Welcome to the Select Committee’s innovation showcase. The Committee wants to understand how the UK supports innovators and what more can be done. To inform our work, we select an innovator to share their story before our main session each week. Adam has chosen, and will introduce, today’s innovator.

Thank you, Adam and the Committee, for inviting me to speak today. It is a real honour. I am the director of the Centre for Precision Technologies at the University of Huddersfield. The centre is also the current host of the advanced metrology hub for sustainable manufacturing. The hub is led by Professor Jane Jiang, and is a national centre of excellence and research focus, primarily in manufacturing metrology. To add to what Adam said, you may well ask: what is manufacturing metrology? It is the science and practice of measurement, and is critical in underpinning the manufacturing environment for the UK in terms of verifying product accuracy and consistency and, very importantly, product reliability. One of our key aims for our research is to bring metrology systems into the heart of the manufacturing process, essentially inside large machines. Previously, we had very large optical microscopes the size of suitcases. Our task now is to bring them down to instruments the size of matchboxes that sit inside machines. What does that endeavour deliver? Potentially, it delivers huge increases in productivity. It minimises energy use in the manufacturing sector. It is key to facilitating autonomous and sustainable manufacturing, and that is fundamental to sovereign UK capability. Parallel with our fundamental metrology research, we do research on ultra precision machining and metal 3D printing. The centre is relatively large. We have more than 80 researchers and PhD students. They have world-class skills and predominantly work in high-value manufacturing. Our current activity is supported by Research and Innovation UK, with partners including Oxford, Queen’s Belfast, Southampton and Heriot-Watt universities, as well as the National Physical Laboratory, which is our key lab for metrology in the UK. It is the third time we have been awarded this type of funding. Our critical mass funding over the period has amounted to about £55 million, which we are very proud of, with our current parallel research portfolio, including UK and EU funding, running to about £23 million. Over the life of the centre, we have experienced working with leading UK manufacturing sectors, in triumvirate, large, medium and small enterprises in the aerospace, energy, medical and defence sectors. Very importantly for us are the OEM metrology instrument companies. The work is based around photonics and machining labs. We have lab coverage of about 1,500 square metres. Over the years and in what we do in our collaborations, as Adam will attest, the UK has world-class researchers in innovation for high-value manufacturing. When the transition from research into products and services works well, they reach, through the high-value Catapult network, to end users and technology exploiters. When it works, it works well. Why has our hub model been so successful? This is advertising the hub model in that sense. It is because hubs are predicated on consortia that include academics, obviously, Catapult centres, OEMs and end user companies to both push and pull technology through the development pipeline. That is critical. Towards the end of that development pipeline you can then access funds like Innovate UK-type funding to take those innovations to commercial products. Additionally, the hub funding offers flexibility and longer duration than conventional three-year blocks of funding. It can run to seven years. That model allows a significant degree of responsiveness and stability, which is particularly attractive to industry partners. For us, the hub route has led to over 25 distinct innovations, including licensed IP patents, software and new instrumentation. It has been excellent for us. Some of our recent activities derived from an excellent UKRI Strength in Places funding initiative that runs across West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester. The initiative is focused on regional expertise in machine building. The model has been really successful, especially for small, innovative companies in that area. Unfortunately, the scheme is due to come to an end in 2026. We feel that that runs the risk of dissipating the expertise that has developed across the whole partnership. We advocate using the model to spin out across the UK, to reflect the strength in places across different geographical areas with a specific geographical expertise. Timing, end user pull and research push are key to exploiting innovation. We have several examples across different areas. First, in our Manchester region and our West Yorkshire region, we are working with our SME partner, Machine Tool Technologies, on developing microsensors in software. That significantly increases the accuracy and productivity of their customers’ machine tools. Their customers are large manufacturers such as GKN and BAE Systems. Secondly, we have done a lot of work with Renishaw on their response to an organisation for our centre. They are the leading metrology company in the UK on developing photonics bases. These are ultra micro-optics-based centres that sit inside machines or manufacturing systems. Thirdly, our latest innovation is working with the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority on printing complex shapes for thermal protection materials for the next generation of fusion reactors. As well as all that, we have sought to exploit our technologies ourselves through the form of several spin-outs. This is where we have run into issues and problems, especially with getting access to finance for high-tech start-ups. We have been able to generate interest in capital from overseas, but the problem is that getting UK private capital is extremely difficult. The key is for those early investments to help start-ups bridge the classic valley of death and to go from innovative ideas to viable commercial products. That is really important at this stage, and we think that three factors are critical. First is access to investment that appreciates the risk and reward associated with these high-tech start-ups. Secondly—and this is my baby—there is avoidance of the failure shame associated with new start-ups, where previous start-up failures trigger very significant caution in investors. In many ways, that is different from the US, where failure in investment has been considered a positive. The final element I want to touch on is skills in the STEM areas. This is a big area of concern. It is critical to develop key skills. What we are looking for is a strong pipeline in what I would term innovation-brave young people for emerging technologies, with good jobs across the country in sectors like aerospace and defence. In conclusion, our research and innovation pipeline is based around industrial metrology. Its importance, as I said, is critical for advanced manufacturing. Reliance on good measurement practice is not new. I remind you of the words of the 19th-century physicist, mathematician and engineer Lord Kelvin, who stated, “When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it. When you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge of it is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.” Thank you, Committee.

Thank you very much, Professor Liam Blunt. I think we all understood the importance of industrial metrology, but it was fascinating to hear how that plays out in the centre of excellence, and also in advanced manufacturing across our country, which is a key part of the work that we are doing on regional innovation and growth. Our thanks to you, and to Adam for introducing you. The importance of measuring things is clear, both in engineering and in politics. We look forward to progress in both those areas. Thank you very much.