Heriot Watt University and FlexBio have been awarded funds from Innovate UK as part of the RESILIENCE Centre of Excellence, an Innovate UK and Office for Life Sciences-funded programme which is intended to strengthen the UK’s Medicines Manufacturing skills pipeline, from outreach, awareness, and training in schools, to postgraduate and CPD study.

The RESILIENCE Centre of Excellence will be led by an academic consortium, itself led by the University of Birmingham, with University College London, Teeside University’s National Horizons Centre, and Heriot Watt’s FlexBio facility, who will work alongside Britest Ltd.

FlexBio will play a vital role in Heriot Watt University’s contribution, which will build on the university’s existing excellence in outreach and engineering, and FlexBio’s established Bioprocessing scale up equipment and staff expertise, supported by IBioIC.

The funding will be used to deliver free resources to schools, universities, and colleges. A key part of the funding will deliver state of the art VR/AR tools to mimic bioprocessing and clean room environments. Using virtual reality in this way will accelerate skills development, upskilling, and awareness, and facilitate access to hands-on training while reducing the volume of manufacturing waste.

Read the University of Birmingham’s press release: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2024/future-vaccine-makers-to-get-vr-assisted-training-centre-of-excellence