Budget brings potential opportunity for University
20 Mar 2014
Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne MP announced plans in Wednesday’s budget to fund an Alan Turing Centre for computing, and a new graphene centre.
There has not yet been a decision about where either of these will be located, but the University confirmed it would be bidding for both to come to Manchester. Speaking about graphene, Vice President and Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences Professor Colin Bailey said:
“We are engaging across the UK to commercialise graphene and to utilise the world-class knowledge base here at The University of Manchester. We are developing an infrastructure at the University which links in with the existing catapult centres to ensure efficient commercialisation of graphene to accelerate applications to market. Today’s announcement is welcome support from the Government.”
On the new Alan Turing Institute announcement, Professor Bailey added: “The University of Manchester has extensive knowhow and expertise in big data handling and will be supporting the new Alan Turing Institute for the benefit of UK Plc. Our impressive heritage and strong track record in both computing and mathematics, not least from the work Alan Turing himself did here, means we will be bidding to have the new Institute based in Manchester.”
Here is how the Manchester Evening News covered the announcements on Wednesday.