The second phase of Parkside Office Village opened in autumn 2018 and a new £12m Innovation Centre opened in 2019. The innovation Centre will provide a home to more than 50 start-ups and has been supported with substantial funding from Essex County Council and South East Local Enterprise Partnership. The university was named a University Enterprise Zone (UEZ) by the UK Government in September 2019 and received £800,000 towards the £1.3m Accelerating Innovation at the Knowledge Gateway project which is developing a range of initiatives to support businesses to work with the university, Knowledge Transfer Partnerships Essex's Research and Enterprise Office connects businesses with academic expertise and also offers business support. In December 2019 Essex was the leading university in the East of England and London for Knowledge Transfer Partnerships, the flagship Innovate UK programme, and third in the UK with 35 active projects worth a total of £8 million. Notable alumni Notable alumni in the field of politics and government include Óscar Arias, the former President of Costa Rica, who completed his doctorate in political science in 1973 and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987. Kevin Casas Zamora, the former Vice President of Costa Rica, received a MA from Essex in 1993. In October 2010, the Nobel Prize in Economics was jointly awarded to Christopher A. Pissarides, who had completed his BA and MA in economics in the early 1970s. Other political figures educated at Essex include the foreign ministers of Slovenia (Dimitrij Rupel) & Iraq (Hoshyar Zebari), Conservative Party MPs Virginia Bottomley, Priti Patel and John Bercow, former Speaker of the House of Commons, Labour Party MP Siobhain McDonagh, Labour Party MEP John Howarth, Speaker of Bangladesh's Parliament Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury, Pakistani social activist Omar Asghar Khan, South African politician Thozamile Botha, Rob Whiteman Chief Executive of CIPFA, and Singapore social activist James Gomez (MA 1994). Two of those convicted of conspiracy to cause explosions connected to The Angry Brigade, Hilary Creek and Anna Mendleson, had been to Essex University but left without completing their degrees. Notable alumni in the field of the humanities and media include Stephen Daldry and Mike Leigh, who both studied at the East 15 Acting School (part of the university since 2001), artistic director William Burdett-Coutts (MA Drama), documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield, filmmaker David Yates, artist and art collector Robert Priseman, writer and graphic artist Tom Raworth, the TV comedy producer Geoff