Bangor Law School teams up with the School of Electronic Engineering to collaborate with 5 other European countries in a major Transnational European research programme

Bangor University’s Law School is to join an elite group of universities and organisations on a Europe-wide research transnational collaboration to support knowledge intensive high growth potential companies.

Bangor University – the only UK partner to be invited to join the consortium – will work in conjunction with the University of Tilburg, Netherlands, to research how high-growth potential start-ups can benefit from public procurement participation, and the challenges they face in doing so.Attending the TESLA launch (L-R) : Dr Patrick Mulhern, from Lionra; Councillor Cyril Burke, BMW Regional Assembly; Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny; Michael Delaney, Cork Institute of Technology; Dr. David Joyner, Bangor University; Gerry Finn, Director of the BMW Regional Assembly.

As well as participation by Bangor Law School’s Institute for Competition & Procurement Studies (ICPS), the three-year project will also see Bangor’s School of Electronic Engineering collaborate on a series of innovation and product design projects. ICPS will also train organisations in a variety of areas such as cross-border access to public procurement markets and collaborative bidding techniques, as well as offering one-to-one Tender Surgeries.

Professor Dermot Cahill, Head of Bangor Law School said: “this will be an extremely important collaboration for us, and builds on Bangor Law School’s strong funded-research track record in the area of public procurement law and strategy”. Professor Paul Spencer, Head of the College of Physical and Applied Sciences, added “by making the latest Design Thinking and academic expertise available to companies in Wales and across the TESLA European partnership, our network will energise the dynamic interplay between knowledge creation, product development and market adoption”.

TESLA Partnership Director for Bangor University, Dr. David Joyner, commented that “TESLA is a great example of cross-disciplinary collaboration at Bangor University, as Law and Electronic Engineering will be collaborating to bring the University’s expertise and research to bear on one of the highest priority economic growth areas – that of knowledge intensive businesses”.

Transnational Ecosystem Laboratory & Actions (TESLA) will be funded by the INTERREG IVB North-West Europe Programme, an EU fund aimed at tackling common challenges in North West Europe through transnational cooperation. The 3.7 million euro, 3-year project - led by the Borders, Mid and Western Regional Assembly of Ireland - will see eight partners from Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands and Wales collaborate to support high growth potential start-up companies in a wide range of contexts including Internationalisation, New Product Development & Innovation, Entrepreneurial Finance and Public Procurement.

Publication date: 14 May 2012