In 2004, the Vice Chancellors of the eight most research intensive universities in the North of England agreed to collaborate to bring together the N8 Research Partnership.
The N8 universities consist of Durham, Lancaster, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield and York. Together they undertake more than £650m of research and employ over 8,200 staff. The collaboration represents a unique combination of complementary research strengths and capacity which is of proven internationally-leading quality.
Whilst the N8 universities are all research intense, they differ in size and ambitions and have varied reasons for joining N8. Each N8 university however share a common view that N8 can add significant value to their research and enables them to participate in an innovative form of research partnerships and tackle research questions they would otherwise be unable to undertake alone.
The universities chose five research themes of Ageing and Health, Energy, Molecular Engineering, Regenerative Medicine and Water as the first areas for collaboration. These were chosen as pilots to test the feasibility of the partnership and its attraction to industry and to other funders of research. In August 2006, N8 Ltd was established as a vehicle for funding and was the first time that a group of UK universities have formed a jointly held company.
The Northern Way, a partnership of three northern Regional Development Agencies provided funding for the N8 partnership in March 2007. A total of £6m was secured from The Northern Way Growth Fund and was utilised to setup and develop research centres around these five themes.
The N8 partnership has been working towards bringing together research excellence whether located in the private sector or higher education.
So far we have worked with 165 companies and achieved £22.5m in research income.