GUV Powerlist 2018: #14 James Wilkie

James Wilkie, chief executive of University of Birmingham Enterprise, the institution’s tech transfer office, certainly knows how to keep busy. He joined the university in 2007 and since then has led the charge on the creation of a ground-breaking biomedical incubator, BioHub, overseen the Birmingham Research Park that houses both the incubator and the TTO, and negotiated the launch of a £5m ($7m) seed-stage, internal Spinout Investment Fund.
He also holds various non-executive directorships and advisory board positions in addition to his duties at University of Birmingham.
Before Wilkie joined the university, he spent 20 years working for companies including telecoms firm BT, where he was a research scientist working on optic-fibre transmission technologies, and oil and gas company Shell, where he held a variety of positions such as vice-president, technology at solar energy subsidiary Shell Solar.
Wilkie previously spoke to Global University Venturing about his decision to move from the corporate world into academia, saying: “It was quite natural to come across the other side of the table and start to be the individual who is representing the assets of a university to corporates and businesses, and to be looking at how you can gain value from intellectual property.”
One of the Spinout Investment Fund’s portfolio companies is Smart Antenna Technologies, a spinout founded in 2013 to develop an antenna for smartphones and laptops that combines GPS, wifi, bluetooth, 4G and 5G in a single unit – each of them currently need separate antennae – saving not only space in the device for other parts but also reducing energy use and manufacturing cost.
Another company is Linear Diagnostics, which is working on a handheld device able to detect the presence of a bacterial infection and identify the risk of resistance to the most commonly prescribed antibiotics within minutes of sampling and without the need for lab facilities.
But the fund has not been the only vehicle in which Wilkie has played an instrumental role. He represents the University of Birmingham Partner in the Mercia Fund I, a limited liability partnership university challenge fund established in association with University of Warwick in 2010.
Wilkie’s early fascination with the university venture fund of another institution – the $800m Oxford Sciences Innovation – have come to underline how much one person can influence an ecosystem if inspiration strikes. In December 2017, eight UK universities located in the English Midlands, announced not only their intention to collaborate on technology transfer and aggregate their combined intellectual property, but also to seek $400m for a university venture fund.
Birmingham is leading the charge, but the members of Midlands Innovation include the universities of Aston, Cranfield, Keele, Leicester, Loughborough, Nottingham and Warwick.
University of Birmingham may not usually receive the same recognition that UK peers Oxford or Cambridge command on the international stage, but with Wilkie pushing the envelope time and again, it seems he will not stay out of the top 10 on the GUV Powerlist for long.