Non-profit organisation IOTA recently announced the opening of the I3-Lab at Imperial College London, a cutting-edge research facility dedicated to the circular economy. This initiative has been made possible by a £1 million donation from the IOTA Foundation, additional support from Imperial, and further grants from UK Research and Innovation and the European Union.
The I3-Lab is located within iCUBE, a specialised space that serves as the centre for innovative sustainability research, which was officially launched on 3rd July 2024.
The I3-Lab, which stands for Imperial IOTA Infrastructure Lab, is dedicated to developing and utilising digital tools that advance the circular economy. Traditional business models often tie resource consumption to economic growth, leading to unsustainable practices. The circular economy seeks to break this link by emphasising sustainability through reuse and recycling. This transition necessitates new production methods and technologies that promote sustainability, a key focus for the IOTA Foundation. The distributed ledger technology is already being implemented in various projects that innovate new economic models, such as the Trade Logistics Information Pipeline (TLIP) and Digital Product Passports.
A distinctive aspect of the I3-Lab is its commitment to creating technologies that support new ownership and business models based on servitisation. These models enable sharing and on-demand access to goods, services, and materials, moving away from traditional sole ownership. Through these innovations, the I3-Lab aims to develop circular economy models that successfully separate economic growth from resource consumption.
The I3-Lab has already made significant progress, securing additional grants and funding for projects like Autofair, a Horizon Europe project for fair AI algorithms, iCircular3, which studies circularity in robotics, automobiles, and outdoor tools, and CoDiet, a research initiative to combat diet-related diseases through diet-monitoring technology and personalised nutrition. The lab has recruited five PhD students and several senior researchers, with a target team size of about 25 members. The Victorian building housing the lab has been meticulously restored, adding historic charm to this state-of-the-art research facility.
The IOTA Foundation’s Applied Research Team will collaborate and share knowledge with the Lab’s projects, led by Dr. William Sanders, IOTA’s Director of Applied Research and a visiting researcher at the Lab. The I3-Lab represents the latest advancement in the partnership between the IOTA Foundation and Imperial College. IOTA has previously funded grant work for Imperial’s Professor Robert Shorten, with Dr. Pietro Ferraro, now part of the IOTA team, having participated in this grant as a postdoctoral researcher. He contributed to the development of the IOTA Congestion Control algorithm and co-authored several publications on IOTA.
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