Carolyn Ansell

Internal Business Development Team (IBD) is a recently formed team comprising of Research Advisors and Commercial Project Managers.  The aim in bringing these two areas together is to provide a unified support service to our academic and professional service colleagues in securing grant and commercial funding. 

The service offered by IBD is focused on two key areas:

> Research
The Research Advisors play an important role in supporting the University Research Community in research development.  They work across the institution with groups and individuals, and interface with key external organisations (Research Councils, Government Departments and Government Agencies, Charitable Foundations and Trusts, and the European Commission), to assist in the identification of relevant opportunities and the development of proposals and applications for funding.

> Consultancy and Commercial Research Projects
The Commercial Projects Managers aim to make life easier by handling many of the vital commercial aspects which need to be in place in order for projects to be successful. The team consists of specialist people, all of whom have commercial backgrounds and are able to support you when interacting with industrial partners.  The best run projects get the commercial details sorted out before work starts.
 
In addition, the team members are also the R&I Business Partners for faculties, working alongside them to align the support received from R&I to their research funding and commercial income generation objectives.  The Business Partners will work with the Faculties’ management groups to determine priorities and reach back into the wider Directorate to provide appropriate solutions