Every day, Global University Venturing rounds up the smaller investments from across the university innovation ecosystem in its deal net.

Scipio Bioscience, a France-based cell sequencing technology developer exploiting University of Geneva research, has collected €6m ($6.5m) in a series A round led by M Ventures, the strategic investment arm of Germany-based drug maker Merck. The round featured public-private partnership High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF), venture capital fund Seventure Partners’ Quadrivum I, Financière Arbevel and Investiere. The funding will facilitate the final development phase of Scipio’s RNA-focused sequencing technology ahead of commercial launch in 2022, as well as its marketing and business development efforts. The spinout previously completed a $1.3m round in 2017 featuring both HTGF and Quadrivium I. Vulkam, a France-based amorphous metal developer exploiting research from multiple universities in the Grenoble region, has raised €4.5m ($4.9m) in funding from BNP Paribas’s Développement unit, venture capital firm Sofimac Innovation, VC fund manager Supernova Invest and government-owned investment bank Bpifrance. The funding includes $3.8m from a round co-led by the former two investors. Vulkam is working on metallic glass materials that can be used to produce highly-specialised miniature mechanical components that are more malleable and resistance than incumbent technologies. Vulkam will put the funding towards a pilot of its technology in preparation for mass production aimed at segments including watchmaking, medical devices, aeronautics and aerospace. Gyana, a UK-based no-code data science development spinout of University of Oxford, has attracted £3m ($3.9m) of funding from investors including specialist redeveloped property management firm U+I Group, TechCrunch reported today. Venture firm Fuel Ventures led the round, which was filled out by growth capital unit Green Shores Capital and Twitter co-founder Biz Stone. Founded in 2015, Gyana has built a software development framework in which data science models can be programmed and deployed without any specialist programming knowledge. Users upload their structured data files to Gyana’s platform before applying a selection of queries that produce insights such as visual graphs. Gyana joined the incubator of Oxford University Innovation, the institution’s tech transfer office, in 2014 before raising more than £1.2m ($1.6m at today’s exchange rate) from Quivira Capital, Almington Capital and two unnamed family offices, according to the Financial Times. The FT had reported Gyana was in the process of closing a $10m series A round, although further details could not be ascertained. QustomDot, a Belgium-based enriched television display technology developer spun out of Ghent University, has obtained €3m ($3.3m) from multi-university venture fund Qbic II, Flemish government-owned investment firm PMV and Vigo Ventures, a venture capital affiliate of infrared photon detector manufacturer Vigo System. The…

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