Expertise, consulting and commission research for business
Find out how we can help you grow your organisation by connecting you with our people and their cutting edge expertise.
How we can help you
- Consulting services for business.
- Large scale research contracts.
- Consultancy services tailored to entrepreneurs and SMEs.
About our expertise
We can undertake research to overcome a complex technical challenge, or on a consultancy basis, help to apply the latest knowledge to your business.
We have a strong track record of working with a range of partners, including multi-national businesses and small and medium-sized enterprises. Our regular collaborations with local government, industry associations and private investors ensure that our expertise is grounded in today’s challenges. We collaborate with organisations across the spectrum enabling people to flourish in sustainable ways.
Find out more about our expertise
See examples of how we collaborate below. We can tailor our support to suit your business needs.
- Life Sciences and Brighton and Sussex Medical School
Our experts from the School of Life Sciences and Brighton and Sussex Medical School undertake research in our state-of-the-art Medical Research Building. Our experts in Neuroscience collaborate with pharmaceutical firms and health providers to tackle addiction, mental health and dementia. Our Clinical Imaging Sciences Centre (CISC) is an interdisciplinary research and imaging facility. If you partner with us, you will have access to a 3T MRI scanner as well as the Centre’s other testing facilities, seminar rooms and draw upon a dynamic range of researchers.
- Media, Arts and Humanities
Academics working in the Media, Arts and Humanities have developed partnerships with major national organisations such as Shakespeare’s Globe and the RSC, the Wellcome Trust, British Museum, the National Poetry Library, the Photographers’ Gallery, and The Freud Museum and the V&A. Two faculty members contributed expertise to the blockbuster (and Covid delayed) ‘Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser’ exhibition.
- Psychology
Our psychologists offer consultancy and training in neuromarketing, safety, human resources and interviewing training as well as user-centred design. Large events companies have benefited from our crowd research and our academics have helped many international businesses, professional sports and military teams transform their performance.
- Quantum Science
Quantum Science offers genuine game changing opportunities for business. Academics from Neuroscience, Engineering, Informatics, Life Sciences, Medicine and Psychology collaborate with businesses to link enabling and foundational science with quantum device development, realising applications that range in scope from human brain activity mapping to next generation touch screens, and from microscopic imaging of molecular motors to quantum radar.
- University of Sussex Business School
The University of Sussex Business School have strengths across the ‘traditional’ business disciplines – including accounting, finance, international business, management, marketing and strategy. It is also renowned for expertise in three interdisciplinary areas: energy, sustainability and innovation.
The Business School operates a Digital Futures at Work Research Centre, which looks at how technology is changing work. Researchers are developing new rapid recruitment techniques using automated interviews and exploring ways to implement new technologies. Read more about the Business School.
Consultancy services for business
Our consultancy services provide dedicated expertise, whether you need to solve a complex technical challenge affecting the efficiency of your firm’s production processes or develop new policies and systems.
Employing an academic consultant will bring expert knowledge, and provide an expert voice, to your organisation. As a University, we offer independence and freedom from commercial conflicts.
We can put you in touch with the best suited academic – or assemble a team to combine expertise – to solve your business challenge. See the packages we offer to businesses below.
- Off-the-shelf offers
Experts at the Data Intensive Science Centre at the University have designed two off-the-shelf offers for businesses:
- a one-day or half-day machine learning canvas session to provide direct advice to a business and develop a plan for a business's overall data and machine learning needs
- a one-day brainstorming workshop to address data challenges in a team environment on campus or at company site (as preferred).
- Bespoke offers
Our academics undertake research to push the boundaries of knowledge and regularly support businesses on a consultancy arrangement. Recent bespoke consulting assignments for business include:
- marketing advice, including new product and service development and branding for a young company, which does not yet have its own marketing department
- landslide field surveys in order to identify any patterns of movement that may impact operations at a holiday park
- technical due diligence for an investment company appraising a software company
- input on a firm’s pharmaceutical drug discovery and development programme
- expert advice concerning formulation and likely debonding properties of adhesive/nano particle mixes for a firm’s new manufacturing processes
- support to a firm as it develops its use of SaaS in response to suggestions from their stakeholders
- geological advice for ground works for High Speed Rail – phase two
- technical advice to a firm setting up an e-market place for business-to-business trading of 'end-of-life' products that may have value in other supply chains.
