Four new centres of academe-industry collaboration, part of the Faraday Partnerships initiative, backed by almost Pounds 9 million from the government, were announced on Wednesday. They are:
* The Faraday Partnership in Aerospace and Automotive Materials, involving Oxford, Oxford Brookes and Cranfield universities in developing materials for cars and aircraft
* Faraday Plastics, linking Warwick University's manufacturing group with Rapra Technology to devise high-performance plastics
* The Smith Institute for Industrial Mathematics and System Engineering, to spread the use of mathematics and computer science in industrial processes
* The Technitex Faraday Partnership, bringing together the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, Heriot-Watt and Leeds universities to exploit textile products.