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The European Union Cosmetics Directive (adopted in 2003) banned the use of animals for testing cosmetic ingredients and the final deadline for compliance was March 2013. The development of alternative methods of safety assessment was therefore essential to ensure both consumer protection and viability of the cosmetics industry. Our research has focussed on the development of computational alternatives to animal testing, including the identification of structural alerts that have been encoded into computational workflows to support toxicity prediction. These methods have delivered tools to the cosmetics industry in Europe and worldwide to enable them to comply with the directive and develop new products. Our findings have also been used to inform thinking and policy in Europe and to develop a new approach to the safety assessment of cosmetics.
Research at Newcastle University on formal methods for the design of computing systems has had a major impact on the delivery of new high-dependability products by industry. The methods (VDM and Event-B), to which we have made significant contributions, have been embodied in tools (VDMTools, Overture, Rodin) and applied in industry. The reach of the work extends to industries in Europe (e.g. in the rail sector by Siemens, 2011) and Japan (e.g. in firmware design by Sony, 2008). Significance is seen in reported improvements in defect detection rates of up to a factor of 5 over previous processes and the cost-effectiveness of design processes. The "Mobile FeliCa" chip developed using VDMTools is now incorporated into over 200 million mobile phones worldwide. Our approach to disseminating research has engendered lively international and online end-user communities further developing and using the tools today.
The volume and diversity of data that companies need to handle are increasing exponentially. In order to compete effectively and ensure companies' commercial sustainability, it is becoming crucial to achieve robust traceability in both their data and the evolving designs of their systems. The CRISTAL software addresses this. It was originally developed at CERN, with substantial contributions from UWE Bristol, for one of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments, and has been transferred into the commercial world. Companies have been able to demonstrate increased agility, generate additional revenue, and improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness with which they develop and implement systems in various areas, including business process management (BPM), healthcare and accounting applications. CRISTAL's ability to manage data and their provenance at the terabyte scale, with full traceability over extended timescales, based on its description-driven approach, has provided the adaptability required to future proof dynamically evolving software for these businesses.
This case study embodies a non-linear relationship between underpinning research, software development and deployment. It involves computer science research at UWE in conjunction with its applied development for the world's largest particle physics laboratory and onward deployment commercially into private sector industry.
The EU REACH regulation 2007 (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and restriction of Chemicals) requires producers and importers of chemicals to register them and provide information to ensure their safe use whilst minimising the use of animal testing. When the White Paper on REACH was published in 2001, over 90% of the 100,000+ chemicals in use had few or no toxicological data available. In order to address the deficiency in the ability for companies to comply with these regulations, LJMU has developed a suite of computational tools to predict toxicity of chemicals using only knowledge of chemical structure and properties. These models have been incorporated into predictive software including the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) QSAR Toolbox which is promoted by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), as a useful means to provide information for REACH dossiers and has been taken up by industry internationally for this purpose.
Reliable and timely measurements are vital for innovation, trade, environmental protection and quality of life. University of Bedfordshire work with measurement systems was already established in 1993 with commercially sponsored work to develop and patent sensors for rapid toxicity assessment in the water industry. Biosensor technologies provide approaches to development and application of cost effective devices for measurement at the point of need in many fields of application and the university's Sensor Research Group has continued to work with industry to develop robust (bio)sensor systems to address business and society needs — particularly with respect to environmental protection, health and wellbeing.
A new class of synthetic self-assembling peptides has been developed at Leeds into a product that allows the enamel in the dental cavities to be regenerated. The peptides assemble to form gels that have been shown to be promising biocompatible materials with applications in regenerative medicine, for example in the regeneration of bone. Credentis AG (Switzerland) was founded in January 2010 to commercialise the technology in the dental care domain. Its first product Curodont™ Repair - the first product of its kind in dental care - has completed first-in-man safety trials (also at Leeds); has received regulatory approval for clinical use in Switzerland, Europe and Australia; and was launched in Switzerland and Germany in Q1/2013. The product has tremendous promise because most adults suffer from dental caries which often go untreated because of patients' fear of the dental drill. A second product Curodont™ Protect, approved in April 2013 and regulated as a cosmetic, has been launched in 2013 for the treatment of dentin hypersensitivity. Credentis has established a UK base in Leeds and has engaged a UK company as distributor of its products from October 2013.
The Leeds unit's MoD-funded research programme in hypervelocity impact dynamics has: saved the MoD two years in ballistic development and £1.5m-£2m in costs; guaranteed robustness and reliability of MoD computations; enabled the MoD to deliver advanced research output cost- effectively under severe budgetary pressures; continued to underpin a £4m annual income for the MoD's War Technology consultants QinetiQ; provided the MoD with a world-leading explosion- simulation capability. MoD codes underpinned by the Leeds research have, during the REF period, led to a reduction in front-line casualties of British Forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and enabled government agencies to make quantifiable assessments of threats to transport and public-building infrastructure, e.g. in the planning of the 2012 Olympic Games. QinetiQ have used the codes with industry to develop a new explosive perforator for oil extraction that has: "halved the R&D process, time-to-market and cost of oil-well exploitation"; improved oil flows by 30-40% in tests undertaken by oil companies, and; yielded substantial (but confidential, see §4e) recurrent licensing royalties.
Researchers from this UoA developed 3D modelling techniques and virtual visualisation software to help car-makers address potential imperfections (gaps between panels, misalignments, etc) that arise during vehicle assembly, even when all part dimensions are manufactured to within their tolerance range. The University of Leeds spun out Icona Solutions in 2003 to develop and exploit this intellectual property. Icona's Aesthetica software was launched in 2006, and since 2008 it has been licensed by over 20 automotive companies in 10 countries. The software has contributed to improvements in the design and manufacture of around 70 different vehicle lines, reaching over 40 million consumers, and saving car-makers approximately £25 million in efficiency and cost savings (including reduced scrap and rectification costs). Icona's turnover since 2008 is well over £1 million.
Air pollution is a major health concern and government policy driver. Leeds researchers and colleagues have developed a detailed chemical mechanism which describes reactions in the lower atmosphere leading to the formation of ozone and secondary particulate matter, key air pollutants. The so-called `master chemical mechanism' (MCM) is considered the `gold standard' and has been used by the UK government and industry groups to inform their position on EU legislation and by the US EPA to validate and extend their regulatory models. The Hong Kong Environmental Protection Department has used the MCM to identify key ozone precursors and provide evidence for abatement strategies.
Research into the operational characteristics and applicability of biological reaction networks, carried out at the university in collaboration with groups at Caltech and Sony Systems, revealed the pressing need for a standard format that could be used for storage and exchange of mathematical models of such systems. Hertfordshire researchers played a crucial role in the initial design, dissemination and early exploitation of the Systems Biology Markup Language, SBML, now recognised as the de facto standard format for this purpose. Several major scientific publishers operating across academic boundaries require their authors to use SBML, and 254 software tools, including MATLAB and Mathematica, are now SBML-compliant. Online forums testify to a sizeable, international user-developer community that encompasses engineers, biologists, mathematicians and software developers.