University of Portsmouth will offer a doctorate in legal psychology

Threats from international terrorism, organised crime, criminal networks and violent gangs are to be addressed by a new doctoral programme offered by the University of Portsmouth.

From 2013, the University of Portsmouth, in collaboration with University of Maastricht (The Netherlands) and University of Gothenburg (Sweden), is offering approximately 25 fully funded PhD scholarships, to be taken up over the next three years. Key policing tactics such as lie detection, facial recognition, investigative interview techniques and best practice in the law courts will be tackled as part of the doctorate programme.

The collaboration, called the ‘House of Legal Psychology’ is designed to prepare a new generation of high calibre researchers as experts in cross-European legal, forensic and security domains.

Students will benefit from the expertise of world-leading researchers based across the three institutions in the fields of investigative and legal psychology. Students will also have the opportunity to work in collaboration with organisations such as government research bodies, public prosecution services, police forces, and defence agencies, who have already lent their support to the programme.

Dr Lorraine Hope, a reader in applied cognitive psychology at the International Centre for Research in Forensic Psychology, University of Portsmouth said: “This is a unique opportunity for researchers to work with police and security personnel to find cost-effective solutions to problems. Research scientists trained in the programme will not only drive forward scientific advances in the field but will also be well-equipped to influence policy and practice across Europe”.

In the UK, the doctorate will be lead by Professor Aldert Vrij, Dr Lorraine Hope and Dr James Sauer.

The posts are funded as part of an EU Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate grant worth more than 5 million EUR.

For more information about the programme and how to apply see http://legalpsychology.eu/

The deadline for applications is 31 January 2013.

Dr Maebh Harding

Researchers from the University of Portsmouth Business School have won funding to examine shared parenting and contact orders for children whose parents separate.

The research comes in the wake of fathers’ rights groups campaigning for more time with their children after divorce, and a mooted change in the law in favour of shared parenting becoming the norm.

Dr Maebh Harding and Dr Annika Newnham, of the School of Law, hope to help inform any change in government policy by examining how courts promote shared parenting in disputes between separated parents.

Dr Harding said: “Many assertions are currently made about what the courts are or aren’t doing, but it is vital that the coming changes to the Family Justice System are based on a clear understanding of the courts’ current work.”

The project won £106,000 funding from the Nuffield Foundation; the first grant won by the School of Law from the Foundation, whose research frequently informs government policy.

Drs Harding and Newnham will examine the data from 210 county court cases over a six-month period from five courts in England and Wales to see if there are any patterns of residence and contact orders. They will look at the relationship between the formal labels given to court orders and the actual allocation of children’s time between parents.

They will also interview stakeholders, including judges, barristers, solicitors and social workers, on their perceptions of how those orders are applied.

The researchers expect to report their findings in 2014.

Dr Harding said: “There is a shortage of empirical research in this area and the mooted presumption of shared parenting means parents rather than children are the focus of the proposed change in the law.

“There are also questions about what shared parenting means – courts, parents and politicians might mean entirely different things by the term ‘shared’.

“Under the Children Act 1989 the courts must look for the solution that is in that child’s best interests, and because every child and every family is different you can’t presume that one size will fit all.”

The Family Justice Review has cautioned the government against drifting towards shared parenting as a default position without research on what the courts already do to make shared parenting possible using the current legislative framework.

Dr Harding said: “People have very firm views on families and what should happen based on their own family experience, but those experiences reflect just a single family and do not necessarily apply to the thousands of families who go through divorce and custody battles every year.

“We are open minded. We simply don’t know what we will find, but we do think government policy should be informed by research  .”

Under the Children Act 1989 children’s best interests are paramount, but the test is flexible to allow for differences in different families. In 1989 shared residence was highly unusual and though it is growing in popularity it has no firm definition. It does mean alternating between two family homes but the amount of time spent at each is not necessarily equal.

The team from the School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences has identified the function of little known proteins which they believe could be fundamental in the ageing process and be responsible for cognitive decline.

Image of an oligodendrocyte expressing Kir4_1

They have found that a protein known as Kir4.1 is a key element in controlling special cells in the brain and spinal cord that form myelin, a substance which insulates the brain’s wiring.  They discovered that the protein is critical to ensuring that these cells, known as oligodendrocytes, function well.  The team represents the only laboratory in the UK researching this avenue and have been awarded £500K by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) to further investigate their findings.

