The CREST Centre is the only dedicated surface coatings laboratory on the Island of Ireland. It exists to serve the SMART economy by means of translating in-house fundamental knowledge from the bench-top to the market. This is particularly relevant based on the National Strategy for Higher Education to 2030 published by Colin Hunt (January 2011), which emphasise that the ‘Higher education research will need to connect to enterprise and society in new and imaginative ways to harness its potential for economic and social well-being, including a more effective approach to knowledge transfer and commercialisation’. The CREST model (see below) relies on an expert and professional coatings consultancy service to front-face its activity. Companies with a commitment to develop an innovative technical capability, recognise the capabilities in the Centre and in time view the Centre as an extension of its own R&D capability.

The Centre has over sixty years of commercial surface coating experience to provide this level of service. CREST recruits and develops industrial development scientists with a product development background operating within an ISO 9001 Quality Management System to guarantee consistent and reliable project delivery. Product development needs to be sustained, as secret know-how and craft can quickly become obsolete, therefore, robust intellectual property (IP) development that has sustained market value requires long-term focused strategic investment in fundamental research.

CREST recruits, trains and supervises scientists from undergraduate to postgraduate level. The CREST model has facilitated both rapid-turnaround and long-term technology development activities and nurtured the synergies between both, in addition to feeding the undergraduate, post-graduate and publication pipeline for the relevant Schools within the Dublin Institute of Technology.