More acronyms for you - DTCs, EIT and KICs

Top of the news list this week is that there are heaps of excellent PhD studentships up for grabs at Sheffield and Leeds (and possibly I suspect elsewhere). Why? You may have heard that the EPSRC has supported 44 Doctoral Training Centres (DTC) across the UK. According to the EPSRC these DTCs:

"aim to provide a supportive and exciting environment for students to carry out a challenging PhD-level research project together with taught coursework. The new centres will each take in around 10 students per year for five years starting in 2009."

So if you are an energy student looking for a PhD opportunity then these are the DTCs you should be looking out for:
University of Bath - Sustainable Chemical Technologies
University of Birmingham - Hydrogen, Fuel Cells and their Application
University of Leeds - Technologies for a Low Carbon Future
University of Manchester - Nuclear Fission Research, Science and Technology AND
Industrial Doctorate Centre in Nuclear Engineering
University of Nottingham - Efficient Power from Fossil Energies and Carbon Capture Technologies
University of Reading - Technologies for Sustainable Built Environments
University of Sheffield - Sheffield Training in Interdisciplinary Energy Research: STIER
University of Southampton - Industrial Doctorate Centre in Transport and the Environment
University of Strathclyde - Doctoral Training Centre in Wind Energy Systems
University of Surrey - Industrial Doctorate Centre in Sustainability for Engineering and Energy Systems
UCL - Industrial Doctorate Centre in Urban Sustainability and Resilience AND
Doctoral Training Centre in Photonic Systems Development

Plenty of choice for even the most discerning graduate I would hope.

This week I've also been learning about the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). Rather than try and explain what EIT is, I've lifted a suitably vague description from the website:

"The EIT has the potential to become a key driver of European sustainable economic growth and competitiveness through the stimulation of world-leading innovation. Next to and beyond research and technology, EIT will focus on education, entrepreneurship, business creation and their capitalization in order to boost Europe's innovation capacity. This will be done in a cross-fertilizing effort with existing European programmes on Research and Technology, innovation and entrepreneurship."

You may wonder why I'm boring you by discussing the EIT (I'm not just filling space – honestly). Well as it happens there is an initiative in the pipeline that might be of interest to some of you. The EIT is soon launching a call for Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs). The call is expected imminently (although from experience don't hold your breath). You can read all the details about KICs here, but I thought it might be worthwhile giving the very top level highlights.

Three KICs are expected in the first call, and two are of interest for this community – one on sustainable energy and one on climate change and mitigation. A KIC is an international consortium of researchers, technologists, educators, business people, entrepreneurs (yes, non-EU partners can be involved). The difference between a KIC and other programmes is that the EIT is not giving money to fund research. The EIT wants to provide money (up to perhaps 25M euro per year) that will enable a KIC to do something dramatic and exciting. EIT funding is additive to funding already available to the consortium (e.g. won research grants, business grants, etc). This KIC funding (I'm refusing to say "KIC start" here) could be used for several purposes. One strong idea is to facilitate people movement to a central location where they can innovate to their hearts content. Another suggestion I believe I heard was for the money to be used to provide funding to small businesses to de-risk product development. The overall aim is that the KIC will:

"deliver a measurable impact on society from an economic, scientific, educational and entrepreneurial perspective."

So, as I mentioned, it's all a bit vague right now, but it did seem to me to be something slightly more exciting that I first imagined. I'll try to keep an eye out for the call (which may well debunk a number of the myths I've just propagated) and will update as and when appropriate.