The Rt Hon Dr Vince Cable MP, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, visited Oxford University this morning [Wednesday 13 February] to hear more about how world-class Oxford research gets translated into commercial applications with benefits for the economy, health and the environment.
During his visit he observed the development of next-generation solar cells, seeing how scientists are finding ways to generate renewable energy from a wide variety of surfaces and materials.
He also saw how engineers and medics have worked together to create a device that can keep organs alive outside the body, increasing the number of organs available for transplant.
He spoke to those involved in both undergraduate and postgraduate access and funding; and saw how digitisation is transforming the humanities when he met a researcher who has put Jane Austen’s handwritten manuscripts online.
Business Secretary Vince Cable said: ‘Oxford University is a powerhouse of science and research covering a wide range of academic disciplines. Today I saw how it is also bridging the gap between the lab and the marketplace by turning its leading expertise into cutting edge new products.’
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Notes for Editors:
Photovoltaics research
The ability to cheaply and efficiently harness the power of the Sun is crucial to supply our growing demand for energy and to slow down detrimental climate change. Solar cells aim to produce electricity directly from sunlight, but are currently too expensive to have significant impact. Solid-state dye-sensitised solar cell technology has been developed by Oxford scientists at the Clarendon Laboratory and a university spin-out company, Oxford Photovoltaics Ltd, has been created to commercialise it.
The new solar cell technology is manufactured from cheap, abundant, non-toxic and non-corrosive materials and can be scaled to any volume.
The solar cells are printed onto glass or other surfaces, are available in a range of colours and could be ideal for new buildings where solar cells are incorporated into glazing panels and walls.
Oxford Photovoltaics, formed with the help of Isis Innovation, Oxford University’s technology transfer company, has combined earlier research on artificial photosynthetic electrochemical solar cells and semiconducting plastics to create manufacturable solid-state dye sensitized solar cells. The device is a form of thin film solar technology, a relatively new development in solar energy generation.
Over the next two years, Oxford Photovoltaics will scale the technology from the laboratory to production line, with the projected market being photovoltaic cells integrated into windows and cladding for buildings. Once overall performance and stability milestones are met, the technology promises and is capable to deliver affordable solar power at the many Terawatts scale.
OrganOx
OrganOx Ltd is developing a device for sustaining organs outside the body using blood at normal body temperatures. The device was invented by Oxford’s Professor Peter Friend, a leading transplant surgeon, and Oxford’s Professor Constantin Coussios, a leading biomedical engineer. In the first instance, it will be used to improve and prolong preservation and transportation of livers before transplantation.
The OrganOx technology allows livers to be preserved for up to three days – more than three times longer than is possible by conventional cold storage – and the company expects that it will also allow livers currently deemed unsuitable for transplantation to recover to an acceptable standard for transplant.
OrganOx was founded in April 2008 with the mission to ‘increase the quality and quantity of livers for transplantation’. The core technology has been in development for over 15 years. During this time Professor Peter Friend and Professor Constantin Coussios have driven the development of organ preservation and maintenance, formerly at the University of Cambridge and latterly at the University of Oxford. The technology behind the company, normothermic preservation, has been described in more than 30 peer review publications and reviews, including one seminal paper published in the Annals of Surgery in 2009 which showed that it was potentially possible to transplant organs that would usually be discarded.
