CMI cashback

I read your article about the Cambridge-MIT Institute (CMI), ("Flagship institute set to ask for more cash", July 8) with dismay. For your readers' benefit, I will outline a few of the things we are doing for the UK economy.

1) Thanks to the CMI-sponsored Praxis courses, well over one third of the UK's technology-transfer professionals have received vital skills training.

2) Some 444 students from 41 universities have attended our undergraduate entrepreneurship course and have gone on to launch more than 40 ventures.

3) Staff from all UK chemical engineering departments were invited to a workshop last week to hear about a CMI project that is making experiments available online.

4) We will be working with University College London as part of the Royal Academy of Engineering's initiative to promote strategic and vulnerable engineering courses.

5) CMI is bringing university and industry together in many ways, including in the Silent Aircraft Initiative and in the development of an ultra-light metal to be used in vehicles to cut their weight and therefore fuel emissions.

Lord Sainsbury, the Science Minister, said of the CMI last week: "I think that the way CMI is bringing business and academia together in innovative ways is an excellent example of how universities can rise to the challenges of the knowledge economy, and I believe it can contribute a great deal in the future to our plan to make the UK one of the best places in the world for science and innovation."

Michael J. Kelly
Executive director
The Cambridge-MIT Institute