Institutions are taking stakes in science-based start-ups

Showcasing amateur inventors makes for compelling television viewing, as the television series Dragons’ Den has proved. Now universities are getting in on the act by applying such ruthless logic to postgraduate scientists.

Hosted by Evan Davis, compere of Dragons’ Den, Imperial College London’s version of the show was won in the summer by three doctoral students, Ali Salehi-Reyhani, Duncan Casey and Joseph Kaplinsky, who were competing against four teams from the university’s chemical biology centre for £20,000 development money.

The contest enabled the winning trio to work closely with MBA students from London Business School to prepare a business plan and identify intellectual property rights for their product, known by its slightly geeky title Anywhere HPLC. HPLC — high pressure liquid chromatography — is an expensive and cumbersome technology used to identify the chemical composition of, say, a new drug, soil sample or liquid. "Our breakthrough was to miniaturise the process using disposable aerosol canisters," Salehi-Reyhani says. "These blow high pressure gas to separate the various chemical constituents."

By simplifying the process from a kit which costs up to £60,000 to a handheld device, laboratory tests that usually take weeks to feed back results can be carried out in the field.

The product will revolutionise tests for soil or water pollution.

With science and technology funding likely to suffer cutbacks under the Government’s Comprehensive Spending Review, universities are looking for ways of taking research out of the laboratory and transforming it to aid high-tech business start-ups aimed at a commercial market.

Many universities are investing in winners from internal research team competitions, taking an equity stake in the start-up and selling at a profit if it is floated on the Stock Exchange. The process is known as technology transfer and it has been developed by universities such as Imperial, University College London (UCL), Cranfield and York which have set up investment arms and “incubator units” — fully serviced small offices where start-ups can be nurtured until they are ready to expand and take on staff.

Of course, it is the student entrepreneurs who are the stars of the show. Although armed with investment, they still need plenty of hard work to build these small start-ups into thriving businesses. Choosing this route is not as uncommon as it once was. “Out of my 27 engineering PhDs only two have chosen to become academics,” says Professor David Bogle, head of the UCL graduate school.

Daniel Hulme, a computer scientist, and his business partner and fellow student Alastair Moore, both of UCL, are firmly set on the entrepreneurial route after winning several competitions for their new venture Satalia, a software package capable of resolving complex calculations to streamline design and business processes. “We call our product the ‘solve engine’,” Hulme says. “It can be used by manufacturers of microprocessors as well as logistics and finance companies.”

The college’s dean of engineering is on the board and UCL Business and UCL Advances, the technology and entrepreneurship and innovation arms of UCL, helped to take Satalia through the proof of concept stage to its launch. So far Satalia has collected a £20,000 award from UCL Advances and a £30,000 proof of concept grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. It also won the e-Challenge business plan competition run by UCL and London Business School.

Hulme and Moore have expended much energy taking the idea to manufacturers and are in discussions with a high-tech company in America’s Silicon Valley. “The university is encouraging that,” Hulme says.