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Suzhou Daily
He was joined by Prof. Dermot O’Hare, Associate Head (Research and Innovation) of MPLS and Board Director of OSCAR, Dr. Richard Liwicki, Legal Representative and Board Chair of OSCAR, Jeremy Sims, Finance Controller, MPLS, Sophie Pryor, Company Secretary of Subsidiary Companies, University of Oxford, and OSCAR Visiting Professor Monique Andersson, who is an Associate Professor in Medical Virology/Consultant in Infection at Oxford.
As well as listening to a presentation of OSCAR’s research work and celebrating the Centre’s sixth birthday, the Oxford contingent met with leaders from Suzhou and Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP) to discuss future collaboration through the OSCAR project.
Prof. Naismith congratulated OSCAR on reaching its sixth anniversary at the OSCAR Annual Research Work Summary Meeting on 29 November. He said:‘Everyone is incredibly impressed by the work that you have done here. I want to pay tribute to all of you because I know you do the work. I want to congratulate all of you on your 6th birthday today in this building and to see how proud we are of what you've done.’
The research presentation was followed by a festive birthday celebration to mark OSCAR’s six-year journey to where it is today.
On 22 November 2018, the University of Oxford and Suzhou Industrial Park announced the inauguration of OSCAR, an exemplar project of UK-China science and technology collaboration.
On 7 December, at OSCAR’s 5th anniversary celebration, the University of Oxford and Suzhou Industrial Park launched the ‘OSCAR i3 initiative’, underscoring OSCAR’s commitment to ‘Innovation, Incubation and Impact’ in the next phase of its development.
By November 2024, OSCAR had worked its way through six years of exciting progress and multi-faceted challenges, to become an international research institution boasting an innovative vibrancy.
‘OSCAR represents a unique co-location of PIs from across the MPLS departments of Engineering Science, Chemistry, Materials and Maths,’ said Martin Edmunds, MPLS Head of Research Support. Over the past six years, OSCAR has been able to ‘co-locate’ with 30 world leading scientists under diverse partnerships to undertake interdisciplinary research.
OSCAR was born with Oxford’s renowned research excellence. An extending network of collaboration and the flourishing innovation ecosystem in Suzhou Industrial Park position OSCAR well to accelerate the translation of scientific discoveries into solutions for society.
OSCAR is recognised as a major research laboratory and proof-of-concept centre, both within the local region and at a state-level. OSCAR’s research impact continues to grow, having formed partnerships with nearly 50 institutions and businesses from 11 countries, and is delivering on over 100 research-industry collaborative projects. OSCAR has filed 45 patent applications, of which 15 are PCT applications.
To speed-up technology transfer and commercialisation, a 2,500 sqm ‘OSCAR Innovation Hub’ was opened in 2022 inside the OSCAR building, to host activities from technology validation, prototype design to clinical trials and pilot batch production. The Hub is now supporting 10 proof-of-concept projects. Furthermore, OSCAR has helped close to ten technology projects achieve commercialistion, with three spin-out companies registered. Six more projects are now in the pipeline for commercialisation, which have the potential to benefit health monitoring, financial trading, display technology and the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals and compounds.
Sir Mark Walport, Vice President and Foreign Secretary of the Royal Society, described OSCAR as ‘an excellent example of the cooperation between the UK and China’ following his visit to OSCAR in September.
‘More work awaits us in year seven,’ says Prof. Zhanfeng Cui, ‘more Oxford professors will join OSCAR to do close-to-market, innovative research. Our research teams will be regrouped into research clusters, reimaging the way we innovate and collaborate. I’m confident that OSCAR will become a leading institute of international collaborative research at a time when it’s urgently needed.’