Businesses and entrepreneurs are being invited o join a pioneering innovation centre aiming to apply scientific development to industrial challenges, including food security and diseases linked to climate change.

Opening in Inverness this year, the Rural and Veterinary Innovation Centre (RAVIC) will develop technologies and systems focusing on agriculture and aquaculture.   

The £12.5 million project is led by Scotland’s Rural College, (SRUC) whose existing Centre for Epidemiology and Planetary Health will provide a core function.  It has been funded by the European Regional Development Fund, the Scottish Funding Council and SRUC. 

There will also be an emphasis on bioscience, including animal health, as RAVIC is to form part of Scotland’s new School of Veterinary Medicine. 

The centre will tackle issues around climate change which is expected to impact on the farming sector through changing animal diseases and uncertain markets.

Located on Inverness Campus, a Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) development,  the RAVIC building, will house several commercial business incubation units, a lecture theatre, wet and dry molecular, necropsy, and microbiology facilities, and a public atrium. 

Dr Adam Giangreco, an international expert in commercial, translational, and applied life sciences, has been appointed as head of business development. The post has been supported through  a partnership between RAVIC and HIE which has helped facilitate the development.