payment processing, to budget reconciliation.
- Winding the project down when it reaches completion.
Case studies
The Enhanced Delivery Ecosystem for Neurosurgery (EDEN2020) was an €8.3 million project (2016-2021) funded by the European Union Horizon2020 programme, which aimed to translate the latest surgical robotic technologies into patient-specific neurosurgical applications, meeting the demand for better and less invasive treatment in neurosurgery. The EDEN2020 consortium was awarded this competitive Research and Innovation Action (RIA) on robotic-assisted neurosurgical drug delivery in April 2016.
The project, headed by Prof. Rodriguez y Baena, coordinated EDEN2020, benefited from a strong industrial presence (Renishaw plc. and XoGraph ltd.), a first-class clinical team in Italy (Universita’ di Milano, San Raffaele and Politecnico di Milano) led by Prof. Lorenzo Bello, and the involvement of leading experts in intra-operative imaging (Technical University of Munich) and shape sensing (Universitair Medisch Centrum Groningen).
Our role...
The Research Project Management team provided consortium & project management to the 8 industrial and academic partners from the UK, Italy, the Netherlands and Germany. We also led on the dissemination, communication and exploitation activities.
Article showing research progress post-project closure:
New flexible, steerable device placed in live brains by minimally invasive robot
Impact video at project-closure
EDEN2020 - Fully functional technology platform for precision neurosurgery
Concept video in 2016
EDEN2020 Project - How it Works
Personalised Risk assessment in febrile illness to Optimise Real-life Management across the European Union
PERFORM was a €17.9 million collaborative project (2016-2021) funded under the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme for research and innovation.
The project was looking at ways to reduce antibiotic misuse, through the development of improved tests used to distinguish bacterial from viral infections. Currently, doctors have very limited capacity to reliably differentiate life-threatening bacterial infections from trivial viral illnesses in children. As a result, thousands of children worldwide undergo investigations such as lumbar punctures, x-rays and blood cultures, and are treated with broad-spectrum antibiotics while waiting to rule out bacterial infection.
The project was led by Professor Michael Levin from Imperial College and involved partners in Oxford, Liverpool, Spain, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Greece, Slovenia, Latvia and Switzerland, along with two biotechnology companies (Micropathology Ltd in the UK and bioMérieux in France).
Our role...
The Research Project Management team was providing overall consortium & project management, as well as leading on the dissemination and stakeholder engagement.
Prof. Michael Levin said...
“Better tests to identify those children with life-threatening infection amongst the infinitely more numerous children with viral infections are urgently needed if antibiotic use is to be reduced. We have exciting pilot data which shows that bacterial infection can be recognised by the patterns of genes and proteins switched on in each child’s blood during infection. PERFORM will apply sophisticated genomic and proteomic methods to study thousands of febrile children with the aim of identifying and developing a better test for bacterial infection than what is currently available.”
3D-games for TUNing and lEarnINg about hearing aids
3D Tune-In was a €3.3 million project (2015-2018) supported by the Horizon2020 ICT programme of the European Commission. Its main focus was to use Virtual Reality and 3D gaming technologies to assist hearing impaired users gain an improved understanding of how to use their hearing aid.
The project was led by Dr Lorenzo Picinali from the Dyson School of Design Engineering at Imperial College London and took a participatory-design approach. The project brought together relevant stakeholders from academic institutions as well as traditional gaming industries, a large European hearing aid manufacturer and hearing communities to produce digital games in the field of hearing aid technologies and hearing loss in children and older adults.
Our Role:
The Research Project Management team provided full project management support including budget and resource management and consortium management of the 8 institutions across three European countries.
For more information please visit the 3D Tune-In project’s website and have a look at our project video on youtube.
Novel Mobile Sonification Process for Local Valorisation of Lignocellulosic (Forest) Materials to produce Valuable Chemicals (BIOSONIC) was a European Commission FP7 for SME’s project.
The BioSonic consortium developed a novel ultrasonically-enhanced separation process that does not require high temperatures or pressures and is capable of producing pure wood fractions replacing the current harsh hydrolysis or steam explosion methods, which degrade one or other of the output materials and performs much faster than traditional digestion processes. The BioSonic separation process is targeted to be cost-effective at a small enough scale to allow localised processing to take place.
The project was led by Professor Nilay Shah of Imperial College London.
Our Role:
The Research Project Management team's role within Biosonic was to provide support to Imperial College academics involved in the project and as an RTD provider. We also advised BIO-SEP on their role as final consortium coordinator.
To find out more visit the BIOSONIC website.
The High Hydrogen project was led by Imperial College and the Health and Safety Laboratory (HSL) and was funded by the Energy Technologies Institute.
The project investigated the safe operating conditions for power generating systems running on high hydrogen fuel compositions, which may be hazardous in the event of flammable fuel mixtures unintentionally entering the hot exhaust system where they may ignite.
At Imperial College, the project was led by Professor Hans Michels in the role of Chief Technology Officer with the collaboration of Professor Peter Lindstedt.
Our Role:
The Research Project Management team provided project management support to the Imperial College academics involved in the project.