The researchers already know that myelin acts as the insulating layer around nerve cells and is essential for rapid conduction of information.  Myelin insulates nerve fibres in the central nervous system and when it is damaged this interferes with messages between the brain and other parts of the body.  Previously much work in this area has focussed on the nerve cells, but the team believes that these can only transmit information if the oligodendrocytes are doing their job.

They are also researching a little known protein called Gas6 which they have discovered can stimulate oligodendrocyte production and survival.  A further £100K funding from the Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Society will further their investigation of how Gas6 acts as a growth factor on cells in the brain’s white matter via signalling molecules called TAM receptors.

Image of a myelinating oligodendrocyte

Leading the new research is the University’s Professor Arthur Butt, a world specialist on glial cells, the family of cells to which oligodendrocytes belong.

He said:  “These cells in the brain are generated at birth and during the first years of development.  But they continue to be generated in the adult brain and are important for replacing cells lost during the normal ageing process.

“We think that the brain slows down its production of these cells as it ages and this decreases the rate at which the brain repairs its white matter – important for cognitive function.   The area of the brain known as the Hippocampus, important for storing memory, is also affected.

“Through investigating the signals used by the brain to control these functions  we hope to gain further insight into the aging brain and better understand  diseases such as Alzheimer’s and dementia.”

Dr Sassan Hafizi, also of the University of Portsmouth, is using the same channels of research to investigate MS.  Symptoms of the disease, which include memory and emotional problems as well as effects on the body, are the result of lesions on the brain’s white matter caused by damage to myelin and to oligodendrocytes.

He said:  “The brain and spinal cord of adults contains a large number of stem cells that have the potential to regenerate oligodendrocytes and repair damage in MS. By understanding how this process goes wrong in people with MS, there is potential to develop therapies for the disease.”

The team’s combined research will focus on signals in the brain which stimulate the growth and regeneration of oligodendrocytes and myelin.

The results of the research, which will start later this year and take three years, could be used to develop experimental treatments for diseases of the brain and for MS.   There is also the potential in the future for a diagnostic tool for clinicians to use to predict Alzheimer’s and dementia.

Out in front: The Red Arrows flying over RAF College Cranwell, Lincolnshire

A £5.3m contract to help train the Royal Air Force’s leaders of tomorrow has been won by Portsmouth Business School, in partnership with Cranfield University.

Over the next five to seven years, leadership and management experts from both universities with specialist knowledge of the military will develop the abilities of 3,700 RAF personnel a year as part of both initial officer training and senior officer development. Training will focus on international security and defence leadership, in collaboration with the RAF’s own in-house training programme.

A unique element will be a senior officers’ programme for the thousands of senior officers not selected for elite roles. These officers will now be exposed to private enterprise thinking to reinvigorate the middle management of the RAF.

Back, from left, RAF clients representing the different streams of officers being trained, Squadron Leader Carl Hamilton-Reed (OC Air Warfare Centre Cranwell), Squadron Leader Joe Duhan (Stn Cdr RAF Halton), Wing Commander Ash Bennett (OC Officer and Aircrew Training Unit Cranwell), Group Captain Phil Sagar (Officer Commanding 22 Training Group Generic Education and Training Centre Cranwell), and Wing Commander Jason Crawford (Chief of Staff GETC Cranwell).

The training programme has been co-ordinated by Nick Capon of University of Portsmouth Business School supported by Sylvie Jackson of Cranfield School of Defence and Security. University of Portsmouth has 20 years’ respected track record providing research and leadership education for the MoD. Cranfield have a similar track record in management and technology for the Defence Academy, UK.

Business School Dean Professor Gioia Pescetto said: “The RAF is looking for people who can think flexibly and laterally and they are prepared to invest in developing those qualities. Better leaders and better technology are all part of one goal – to be a leaner and effective defence system.

“We have respect for what the RAF does and is aiming to do and we fully expect this to be a real partnership. We know that we will learn a lot from them as well. Working closely with organisations from outside the University informs and improves all we do, from research to teaching.”

Director of Cranfield’s Centre for Defence Management and Leadership Dr Sylvie Jackson said: “We are delighted to be part of the successful bid and look forward to working with the RAF over the coming years – our strengths in air power, contemporary security studies, leadership and technology can only be developed further by this partnership.

“This is a unique and very special opportunity at a time of considerable changes in global security.”

