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Meet National Lab's partners
Find out more about our academic and industry partners.
Industry partners play a core role in the development and delivery of the CoSTAR National Lab, providing leadership, expertise and strategic direction across its activities. Their collaboration helps cultivate a wider innovation ecosystem that delivers tangible benefits across the UK’s creative industries.
Partners contribute significant cash and in-kind support to ensure the Lab’s long-term sustainability. This includes locating our National Lab in the centre of world-class production facilities at Pinewood Studios, alongside specialist hardware, software and technical expertise from founding partners including BT and Disguise. These assets are made available across the CoSTAR Network.
CoSTAR National Lab’s flagship lab will be located at the prestigious Pinewood Studio’s right at the heart of the UK’s film production community enriched with over 85 years of storytelling, blockbusters and groundbreaking productions. It will be the only advanced R&D facility for Creative Industries of its kind at Pinewood.
Disguise is the industry-leading platform at the heart of the new era of visual experiences. One powerful integrated system to create the next generation of real-time spectacle, from the world’s biggest live shows and the most immersive XR broadcasts to the most ambitious virtual productions in one end-to-end workflow.
BT provides a cutting-edge private 5G wireless network for CoSTAR, with a forward-looking roadmap to explore the possibilities of 6G. BT welcome the use cases opportunities that R&D provides for testing the limits of what is possible both in the network and the wider ecosystem.
Magnopus is an Oscar-winning experience company that fuses technology with creativity to define "what’s next" for global audiences. Over more than a decade, they’ve become the go-to company for next-generation content experiences – leveraging spatial computing, AI, and interoperable platforms to connect people across any space, digital or physical.
CoSTAR is led by Royal Holloway, University of London and works in partnership with the National Film & Television School, the University of Surrey's People Centred Institute of AI, Abertay University in Dundee. Their research expertise and academic excellence create a knowledge infrastructure that puts CoSTAR National Lab's R&D at the centre of the UK's screen production.
Royal Holloway, University of London is the lead partner for CoSTAR National Lab. Providing world-class researchers recognised as experts in the arts, humanities and sciences, Royal Holloway’s Egham campus is also home to StoryFutures and the National Lab’s prototyping facility Futures Studio which launched in November 2024.
Abertay is a top International school for Game Education* and R&D - collaborators include Sony, Epic, Houdini, ILM, Nvidia, VVS, Microsoft, AWS and many smaller studios with more than 30 year development history including: Lemmings, GTA, Minecraft.
The Surrey Institute for People-Centred AI (PAI) brings together world-leading foundational AI with domain expertise across the arts, humanities, physical, social and health sciences to shape future AI technologies. Our multi-disciplinary approach puts people at the heart of AI, enabling and designing AI systems that are ethical, responsible and inclusive.
The National Film & Television School is consistently ranked among the world’s 'Top International Film Schools' by The Hollywood Reporter, with graduates winning 165 BAFTAs and 15 Oscars. Recognised by BAFTA for its outstanding contribution to UK screen culture, the NFTS runs more behind-the-camera courses than any other film school in the world. Since 2017, the NFTS has worked closely with StoryFutures to integrate R&D and innovation, staying at the forefront of industry advancements.