The University of Wolverhampton's Brussels office: a symbol of scientific cooperation

As announced by Ambassador Brenton in this month’s column, the University of Wolverhampton opened a brand new Brussels office on September 16, an outpost aimed at ensuring the university’s presence at the heart of future policy development on European funded research. The office’s location, close to national embassies and the EU buildings, is no coincidence.

It is hoped that by creating a presence at the home of the European Union, the University will, besides being at the centre of the political decision-making process, be able to forge a network of contacts throughout the Union. It will be able to collaborate with other trans-European academic institutions and businesses on some of the University of Wolverhampton’s most successful initiatives in the fields of research, knowledge transfer and skills development. This, in turn, will allow the University to build new partnerships with scientific or industrial projects and firms and bid directly for EU funding to support new, innovative developments.

“Our research centres encompass a broad range of disciplines and as a University we are striving to produce world class research,” said Professor Ian Oakes, University of Wolverhampton deputy vice-chancellor for research and external engagement. “It is vital that as a University we can share our expertise and collaborate with a wider European network as well as giving ourselves the best opportunity to broaden our research work in future years. This means we need to be well placed to access opinion makers, businesses and potential funding streams and that is exactly why we are launching this new venture in Brussels. We are open to new ideas and partnerships and would like to share our success with other organisations, jointly developing research in order to address the main societal challenges and supporting the world of business.”

The University of Wolverhampton is rapidly developing areas of world class research and only recently created a Research Hub as part of a multi-million-euro investment into research. Areas of cutting edge research for which the University has international reputation include being the first in the world to uncover one of the processes in the body that can cause type 2 diabetes, developing Europe's first metal laser sintering machine, providing breakthrough research into brain tumours and producing world-leading analysis of web content and traffic.

For her part, the British Embassy’s deputy head of mission, Katrina Johnson, speaking at the launch of the University of Wolverhampton’s Brussels office, deplored that the extent of amount of scientific cooperation between the UK and Belgium was not as well-known as it should be. “When there was talk of the discovery of the Higgs boson last year, we learned that the mysterious particle should really have been called the Englert-Higgs boson, following the work of both Edinburgh University researcher Peter Higgs and Université Libre de Bruxelles professor François Englert,” she said.” And people are often surprised to discover that the Belgian prime minister Elio Di Rupo once taught chemistry at Leeds University”.

Student mobility between countries is also vital for research programmes, she explained; via the Erasmus programme, 259 British students came to Belgium for work and study placements in 2011-2012, a year where UK participation reached record levels.

“Complementary strengths, such as in biotechnology, creative industries, micro-electronics and environmental sustainability, to name just a few, combined with Belgium’s proximity to the UK – a mere two hours on Eurostar - means practical academic and business cooperation is easier than elsewhere in the world. And this is why the opening of the University of Wolverhampton office here is a welcome opportunity to drive forward research and innovation,” she concluded.