A collaborative research fund established by Imperial and TUM has made its public debut with at least 12 projects in its portfolio focused on areas including healthcare, energy and industry.

Imperial College London (ICL) and Technical University of Munich  (TUM) joined forces on Tuesday to launch a seed fund of undisclosed size backing early-stage research collaborations between the two institutions.
Imperial-TUM Collaboration Fund is being established to fund researchers from both institutions to explore domains ranging from healthcare haptics technology to battery storage and the circular economy. None of the fund’s investors were named in the press release.
The vehicle’s portfolio is already equipped with at least a dozen projects, though the size of each commitment was not disclosed. The projects were identified as:

  • A wind farm simulator program led jointly by Sylvain Laizet, senior lecturer in ICL’s Department of Aeronautics, and Carlo Bottasso, chair of wind energy research at TUM’s Department of Mechanical Engineering.
  • An anti-inflammatory drug program targeting irritable bowel disease, delivered by Nazila Kamaly from ICL’s Department of Chemistry and Philipp-Alexander Neumann of TUM’s Clinic and Polyclinic for Surgery.
  • A 3D printable-safety helmet concept headed by Mazdak Ghajari from ICL’s Dyson School of Design Engineering and Fabian Duddeck from TUM’s Department of Civil, Geo and Environmental Engineering.
  • A virtual reality-driven healthcare technology being pioneered by Fernando Bello from ICL’s Department of Surgery and Cancer, and Eckehard Steinbach from TUM’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
  • A project exploring environmental science for the benefit of the circular economy, under the lead of ICL’s Marco Aurisicchio, from the design engineering department, and TUM’s Magnus Fröhling, head of TUM’s circular economy professorship.
  • A collaboration to develop probes for B-meson subatomic particles using the Large Hadron Collider at Cern spearheaded by Mitesh Patel and Danny van Dyk, from the ICL and TUM physics departments respectively.
  • A molecular analysis of gene mutation-related heart defects, led by Thomas Brand from Imperial’s National Heart and Lung Institute and Stefan Engelhardt from TUM’s School of Medicine.
  • An attempt to find new designs of structured electrodes as the foundation for next-generation lithium-ion batteries, spearheaded by Sam Cooper from ICL’s design engineering department and Hubert Gasteiger from TUM’s chemistry department.
  • A program focused on nanotweezers that could be used to study biological cells and their contents, launched by Aleksandar Ivanov from ICL’s chemistry department and Oliver Hayden of TUM’s electrical and computer engineering department.
  • A partnership targeting a nano-manufacturing process for single photon emitters in quantum communication systems, overseen by Felice Torrisi from ICL’s chemistry department and Jonathan Finley from TUM’s physics department.
  • A study of friction and lubrication’s fundamental impact on different parts of machinery being undertaken by ICL’s Daniele Dini and TUM’s Karsten Stahl from the institutions’ respective mechanical engineering departments.
  • A knowledge-sharing initiative focused on supporting technical staff through teaching, research and innovation, currently led by Allison Hunter for ICL’s Department of Life Science, with the TUM representative to be confirmed at a later date.
  • Two further ICL-TUM collaborations have been funded through ICL’s European Partners Fund, which provides seed and grant funding for ICL researchers pursuing collaborative work with colleagues from elsewhere in Europe.