Knowledge Transfer Partnerships

The KTP Office actively promote Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs) and support all aspects of the work from project definition to proposal writing and submission, graduate recruitment and comprehensive support through to project completion and final report. The KTP Office is now based in the Research and Innovation Service and is the first point of contact for KTPs with the University of Leeds.

What is it?

KTP is a government-funded scheme that enables business to access the skills and resources of the University of Leeds for strategic advantage with high quality graduates working in companies on knowledge transfer projects.

What are the benefits?

Companies: KTP helps your business improve competitiveness through innovation, increased profitability, the retraining of staff, and the development of a potential employee.

Graduates: KTP provides you with a responsible employment opportunity with business related training personal development, a competitive salary and can accelerate your business career.

University: KTP provides a mechanism for applying your expertise to important business problems whilst gaining experience of current business developments, which can influence your research and teaching.

What does it cost?

KTP programmes can run between 6 month to 3 years depending on the project. However KTPs of 2 to 3 years duration provide a more realistic time frame for a typical innovative and challenging project. The standard budget for a project varies, but not greatly, and typically costs c.£70k per year. For a first KTP large company (more than 250 employees in the Group) will receive a 50% grant (i.e. cost to them is c.£35k per year) whereas a small to medium size enterprise (SME - less than 250 employees in the the Group) will get a 67% grant (i.e. cost to them is c.£23k per year).

The costs cover the first £27k employment costs of the graduate, 10% of an academics time, budgetory and secretarial support, travel and subsistence, equipment and consumables and personal development budgets as well as University overheads.

How do you get involved?

The company will have a strategic need which it wishes to achieve through a partnership with the University of Leeds as they lack the in-house knowledge to carry it out themselve. Also there must be no comercial method available to solve the problem.

The next step is then to talk to someone from the KTP Office at the University which will explain how the scheme works in detail and, if both sides are happy, link the company with an appropriate academic (if not alreaady identified) to put the funding proposal together.

The role of the KTP Office in KTP is to promote it to companies and academics, link them together in partnerships, help write the funding proposal, help to recruit the graduate and then provide the management and administrative support for the duration of the programme.