Submitting Institution: Edinburgh (University of)

REF impact found 227 Case Studies

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Actual Analytics Ltd: automated processing of video data to reduce the use of laboratory animals in scientific research

Summary of the impact

Series of images from animal behaviour studies contain vast quantities of complex and highly valuable data. Extracting the value from this scientific data often requires expert annotation. This is frequently an intuitive process based on experience gained through years of training to make important decisions. Experts are rare, expensive and hard to train so the iBehave project at the University of Edinburgh (2006-2009) sought to reverse this model and deliver systems that learned to mimic expert annotation of video data. This effort resulted in a new spinout from the School of Informatics, a software company called Actual Analytics Ltd (Actual). Founded in 2010, Actual delivers innovative software solutions for behaviour analytics which use machine learning algorithms to process video data of laboratory animals to improve the accuracy of the experimental process and reduce the need to use animals in scientific research.

Submitting Institution

University of Edinburgh

Unit of Assessment

Computer Science and Informatics

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Biological Sciences: Genetics
Information and Computing Sciences: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing

13 - Advanced Wavemaker Designs

Summary of the impact

Edinburgh Designs Ltd., (EDL) was spun-out to exploit ERPE research from the original Wave Power Group. With six staff and an annual turnover approaching £2M EDL has supplied the equipment and control systems for wave tanks in 19 countries including the world's largest computer-controlled wave test facility, the US Navy Manoeuvring and Station Keeping Tank. They are currently completing the world's first circular tank, combining waves with currents in any relative direction, which is operated by the 6 person company, "FloWave" EDL, still run by the founding staff, it is the world-leading supplier of wave-making technology for scientific and recreational facilities.

Submitting Institutions

Heriot-Watt University,University of Edinburgh

Unit of Assessment

General Engineering

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Engineering: Maritime Engineering, Interdisciplinary Engineering
Medical and Health Sciences: Neurosciences

1m. Aerial perches improve the welfare of laying hens and are now recommended by the European Union

Summary of the impact

Impact: Policy / animal welfare. Policy implementation changed and bird welfare improved.

Significance: Our research informed welfare guidelines impacting upon housing of around 200 million laying birds in the EU. Our work has been adopted in EC regulations, and they are pushing all EU member states to ensure all their producers install aerial perches over slatted surfaces.

Beneficiaries: Laying birds, welfare organisations, egg producers, and the general public.

Attribution: Prof. Sparks, Dr. Sandilands (SRUC). Involved collaboration with Prof. Green at Heriot Watt University acting as a vision specialist.

Reach: Guidelines have been adopted in EU legislation.

Submitting Institutions

University of Edinburgh,SRUC

Unit of Assessment

Agriculture, Veterinary and Food Science

Summary Impact Type

Political

Research Subject Area(s)

Biological Sciences: Zoology
Medical and Health Sciences: Neurosciences

Air Quality; Measurement, standardisation, and quantification of airborne contaminants

Summary of the impact

Impact type: Public Policy

Significance: The research provided evidence for formulation of government policies to ameliorate poor air quality, to which fine particulate matter (PM2.5), O3 and NO2 are the most important contributors; PM2.5 alone reduces average life expectancy in the UK by 6 months and costs £9bn-£20bn a year. The research has been incorporated into UK national guidance and policy-evidence documents for Defra, the Health Protection Agency, and the Environment Agencies.

Beneficiaries are the public and the environment.

Research; date; attribution: EaStCHEM research (1995-2011) (a) established reliable techniques to measure NO2 for a national protocol, and (b) quantified the impact of pollutant emissions on PM2.5 and O3 concentrations, and on hospital admissions and deaths. Heal (EaStCHEM) led the research and wrote, collaboratively in some cases, the reports and the work cited.

Reach: UK wide.

Submitting Institutions

University of St Andrews,University of Edinburgh

Unit of Assessment

Chemistry

Summary Impact Type

Political

Research Subject Area(s)

Medical and Health Sciences: Public Health and Health Services

Albachem: Commercialisation of the chemical synthesis of biologically active human proteins

Summary of the impact

Impact: EaStCHEM spin out Albachem (1994), subsequently incorporated into the Almac group, enabling the latter company to become a world leader in the provision of chemically synthesised proteins.

Significance: Chemical synthesis is competitive with recombinant methods for commercial production of the therapeutic polypeptides that represent ~50% of drugs in big pharma pipelines and have a market value in 2008 of over $13B. The value attributable to Ramage's methods for polypeptide syntheses over the REF period is estimated at approximately £6M.

Beneficiaries: Drug manufacturers, contract research organisations, patients, clinicians.

Research: Studies (1993-6) led by Ramage (at the University of Edinburgh) on new methods for high-yield total syntheses and purification of long polypeptides.

Reach: Almac's protein-manufacturing team remains in the UK with 24 staff members. The Almac Group, headquartered in N. Ireland, has 3300 employees globally (1300 outside UK) and sells to 600 companies worldwide.