Air Commodore David Stubbs, Commandant of the Royal Airforce College Cranwell and Director of Recruitment and Initial Training (RAF) said: “That we let this contract at a time of significant fiscal constraint shows the Royal Air Force’s commitment to developing our people to be among the best leaders of their generation – Portsmouth Business School and Cranfield Defence and Security were worthy winners in the face of some stiff competition.

“Our new academic partners will also be asked to join forces with the RAF’s Air Warfare Centre where RAF Senior officers will return to RAF Cranwell at a later career stage for further immersion into academia – this time at Masters level – through the Senior Officer Study Programme. Here they will be challenged to bring their wealth of experience back to the academic environment in order to thrash out the big issues surrounding the future of national and international Defence and Air Power, thus institutionalising the culture of strategic thinking that is called for by today’s ever more complex military-political landscape.”

Portsmouth Business School’s experts in leadership will work with politics and military history researchers in Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences co-ordinated by Malcolm Kaill and experts in military strategy and air power from Cranfield School of Defence and Security to deliver the training and research. A core of six to eight military experts will lead the course and draw in a team of 34 others with specialist leadership knowledge in other areas.

Scientists to study the effect of storms on river estauries

A team of scientists, including one from the University of Portsmouth, have won over £1m to monitor the effect of storms on pollution in a river – estuary in Hampshire. 

Excess concentrations of phosphate and nitrate in river water originating from fields, crops and sewers are some of the major pollutants affecting Britain’s rivers and estuaries.  These nutrient enriched waters can cause severe problems, such as stimulating the growth of excess algae that depletes oxygen from the water, causing widespread death to fish or causing the growth of poisonous algal species (red tides) that can decimate shell fisheries.

A red tide is the term often used to describe a discolouration of estuarine or coastal waters caused by a proliferation or ‘bloom’ of microscopic algae. These are often red in colour but can be other colours including green, brown or yellow

Using the Hampshire Avon and Stour rivers and Christchurch Harbour in Dorset as examples, the team will spend 12 months measuring nutrient water quality and examining pollution levels when sediments in the estuary are stirred up by storms.  They will also look at how sudden storms affect the input of nutrients and biological activity in the estuary.

The work is crucial because climate change means that the intensity and frequency of storms are likely to increase. 

Results of the study will be used to create a powerful statistical model of the distribution of excess phosphates and nitrates, how they transfer from rivers, through estuaries and into the coastal seas and the role that storms play in this process. The team anticipate that this will allow policy makers to make more informed decisions about how to reduce nitrate and phosphate pollution in our estuaries.

The scientists are part of a consortium from the University’s of Southampton, Portsmouth and East Anglia and the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton which has won a Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC) grant of more than £1m. 

University of Portsmouth marine biogeochemist, Dr Gary Fones said: “Approximately 40 per cent of the world’s population live within 100 km of the coast and estuaries making them some of the most vulnerable sites for impact from man’s activities. Pollutants such as runoff from fertilised fields and discharge from sewage treatment plants are gathered by rivers from large areas of the interior and accumulate in estuaries and this is aggravated by storm activity.

“It’s like running a bath with the tap turned on just enough to create a steady trickle of water. When a storm occurs the river flow increases, as if the bath tap has suddenly been turned fully on, bringing more nutrients into the estuary and churning up the bath water and anything on the bottom.  We want to find out the extent of the effect of that activity in our estuaries.”  

The consortium leader, Professor Duncan Purdie from University of Southampton said: “This study focuses on Christchurch Harbour which has the advantage of being an enclosed estuary with two of the South’s major rivers, the Stour and Hampshire Avon flowing into it and with one narrow connection to coastal waters of the English Channel.

“By using a number of state of the art continuous monitoring techniques we will produce an accurate assessment of the impact of nutrients entering the estuary during short term storm increased flows in the two rivers.”

Previously most water quality monitoring in rivers and estuaries has taken place at fixed times that are spaced too far apart to capture storms when they occur.  The project is the first in the UK to monitor water quality in estuaries using sensors and weather prediction technology to anticipate a storm.

Experts: Dr Sarah Turnbull, left, and Dr Liza Howe-Walsh, right

Women scientists in the Middle East hoping to rise to senior positions are being given a helping hand by two experts in global leadership competencies.

