Warwick Manufacturing Group was founded in 1980 by
Kumar Bhattacharyya to support UK manufacturing through research and knowledge transfer (Bhattacharyya, made a
life peer in 2004, became chairman of WMG). Its first venture was a part-time master's degree for senior industry staff; this considered technology and management as a unified whole, with modules taught at a purpose-built residential centre. The course proved popular with industry and companies began to send staff to WMG in greater numbers. Bhattacharya then decided to provide industry-related research services too, and its success (and the income generated) allowed WMG to build two further buildings to enable expansion into other areas, including healthcare, construction, pharmaceuticals, mining, information technology and food and drink where learning from the manufacturing industry could be applied to similar processes and services. and 2001 election campaigns.
Gordon Brown laid the foundation stone of WMG's International Digital Laboratory shortly before becoming Prime Minister and stated that "WMG's work is based on very strong collaboration with industry and provides a prime example of how the knowledge created in our universities can be transferred to make a difference in the real world". In 2009, WMG was awarded the
Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education, formally presented at a ceremony at Buckingham Palace on 19 February 2010. In 2011, WMG accounted for 30 per cent of the University's research activity and had over 2,500 postgraduate students, 650 studying full-time at Warwick. Twenty of 450 staff, and 10 per cent of its £120 million annual research budget, was funded by the
Higher Education Funding Council for England. May's visit was later credited with inspiring the Prime Minister to support a British industrial strategy by the
Business Secretary,
Greg Clark. Clark stated that "
Kumar (Lord Bhattacharyya, former chairman of WMG)
created this, all those connections, all of those links between education and jobs and technology. During all the time I’ve known Lord Bhattacharyya he’s been a big champion for the West Midlands. One of Theresa May’s first visits as Prime Minister was here and she saw for herself what is possible. As a result, I think the industrial strategy has taken such a prominent position in the post-Brexit plan". WMG has links in China, where WMG has been engaged since the 1980s, and in India, where it helped establish a technical university. ==Research==