51Âþ»­

51Âþ»­ Leicester (51Âþ»­) has been awarded funding for four new Innovate UK-funded projects designed to help businesses innovate quickly.

The Accelerated Knowledge Transfer (AKT) projects, three of which are in Health and Life Sciences and one in Computing, Engineering and Media, are worth £141,000 and will run for four months.



Each project is led by an academic who will work with a business to help them develop an innovation that has potential for significant impact for that company. The projects are:

•    Alpha Biolaboratories Analytical Ltd, academic Dr Urszula Krzeminska Ahmadzai – to optimise a novel data analysis approach to increase the success rate of non-invasive paternity testing

•    Genvolt Ltd, academic Professor Zeeshan Ahmad – developing and testing a portable platform technology to more accurately deliver active drug compounds

•    Micron Design, academic Professor Geoff Smith – to address the increasing demand for freeze-dried products in pharmaceutical manufacturing while also improving efficiency and reducing environmental emissions  

•    Marlow Foods, academic Dr Andrew Wright – a techno-economic feasibility study of the heating and cooling requirements of one of the company’s sites to supports its ambitions of going net zero by 2030.

Casey Randall, Head of Genetics at Alpha Biolabs said: “The AKT project is a fantastic opportunity to collaborate with an academic partner, in order to enhance our offering to our customers.  In particular, we are all very excited to see what advancements and improvements the project can make to our non-invasive prenatal paternity testing service.”

Dr Rhianna Briars of 51Âþ»­’s Knowledge Exchange team, said the awards were a sign of 51Âþ»­’s continued drive and emphasis on not only its applied research but its collaborative approach to working with businesses to tackle challenges that faced industry partners.

She said: “It is great to have a mechanism from Innovate UK to do these rapid collaborative innovation projects which enables different types of activity that our researchers can engage with industry contacts on.”

AKTs were launched by Innovate UK in 2022, and the new awards bring the number of projects won by 51Âþ»­ to nine, collaborating with a range of businesses and third sector organisations.