Large scale research contracts
We have world-class research capabilities so we can partner with you to perform your research and development (R&D). If you are looking to revitalise your R&D, we offer a track record of working over a number of years with businesses as they seek to deepen their competitiveness. Collaborations include:
- Advanced Material Development Ltd
Advanced Material Development Ltd have partnered with academics at Sussex to undertake research at our laboratories on campus to generate a number of new nano-scale technological solutions.
Nanomaterials are tiny, some 10,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. Making things stronger and lighter offers commercial benefits to many industries. The research has pioneered a way of producing nanomaterial inks – stable liquid dispersions with a range of nanomaterials – and assembling them into coatings which can be placed on a range of substrates using commercial printing techniques, such as ink-jet printing.
Find out more about our partnership with Advanced Material Development Ltd. - CDO2
CDO2 Ltd develops electronic measuring and testing equipment and has been collaborating with researchers at Sussex to build quantum sensors to test the health of electric batteries.
Our collaboration will streamline the battery development process. Normally, electric batteries are left to develop at a warm temperature and are assumed to be ready after several weeks. But with the new quantum sensors, the batteries can be tested for their readiness in real-time, potentially speeding the production process from weeks to days. This means they’ll be useable more quickly, and more batteries can be created in the meantime. It’ll save factory space and energy costs too.
We have also established a Centre for Quantum Technologies, where eight research groups are harnessing and exploiting quantum physics research in order to create transformational commercial products with the potential to change the way we live and work. This has led to research collaborations with the world’s leading computing businesses, as well as the University’s own spin out company, Universal Quantum.
Read more about Universal Quantum and about CDO2.
- 113 Botanicals Ltd
113 Botanicals Ltd conducts much of its ongoing R&D work with Sussex. 113 Botanicals' mission is to harness scientific expertise to develop high quality cannabis-based pharmaceutical medicines (CBPMs), and innovative routes of administration, all with a focus on safety, efficacy and affordability.
113 Botanicals collaborate with the Nobel Prize winning Department of Chemistry, and other departments in the School of Life Sciences, to conduct ongoing research into novel and innovative aspects of cannabis process technology and medicinal cannabis.
A dedicated laboratory situated within the Department of Chemistry is available to researchers. The extensive state-of-the-art university facilities includes:
- fully equipped analytical and drug formulation laboratories
- mechanical and electrical engineering
- computing/IT facilities and extensive library services.
This, combined with the wealth of knowledge from our talented, multi-disciplinary team of Sussex academics, gave the perfect framework and apparatus to 113 Botanicals' R&D.
- Moogsoft
Moogsoft has been commissioning research activities at Sussex and, specifically, the School of Engineering and Informatics since 2008. Moogsoft offers solutions to IT teams who are responsible for the performance of their organisation’s IT systems. Its solution applies machine learning algorithms to maintain the highest systems availability by identifying root cause and remediation faster.
Moogsoft has recruited PhD students, organised the Mathematics of Networks workshop and offered summer placements to undergraduate students. It also collaborated with the University on a Knowledge Transfer Partnership funded by Innovate UK. The relationship with Moogsoft has recently developed further when the University invited Phil Tee (CEO Moogsoft) to take up the position as Entrepreneur in Residence (linked to the School of Engineering and Informatics). In this role, Phil advises students and early career researchers on how to turn their research into commercially viable propositions and navigate the maze of funding and routes to market.
Consultancy services tailored to entrepreneurs and SMEs
Experts from our Sussex Innovation Centre help companies innovate and grow. The centre, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the University of Sussex, operates from a base on our campus. Our consultants help to facilitate access to our academic expertise – as well as from premises in Croydon and central Brighton.
You can benefit from the innovation centre’s expertise in strategy development, including business model reviews, new market assessments and investor relations. You will also receive practical support in business areas including:
- legal
- accountancy
- tax
- customer relations management (CRM)
- public relations and communications
- human resources.
Find out how we can offer support through the Sussex Innovation Centre.
Contact
From business solutions to recruiting our talented students, we can help you create a strategy to succeed.
Contact us at: collaborate@sussex.ac.uk.