Collaboration between Welsh Assembly Government, Swansea University and IBM creates a regenerative buzz in South West Wales

Many regions associated with traditional heavy industries share the challenge of maintaining employment and wealth when these industries are in decline.

Swansea University is central to achieving one of the Welsh Assembly Government’s key strategies to address this challenge – stimulating the knowledge economy by developing sectors such as life science. David Lewis, Director, Blue C at the Institute of Life Science, Swansea University explains: “We want to create a cluster of public and private sector organisations around the University and generate some real vibrancy – working together to create life science expertise that translates into practical public health and commercial opportunities.”


Realising the vision
The Welsh Assembly Government secured £1.3 billion of EU Convergence Funding to promote economic regeneration and growth in West Wales and the Valleys between 2007 and 2013. A major focus will be strengthening Wales’ knowledge economy and universities such as Swansea University have an important role to play in achieving this goal. Swansea University leads or partners in, a number of major EU funded projects of which the newly opened Institute of Life Science (ILS) within Swansea University’s School of Medicine is a key example.

The ILS is a unique collaborative venture between the Welsh Assembly Government, Swansea University and IBM, and has a total investment value of over £50 million. It brings together specialists in medicine, engineering, computing, physics and bioscience in a multidisciplinary environment that pushes traditional intellectual boundaries. Academics are supported by an expert business team focussed on building links with the commercial world to take benefits out to the public at large. With reliance on techniques such as bioinformatics for epidemiology, genetic and molecular research, or medical visualisation for diagnostic body scanning, the ILS requires powerful computing and access to the best knowledge management expertise.

“Our choice of IBM as a partner was a strategic one, and provides a key ingredient that contributes to the strength and uniqueness of the ILS,” says Lewis. “We want, and need, to have wide and deep collaborative links to corporations with a very strong research base and unimpeachable brand recognition. We chose IBM because it offers a complete package including brand and marketing expertise, a full range of hardware and software services, a strong research function and an existing focus on healthcare and life science.”

World beating speed
The ILS houses IBM’s “Blue C”, one of Europe’s fastest computers dedicated to life science research. Its impressive performance is used to run simulations of epidemics, analyse viral genomes and construct images from CT scans. One project is analysing the large amounts of genetic data held on publicly available databases to plot the evolutionary history of many human viruses.

Access to Blue C acts as an ‘attractor’ for small and medium sized, high-tech, life science companies, which choose to be based in the Swansea area to be close to the strong life sciences research base in the ILS. The existence of Blue C and associated expertise also encourages ‘spin-out’ activity from the Higher Education sector in Wales.

Nurturing young businesses
To help further stimulate business and economic activity, the ILS has developed its own “Micro-Technium” linked to a Technium network present throughout Wales. These incubators give fledgling businesses immediate access to expert commercial and academic advice, helping ideas to flourish and grow. The new opportunities opening up around the ILS are also bringing exciting business opportunities to the area in other ways. Alliance Boots, Europe’s leading pharmacy-led health and beauty group, has located its Centre for Innovation in the business development space at the ILS building.

The Centre helps researchers and entrepreneurs from around the world develop new healthcare and medical ideas. Liz Morgan, Director of the Boots Centre for Innovation explains: “The powerful combination of research and technical expertise provided by both Swansea University and IBM was a major factor in our decision to locate our Centre for Innovation in the Institute of Life Science at Swansea. It is likely that some of the health and well-being ideas generated here will become widely recognised household brands of the future in areas as diverse as pain relief, cosmo-ceuticals, diabetes treatment and healthy ageing.”

Unlocking the full potential of health information
From the start, experts from IBM have worked closely with scientists at the ILS to help them get the best out of Blue C. The University collaborates with IBM’s Thomas J Watson Research Center on a number of projects, such as the Health Information Research Unit (HIRU) project – taking patient data from the whole of Wales, anonymizing it into a data warehouse and using novel data and text mining methods to provide a countrywide picture of health. Research projects using this data include those assessing the effectiveness of various health programmes.

Swansea University is also interested in making the most of unstructured data such as patient correspondence and clinicians’ notes. The University is collaborating with the IBM Research Center to explore how this currently untapped information can be used to improve medical insight. This groundbreaking project is using pattern recognition and machine-learning algorithms along with large scale data mining to produce a more complete picture of health than has ever been possible before.

“We are exploring with IBM ways of unlocking unexpected insights from unstructured data,” says Lewis. “Many major breakthroughs have been made as the result of anecdotal evidence. If we can ease and enhance the use of this type of information the potential is really exciting. The work we are doing will help IBM develop standard toolsets for clinicians worldwide.”

Committed to sustainable development
Swansea University has a commitment to sustainable development on campus, so the new ILS building incorporates a number of eco-design features. One of the most exciting takes advantage of the natural, stable warmth of the earth to heat or cool the building via geothermal pilings. Energy costs are far lower than for conventional buildings.

The IBM technology used by the ILS is also becoming more energy efficient in relation to the amount of computing power provided. A recent technology refresh enabled Blue C to take advantage of the latest available processor technology, reducing energy costs by around £50,000 annually.

Through the Technium centres, the ILS works with businesses on a variety of energy related projects focusing on marine energy, micro-generation technologies, bio-refining and the cleaner use of carbon-based fuels. As a result, a company involved in generating wave energy has chosen to build and test its first full size prototype in West Wales and is working with the ILS on the technical issues associated with transferring electricity into the National Grid.

Initial and growing success
Andrew Davies, Minister for Finance and Public Service Delivery at the Welsh Assembly Government sums up the benefits that the ILS has already brought: “The ILS represents a quantum leap in the development of Wales’ knowledge economy and is a key part of the strategy intended to make Swansea, and Wales, the home of a vibrant and dynamic life science cluster.”