Goal 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

Evidence provided for the Times Higher Impact Ranking included reporting the number of spin-off companies and the size of our research in STEM subjects and business.

Our Research and Innovation Office (RIO) supports researchers in working together to achieve excellence with impact in delivering the University’s vision for research and innovation. RIO works closely with the Bettany Centre for Entrepreneurship to support businesses, delivering, for example, start-up-weekend, venture day, speaker series, pitch competitions and support for new, aspiring entrepreneurs through to small companies wanting to scale up. The Bettany Centre offers several scholarship programmes, including one for Northamptonshire focusing on the journey to Net Zero.

Our active alumni community supports the next generation of entrepreneurs through the Cranfield 50 network.

In 2021 we continued to support businesses through our Eagle Lab partnership with Barclays and AVIATE+, part of a new UK Aviation Innovation and Technology Entrepreneurship cluster.

The Innovative Mast for Greener Electrification (IMAGE) project, funded as part of the Government’s £9 million support for First of a Kind railway innovation, aims to reduce the financial costs and energy used in production and installation of rail masts for electrification. The built-in sensors will also provide data directly to infrastructure owners, enabling maintenance to be better targeted and reducing the need for line-side manual checks.