EU Boost for life-saving sensor technology

A University of Leeds spin-out company has been awarded £175,000 of European Union funding to further develop its sensor technology to help monitor and detect earth tremors.

The EU Framework 6 funding, which encourages collaborative trans-national research in science, engineering and technology, will support Instrumentel's implementation of its Intrasense® technology. The technology has been designed to record stresses, vibrations, temperature and other parameters in harsh environments and out of reach places.

The EU project named ISSB (Intelligent Smart & Safe Built Concept) will see 21 partners join forces to build a house in Greece, which will better withstand earthquakes by using data recorded from the building itself.  Instrumentel's wireless and battery-less sensing products will be embedded into plasterboard with other components and the recorded data distributed over local and wide-area networks.

Instrumentel's early stage research was supported by the White Rose Technology Seedcorn Fund (WRTSF), a fund which invests in exciting new technology emerging from the universities of York, Leeds and Sheffield.  Says David Milroy of Aberdeen Asset Managers, who manage the WRTSF, “Instrumentel has come a long way in a relatively short space of time, considering it was spun-out of the University of Leeds in 2001, and is now on the brink of landing a global opportunity on the back of its research and development.” 

Says Roger Gregory, chairman of Instrumentel; “This is a major step forward for the company to be part of an initiative which is the first of its kind and further demonstrates the novel and practical applications of our technology.  We are extremely excited about the project and are constructing concept demonstrators which will be ready in Q1, 2008 prior to site installation later that year.”

Details on the ISSB project can be viewed on www.issb-project.com

For further press information, please contact:

Hannah Trinder
The Partners Group
105 The Mount
York
YO24 1GY

Tel:    01904 610077
Fax:    01904 641646
Email: hannah@partners-group.co.uk