The Childhood Life-threatening Infectious Disease Study (EUCLIDS) was a €12million project funded under the Health theme of the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), supporting research and innovation.
Using bacterial meningitis and sepsis as prototypic models, EUCLIDS undertook a large scale genomic study (patient database included 84,800 patients with complete data, from hospitals in Europe and West Africa) to identify genes biological pathways that may determine susceptibility and severity of life threatening bacterial infections, currently accounting for over a quarter of child deaths, globally.
The project was led by Professor Mike Levin of Imperial College London and the consortium was made up of 16 partners spread across three continents.
Our Role:
The Research Project Management team's role within EUCLIDS focused on providing effective consortium management throughout the project, ensuring effective partner communication and timely implementation of deliverables. We also led and facilitated dissemination and training activities, organised project events and managed the overall project communications.
Find out more at the EUCLIDS website.
Funded by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) under the Organic Environmental Contaminants Research Programme this project was led by Imperial College with University of Reading and FERA as collaborators. It aimed to investigate the transfer of organic contaminants to milk due to cows ingesting waste materials used as bedding or as soil conditioner on pasture. The programme also examined the uptake of organic contaminants by carrots and cereals grown in soil amended with waste-derived soil conditioners.
A variety of waste materials are recycled in agriculture with the benefit of reducing pressure on virgin resources. Recycled waste materials, such as untreated waste wood shavings or paper sludge from paper recycling mills, can be effectively used as animal bedding in livestock production.
The project was led by Professor Stephen R Smith of Imperial College London and was partnered with two other organisations, University of Reading and FERA.
Our Role:
The Research Project Management team provided the overall project management throughout the duration of the research, ensuring effective partner communication, and timely implementation of deliverables. We also led and facilitated dissemination activities including organising project events and managing the project’s communication activities.
The EIP SCC Smart Cities Project was an initiative of the European Commission and supported by an external High-Level Group. Heterogeneous expert groups (cities, industry partners, SME’s, financial and research institutions and others involved in the smart city processes), were supported to develop and implement collaborative cross-country activities in the fields of built environment, urban mobility/transport, urban infrastructures, ICT, urban processes, citizen engagement, business models, public procurement, financing, planning and related urban regulation and standards.
The focus was the deployment of technology and service innovation at scale in the fields of interoperable urban platforms, positive energy blocks, smart electro-mobility solutions and smart mobility services. The project also took into account the enabling roles of collaborative actions such as new business models and financing arrangements, new strategies and tools to increase citizen focus and engagement, new strategies and tools for integrated planning and decision-making.
The project was co-chaired by Professor Goran Strbac of Imperial College London.
Our Role:
The Research Project Management team provided day-to-day management of the Action Cluster SDBE; delivering support to the Platform/Market Place Coordinator and Action Cluster Lead (through stakeholder management, event organisation). We also provided management expertise and advice regarding the implementation of the EIP Platform/Market Place and the roll-out of its Initiatives.
The Centre of Applied Research "Energy efficient heat exchange and catalysis: UNIHEAT" was a successful international partnership between leading research institutions and industry, which aimed to reduce the amount of energy lost during the crude oil refining process by 15%. The initiative was divided into two programmes: a research programme and an industry engagement programme.
The research programme developed breakthrough technologies in energy efficiency. The programme was the largest of its kind worldwide, integrating cutting edge research conducted by a diverse pool of international experts, from molecular simulation to plant level optimisation, from theory to experiments, from design to operations.
The industry engagement programme ensured relevance and transferability to industry. Industrial partners provided invaluable industrial insight and continue to benefit from the tailored integration of novel, energy efficient technologies into their operations cycles.
The project was led by Cav. Prof Sandro Macchietto of Imperial College London and was partnered with 5 other organisations.
Our Role:
RPM was responsible for the industry engagement programme, leading on the organisation of all external events and stakeholder engagement. RPM also provided project and contracts management, logistics, travel and financial management to the project.
EIT Climate KIC
The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) Climate-KIC is a knowledge innovation community established and funded by the EIT in 2010. Their purpose is to tackle climate change through innovation. They are Europe’s largest public-private partnership with this purpose – a growing pan-European community of diverse organisations united by a commitment to direct the power of creativity and human ingenuity at the climate change challenge.
EIT Climate KIC projects
Agriculture Resilience, Inclusive, and Sustainable Enterprise (ARISE) was a €5.4 million project, with €3.3 million funded by EIT Climate-KIC research project. It ran from 2019-2021 and was led by Dr Enrico Biffis of the Brevan Howard Centre for Financial Analysis from Imperial College Business School.
Project abstract: Imagine having a set of financial incentives that can be combined and deployed to drive farmers towards the adoption of more resilient and sustainable practices. This could increase the total agricultural output in Africa and Europe, while at the same time driving the whole sector toward sustainability and climate resilience. This is exactly what we aim to achieve with the ARISE demonstrator project. WINnERS developed a financial de-risking instrument, where the cost of insurance depends on basic farming practices improvements such as better seeds or fertilizers. The project has high ambitions and our intention is to leverage the successful innovation already brought to market with the WINnERS demonstrator.