Reviewing the 2022 Li Dak Sum Innovation Fellowship Fund - University of Nottingham Ningbo China

Established by the University of Nottingham Ningbo China(UNNC) in 2019, the Li Dak Sum Innovation Fellowship Fund is a technology transfer fund sponsored by Dr. Li Dak Sum and his family. The project aims to encourage UNNC’s staff and students to transfer their research and knowledge to business for better social and economic impact. The fund supports proof of concept studies, commercial accelerator projects, strategic initiative development and more.

In 2022, three-million RMB of funding was opened for researchers and academic members of all faculties. As well as this and in order to support UNNC students’ innovation and knowledge transfer entrepreneurship, the student category fund was newly created, with up to RMB550K made available to all UNNC students.

The Li Dak Sum Incubator has been responsible for managing and supervising all sub-projects. The incubator has invited internal and external experts to review and evaluate the implementation of all projects, and it also regularly holds project interim and conclusion review meeting to examine sub-projects’ status, achievements, progress, use of funding, and future plans. In recent years, all sub-projects have made significant achievements, effectively promoting knowledge transfer and the industrialisation of research findings.

Project progress

1. Opening of applications

The 2022 fund was launched on 1 April 2022 through a variety of channels.

2. Application deadline

Funding applications were closed on 8 May 2022.

3. Committee Review (paper review)

In June 2022, all applications were sent to the review panel for paper review and shortlisting in order to be endorsed by the RKE committee.

4. External Peer Review (written comments)

In July, the external review panel members (made up of experts from academia, industry and investment sectors) reviewed each project application and recorded them for reference for the oral defence review panel.

5. Oral defense

In September, all shortlisted projects will enter the oral defense phase and the review panel which consists of internal and external experts will go on to decide the final successful projects.

6. EF approval and award release

After the oral defense, the successful candidates will be forwarded to the UNNC Education Foundation for approval, and afterwards the final award results will be announced.

Key sub-projects

As of 2022, the Li Dak Sum Innovation Fellowship Fund has supported 16 research projects. These projects have generated 28 patents, six software copyrights, 29 prototypes, and built cooperation with more than 25 partners from industry and academia. Among the sub-projects, the “Desktop five-axis machine tool” and the “High-speed, sensor-less FOC technology for drone propulsion system” projects have achieved significant success and have attracted wide attention in industry, as well as being reported upon by multiple mainstream media outlets.

Haonan Li: Desktop five-axis machine tool

"Desktop five-axis machine tool" is an innovative product developed by a team led by Dr. Haonan Li, UNNC’s associate professor in aerospace engineering. Compared with the traditional machine tool, which is heavy and expensive, Haonan’s product is light and portable, 40 times smaller in volume than the traditional product, and is favoured by a number of domestic universities and scientific research institutes. Haonan led the whole team to spend more than a year to verify the feasibility of the desktop five-axis machine tool through continuous tests and successfully produced the first generation of desktop machine tool. Since then, the team has continuously added and deleted functions according to the market feedback, as well as upgrading the equipment to meet the needs of mass production. Haonan’s desktop machine tools has received many orders.

Bowen Shi: High-speed sensor-less FOC technology for drone propulsion system

This project was co-established by Bowen Shi, a UNNC alumnus and Li Dak Sum Incubator team member. Bowen and his team have successfully developed high-speed, sensor-less FOC technology for drone propulsion systems, a unique product which has given it strategic advantages in the global market. At the very beginning of the project planning phase, with the advice of an entrepreneurship professor from the Nottingham University Business School China, Bowen and his team avoided the mature fields and discovered their own direction in the application of FOC technology. In 2019, the team obtained funding of 700 thousand RMB from the fund. Sensor-less HS FOC technology has a high technical threshold and requires complex mathematical algorithms. The team dedicated themselves to the project and worked hard for a year to achieve their technological success. The project quickly revealed its commercial possibilities when a leading drone production company in Israel placed an order for automatic picking with drone robots.

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Published on 02 September 2022