Warwick and Queen's University Belfast will administer iCure's expansion in the UK alongside regional commercialisation offices Midlands Innovation and Midlands Enterprise Universities.

University of Warwick and Queen’s University Belfast have joined Innovation to Commercialisation of University Research (iCure), a government-backed tech transfer pilot originally started by five other UK universities. The pilot is currently extending across the UK with an additional £7.7m ($10.7m) in funding from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. Innovate UK’s commitment should support an extra 48 projects nationwide, according to BQLive. Warwick and Belfast will grow the program in the “middle” of the UK, backing 24 teams over 12 months in regions spanning East Anglia to Wales alongside regional tech transfer alliances Midlands Innovation and Midlands Enterprise Universities. iCure’s expansion includes $4.2m for launching and scaling up university-linked businesses from a vehicle administered by research agency Innovate UK, part of government-owned funding network UK Research and Innovation. The initiative started in 2014 under the management of SetSquared, the partnership between the universities of Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Southampton and Surrey. The program provides initial funding of up to $49,000 with another $21,000 available to the most promising university research projects. iCure has so far backed 160 teams and yielded 44 new UK-based businesses. Each dollar spent by iCure is estimated to have generated almost four times that in economic benefits. Quentin Compton-Bishop, program director for Midlands iCure and chief executive of Warwick Ventures, the university’s tech transfer office, said: “We are delighted to be leading the Midlands iCure pilot in collaboration with universities from the Midlands Innovation and Midlands Enterprise Universities partnerships. “ “Warwick early career researchers have been successful in the earlier iCure pilot run by SetSquared, with six new spin-out companies formed which have closed $7m in grants and investment between them.”

Subscribe to go deeper

GCV subscribers get access to all our proprietary data and deep-dive articles, as well as the global directory of CVC investors.



Not sure if you have a subscription?