Submitting Institutions

University of St Andrews,University of Edinburgh

Unit of Assessment

Chemistry

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Chemical Sciences: Organic Chemistry
Biological Sciences: Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Microbiology

08 - Assuring Hydrocarbon Flow with Improved Hydrate Management

Summary of the impact

ERPE research led to the following impacts in the REF2014 period:

  • Extending the life of the NUGGETS field (operated by Total) by three years with an increase in cumulative production of 2% (2.8 Million Barrels of Oil Equivalent, value $150M).
  • Saving $3-7M in costs associated with methanol removal from liquid hydrocarbon phase by demonstrating methanol could be removed from Natural Gas Liquids directly by molecular sieve, which played a major role in Total's decision in eliminating a de-propaniser from "methanol removal facilities", saving around £50M.
  • Hydrafact: a start-up company with a turnover of £1M in 2012 and employing 8 full-time and 15 part-time staff.

Submitting Institutions

Heriot-Watt University,University of Edinburgh

Unit of Assessment

General Engineering

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Chemical Sciences: Physical Chemistry (incl. Structural)
Engineering: Chemical Engineering, Resources Engineering and Extractive Metallurgy

Automatic detection of defects in multi-threaded enterprise Java codebases

Summary of the impact

A spin-out company, Contemplate Ltd, is using advanced static analysis technology in global top-ten investment banks and other clients to discover previously undetected defects in enterprise-scale business-critical multi-threaded Java codebases. The impact is in terms of the benefits delivered to Contemplate's clients by this technology and in terms of the formation and growth of Contemplate as an employer and a successful business.

Submitting Institution

University of Edinburgh

Unit of Assessment

Computer Science and Informatics

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Information and Computing Sciences: Computation Theory and Mathematics, Computer Software, Information Systems

1a. Bovine Neonatal Pancytopenia (BNP), a newly recognised disease of calves, is caused by colostral transfer of cross-reactive alloantibodies induced in dams by PregSure Bovine Viral Diarrhoea (BVD) vaccine

Summary of the impact

Impact: Animal Health and Welfare, Economics: The BVD vaccine associated with emergence of BNP was withdrawn from sale.

Significance: BNP cases have been reported worldwide. On affected farms, the case fatality rate is very high, with losses of up to 5% of calves in a herd being reported. Despite the vaccine being withdrawn, cases continue to be found in some calves born to dams that have been historically vaccinated. In addition, reporting has increased due to increased awareness and Zoetis subsidising post-mortem examinations. However, as an indirect measure, the number of cases being diagnosed at post-mortem at SRUC fell by 42% between 2012 and 2013.

Beneficiaries: Livestock Industry, Animal Health Company, Farmers.

Attribution: Work performed by University of Edinburgh (Penny, Morrison, Sargison, Bell) and SRUC (Hosie, Howie, Kerr, Caldow) identified BNP as a new disease entity, elucidated the cause, and developed strategies to reduce the incidence. This also involved a collaboration with the Moredun Research Institute (Willoughby)

Reach: BNP is recognised world-wide (a peak of 4500 cases in 2011) including France, Germany, United Kingdom, Ireland, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, and Spain. The disease is unknown in countries which do not vaccinate against BVD (Denmark, Austria, and Switzerland)

Submitting Institutions

University of Edinburgh,SRUC

Unit of Assessment

Agriculture, Veterinary and Food Science

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Medical and Health Sciences: Clinical Sciences, Immunology

1d. Breeding a scrapie resistant international sheep flock

Summary of the impact

Impact: Economic, public policy and animal health and welfare: Selective breeding based upon identification of PRNP genotypes can eliminate animals that are susceptible to scrapie from the flock.

Significance: UK sheep meat exports are worth >£380million. Breeding for scrapie resistance protected the sheep industry from similar damage to that inflicted by BSE on cattle and the UK economy.

Beneficiaries: Farmers, animals, consumers

Attribution: Professor Hunter and Dr. Goldmann (Roslin Institute, now part of UoE) identified polymorphisms of the PrP (PRNP) gene linked to scrapie susceptibility and resistance in sheep.

Reach: International, programmes breeding for resistance to scrapie in sheep are now used in the UK, Europe and USA.

Submitting Institutions

University of Edinburgh,SRUC

Unit of Assessment

Agriculture, Veterinary and Food Science

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Agricultural and Veterinary Sciences: Animal Production, Veterinary Sciences
Medical and Health Sciences: Medical Microbiology

Clinical and commercial applications of text-to-speech synthesis technologies

Summary of the impact

Edinburgh's research in multilingual speech synthesis has had clinical and commercial impact, and has resulted in a large and diverse community of users.

Clinical applications: Our research has enabled the construction of natural-sounding, personalised synthetic voices from recordings of speech from people with disordered speech due to conditions such as Parkinson's disease or Motor Neurone Disease. These synthetic voices are used in assistive technology devices that allow sufferers of these conditions to communicate more easily and effectively.

Commercial take-up: Our research has achieved commercial impact through the licensing of technology components, and through the activities of start-up companies.

Community of users: The Festival Speech Synthesis System (v2.1 released in November 2010) is a complete open-source text-to-speech system released under an unrestrictive X11-type license, and is distributed as part of many major Linux distributions.

Submitting Institution

University of Edinburgh

Unit of Assessment

Computer Science and Informatics

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Information and Computing Sciences: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing
Psychology and Cognitive Sciences: Psychology
Language, Communication and Culture: Linguistics

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