Dr Liza Howe-Walsh and Dr Sarah Turnbull, from the University of Portsmouth Business School, have won funding to run workshops which could help revolutionise women’s career paths.

Their workshops will include psychometric diagnostic assessments to reveal whether barriers women might have to becoming leaders exist in their minds or personality, in their skills, or in another area.  The workshops will also include one-to-one sessions to help women navigate their way to the tops of their careers.

Dr Howe-Walsh, an international human resources expert, and Dr Turnbull, a marketing expert who has worked in the Gulf at senior level for many years, are among a very limited number of specialists worldwide who are qualified to use the Kozai Group’s Global Competencies Index (GCI). The GCI index is a psychometric instrument designed to assess an individual’s current global competence and examines personal qualities associated with effectiveness in intercultural situations including perception management, relationship management and self management.

Dr Howe-Walsh said: “This project will investigate developing Arab women entering the science and technology professions in the Middle East and explore the wider career progression implications for women working in these fields.

“It builds upon existing information on the range of positive traits and qualities seen in women in positions of global leadership, and acknowledges that the challenges faced by female Arab leaders differ from those faced by female leaders in Western countries.”

To date, there have been no focused investigations of the nature of global competencies in Arab women, but female leadership has been identified as a priority in the Middle East and many companies are seeking to develop and promote leadership roles for women in science and technology.

Dr Turnbull said: “The use of the GCI index enables organisations to assess the global competencies of individuals and is valuable in nurturing the development of cultural diversity and global leadership.

“Our work in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates will investigate developing Arab women and explore the wider implications for women working in the life sciences and engineering professions.

“The results of the workshops will help us measure predispositions associated with effective inter-cultural behaviour and leadership. Crucially, they will also help us identify to the women who take part any barriers they might have and help them find ways around them.”

The project is a new collaboration between the University’s Business School and its science faculty. Dr Jan Shute, a Reader in Pharmacology in the science faculty, is delivering a keynote speech at the workshops in which she will share her own experiences and strategies to overcome challenges she has faced in making a career in science. Astronomer Dr Karen Masters, of the University’s Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, will also be a keynote speaker discussing her own career experiences as well as strategies to overcome the challenges faced.

The four researchers hope their work helps them win accreditation from Athena Swan which lobbies for the advancement of women in careers in science, engineering and technology.

The results of the study will be presented at conferences in the Middle East in 2013.

Drs Howe-Walsh and Turnbull presented their initial research at the Gulf Education Agenda in London in May to an audience of politicians, ambassadors, educators and fellow researchers from the Middle East.

Award winner Professor Lisa Jack

A classroom discussion led to prize-winning research for Professor in Accounting, Lisa Jack of Portsmouth Business School.

Professor Jack won the Neil Rackham Best Paper award at the School’s recent research and knowledge transfer conference, where she was awarded £5,000.

Her paper, ‘In pursuit of legitimacy: A history behind fair value accounting’, was published in British Accounting Review last December and won best article prize 2011 from the British Accounting and Finance Association (BAFA) earlier this year. It was co-authored by Omiros Georgiou, of University of East Anglia.

Professor Jack said: “It was very kind of the Neil Rackham judges to award me the best paper prize.

“It is particularly gratifying to win the prize for a paper which grew out of a classroom discussion in 2006.  I feel that it is a great example of research-led teaching and shows that working with graduate students in their research to a high level can achieve high class outcomes.”

Three other academics were also awarded prizes for their research.

Adam Cox: Research generated media coverage

Adam Cox, Economics, won the Neil Rackham Research Dissemination prize and was awarded £5,000 for his paper ‘Live broadcasting, gate revenue and football club performance: Some evidence’ published in the International Journal of the Economics of Business. The award was given in recognition of the wide media coverage the research gained.

Adam said: “Being a new researcher, winning a prize for one of my first published articles really shows how well the Business School has supported me. Winning this prize has opened up a number of opportunities for collaborative projects with more senior researchers at the University and international experts in this field from outside the University.”

Annika Newnham, from the School of Law, and Sami Bensassi, Economics, shared the Early Career Researcher prize and were each awarded £2,500.

Dr Newnham’s entry was a chapter in an edited collection on Regulating Family Responsibilities, titled ‘Law’s Gendered Understandings of Parents’ Responsibilities in Relation to Shared Residence’.  

