Member Article

UMI3 recognises ten years of delivering worldwide value for the University of Manchester

UMI3 Ltd, The University of Manchester’s Innovation Company, celebrated 10 years of positive impact in technology transfer this week, a decade which has seen over £70m value created for the University.

Since 2004, over thirty spin-out companies have been created and over 800 licences and assignments brokered, helping to meet the University’s target of becoming a world-class benchmark for commercialising academic research outputs.

Over the past 10 years, over £245M has been invested by venture funders in University spin-out companies, a number of which have gone on to receive national and regional awards. The University’s IP enterprise activities have generated over £70m to the University through the sale of shares in spin-outs, licensing income, IP grants and contracts and translational awards activity.

UMI3 has helped to launch a raft of successful spin-out companies across a wide range of market sectors including quantum dot manufacturer Nanoco Technologies and 2-DTech, a graphene spin-out which was recently sold to Versarien Plc. As a strong supporter of social enterprise, it has supported innovations which have become social businesses including Ketso, a hands-on kit for social engagement, which has been used in Africa and India to help people communicate more effectively and HiSolar, provider of solar powered LED lighting for heritage bathhouses in North Africa and the Middle East and for social housing applications.

It has also licensed University of Manchester technologies to industry for medical, engineering and other specialist applications.

Clive Rowland, UMI3 CEO, commented: “The work that we carry out with our academic colleagues is very exciting and rewarding. We have weathered the external financial shocks well, which is a testament to my colleagues’ persistence and the scale and quality of the University’s inventions and software, which gives us confidence for continued progress over the next ten years.”

Professor Luke Georghiou, the University’s Vice President for Research and Innovation added: ‘As a University we have to ensure that the work we do has impact beyond academia, yielding economic social and cultural benefits. UMI3 is a very important interface, it helps us get our IP out to key target groups, bringing health-improving, quality of life enhancing, environmentally efficient and sustainable technologies into the market place. It is great to be able to take stock of these achievements as we move into the next decade of delivering innovation especially on the back of George Osborne’s recent announcements about science investment in the region.“

UMI3 held a celebration event at the Core Technology Facility which also saw presentations by investor partners The UMIP Premier Fund, IP Group and Professor Simon Rowland, co-founder of spin-out company, Arago Technology.

Delegates were shown around an innovation gallery which highlighted a selection of University technologies which have been commercialised by UMI3. Innovations displayed covered many market sectors including biomedical, environmental and energy fields and consisted of spin-out technologies, licensed technologies and social enterprises.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by University of Manchester Intellectual Property .