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Deb Group secures R&D funding
Deb Group's research and development team recently beat off strong competition from a number of established international businesses to win a funding award. One of only two awards made in the category of ‘product design’, the funding will support the cost of a PhD student at Hull University, Deb's partner institution in this technology. Dr John Hines, Deb Group R&D director, said: "We are thrilled to receive this award as it releases the resources we need to really unlock the potential of this exciting new idea."
At the centre of this award and the future PhD programme is a technology advanced by Hull University that Deb believes could radically reduce the amount of water required for effective cleaning and sanitisation, enabling much improved hand hygiene in water- stressed areas of the world or where water is not available.
Professor Bernard Binks of Hull University added: "Through this award with Deb, we hope to learn how to manipulate the formulation space of our new technology to deliver a range of benefits and active ingredients, as well as to develop scaled-up processing routes to take this innovation to market."
The EPSRC-funded Industrial CASE award was made by Chemistry Innovation, one of 16 Knowledge Transfer Networks (KTNs), leading the national innovation agenda for the chemistry-using industries. Darren Ragheb, product design leader at the KTN, said: "Deb's application was particularly strong in that their innovation addresses several of our key strategic criteria. It is truly novel, has the potential to meet important market needs in hand hygiene, and has potential for much wider application beyond that. Whilst this project has very strong industrial relevance, it will also provide the student with a stimulating and challenging research experience."
Potential PhD students are currently being interviewed ahead of the 3.5 year programme's start date of October 2011.
www.debgroup.com