She said: “The origin of this work was in my DPhil research.  It looked at shared parenting, which is becoming increasingly popular both in policy debates and in case law, and criticised the way the practical and emotional caring that is involved in raising children has been forgotten in the debate.  It cautioned against the current use of shared residence orders to teach parents to co-operate, which I described as a triumph of hope over experience. 

“Winning has meant a lot.  It shows what a supportive, but not pushy, research environment such as our School of Law can achieve.  I have had so much encouragement from my colleagues and I’ve been encouraged to share my research more widely through conferences and publications and believe that I have something worthwhile to contribute to the debate. 

“Our family tent broke while we were camping in the New Forest just a few weeks before I won so we are using some of the prize money to buy a really nice new tent and the rest to go camping in the South west of France on a holiday we would not otherwise have been able to afford.”

Dr Benassi’s entry was for a paper published the Journal of African Economies, titled ‘Economic integration and the two margins of trade: The impact of the Barcelona Process on North African countries’ exports’.

Dr Benassi said: “The paper looks out the impact of a series of trade agreements between the European Union and the Middle East and North African Countries that have changed the rules determining the origin of a particular of product.

“The prize was a real surprise for me. It means that the line of research that I pursue is accepted and appreciated. As a young lecturer recently arrived at the Business School, it is a great feeling. It will spur me on to do even better.”

Logistics expert Dr Dylan Jones

Mathematicians in the UK and France have won €1.8 million funding to find ways of more efficiently transporting off-shore wind farms, which would make green energy more affordable.

Experts in logistics from the Universities of Portsmouth, Le Havre and Plymouth are looking at reducing the cost of setting up and maintaining off-shore wind farms as part of a European Union initiative. Their results could be available as early as 2015.

Off-shore wind farms are a proven source of renewable energy, but the cost of transporting, assembling, and maintaining wind turbines can make them overly expensive when compared with less eco-friendly fuels.

Part of the problem is that most container ports are not set up to handle turbine parts, which are much larger and more irregularly shaped than usual cargo. Some rotor blades reach 75 metres long, over three times larger than the average 20-metre container.  A huge challenge for the industry is dealing with the logistics of these parts at the lowest possible cost. 

Dylan Jones, a mathematician at the University of Portsmouth, said: “Considerable savings could be made if logistics were better used to focus specifically on transporting wind farm parts.

“For example, a large Jacob barge used to transport the parts to the offshore site and to assemble them, costs as much as €200,000 a day to hire. If the wind farm parts can be packed on to the barge in a better way or sent round the wind farm sites in a more efficient way, then the barge is needed for fewer days and considerable savings can be made.

“Every time someone loads their weekly shopping into the boot of their car they are using logistics to work out where to place each oddly shaped bag. The same principle can be applied to the problem of delivering enormous wind turbine parts all over Europe at the lowest cost.

“Some sea ports, including Ramsgate in Kent and Ostend in Belgium, have seized the opportunity and now use part of their port to deal with the wind farm parts, but to quantify the gains of logistic efficiency is difficult at the moment – that is part of what this project hopes to work out.”

The researchers will examine ways of coordinating port maintenance, driving down logistical costs, and providing suitable transportation to and from the wind farms which, combined, are likely to cut the cost of producing ‘green’ electricity.

Dr Jones said: “We are hoping to make wind farm energy a more viable and affordable option in the energy market and this project also shows how maths can really influence everyday life.”

Dr Sherria Hoskins

Portsmouth’s primary school pupils are the first in England to benefit from an innovative project designed to raise academic achievement after the city won £368,000 funding from the Education Endowment Foundation.

The charity the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) is awarding £3.7 million to nine projects across the country to raise the educational attainment of children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth City Council, Pompey Study Centre and Portsmouth and SE Hants Education Business Partnership joined forces to bid for funding to pilot the ‘Changing Mindsets’ project in primary schools in the city.

The two-year project will pilot techniques aimed at developing a ‘growth mindset’ in primary school pupils in general and Year 5 pupils (aged 9 – 10) in particular.  Thirty-six primary and junior schools – predominately from Portsmouth – will participate in the project from January 2013.

For the first time anywhere in the world, their teachers will also be trained in growth mindset techniques in a bid to raise children’s sights and build their belief in their abilities.

Children who have a ‘fixed mindset’ believe that (“I’m no good at this and never will be”) do less well than those who believe that improvement is possible through effort (“I can develop my ability in this subject and I can succeed”). The project is underpinned by 20 years of research pioneered by the psychologist, Carol Dweck, which has found that children who are taught to believe that intelligence can be grown and developed, rather than that their intelligence is fixed, gain confidence in their abilities and achieve better results. They also then develop a ‘growth mindset’ enabling them to overcome difficulties in learning and persevere in the face of challenges that they might otherwise avoid. 

Researchers from the University of Portsmouth will be helped deliver the project to schools by about 60 of the university’s students who have ambitions to become teachers when they graduate.

The University of Portsmouth’s Head of Psychology, Dr Sherria Hoskins, is an expert in how children’s own assessment of their intelligence affects their learning.  She said: “This is an exciting project for all of us involved in delivering it and, crucially, for the children taking part.  The Changing Mindsets project has the potential to have a significant and positive impact in Portsmouth.

“Research has shown that if you can change the mindset of someone to see themselves as capable of growth, they do then grow.

“We are excited to see the outcome of this project and the effect it could have on how well the children taking part do at school after we have worked with them.

“The project also has a wonderful legacy because it will involve training teachers in how to respond to and praise children’s work. And our own students taking part, many of whom will go on to become school teachers, will also help spread the message that attainment at school and in life is flexible and can be changed.

“It is a privilege for us to be able to contribute to our community in this way.”

If successful, the project will raise the educational attainment of the pupils involved and also give them skills that will help them as they make the transition to secondary school.  If the results are well-evaluated by the University’s team and the Education Endowment Foundation, the project could be rolled out to other year groups and schools in Portsmouth and other cities across the country.

Portsmouth City Council’s Cabinet Member for Education, Councillor Rob Wood said, “We are delighted that we have been successful in our bid for this funding.  Portsmouth will be the first city in England to pioneer this innovative approach and if the pilot is successful then all schools could benefit from this approach.  We are determined to raise attainment levels of all our pupils.”

This project forms part of wider work to raise educational attainment in the city and a vision and strategy to deliver effective learning for every pupil is currently being developed with schools and other partners across Portsmouth.

Joe Sekhon and the Minister for Intellectual Property, Baroness Wilcox

A Senior Law lecturer from the Portsmouth Business School has won £30k to set up an Intellectual Property (IP) clinic for entrepreneurial students to access free IP advice from School of Law students.

Joe Sekhon’s project was one of only 13 out of 50 to receive funding from the Intellectual Property Office’s (IPO) ‘Fast Forward Competition’, which has provided £750k for projects that improve the management of IP and knowledge exchange. The IPO is the official government body responsible for granting IP.

The clinic entitled ‘The Intellectual Property Advice and Support Service’ (iPass) will allow students and graduates starting their own companies to access advice on how best to protect and commercialise their invention, idea or intellectual property.

Law students can volunteer themselves to become ‘iPass champions’ and if they are successful after interview they will receive intensive training at an ‘iPass Boot camp’. The clinic will initially operate with 10 – 12 students.

Mr Sekhon said: “I am thrilled to have won funding from the UK Intellectual Property Office. This funding will provide the University of Portsmouth’s growing student entrepreneur community with the very best in advice and guidance on how to utilise the UK’s intellectual property laws to potentially transform their start-ups into the high-growth, job creating ventures of tomorrow.”

Mr Sekhon also predicts that the UK may well be entering a golden age for students and graduates wishing to start their own businesses.

He said: “With the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer personally endorsing start-up initiatives such as Tech City UK, Google Campus and Entrepreneur First, there has never been a better time for students and graduates to get their business ideas off the ground. iPass will help ensure that the University of Portsmouth’s start-ups are perfectly placed to leverage their intellectual property for commercial advantage.”

Announcing the successful projects, the Minister for Intellectual Property, Baroness Wilcox said: “I am delighted to reward Joe Sekhon and the University of Portsmouth with a share of the 2012 Fast Forward Competition funding.

“Ensuring students and graduates receive the very best help and support to transform their business ideas into successful start-ups is vital for the UK’s continued economic prosperity, and iPass does just that. I look forward to seeing the real difference iPass makes to the success of student start-ups in Portsmouth and beyond.”

Joe Sekhon was also part of a collaborative bid between the Universities of Portsmouth, Southampton and Bournemouth, which won £75k funding for the creation of an innovative strategic partnership that will significantly develop the impact of IP for SMEs in the region.