Dundee amongst UK best for commercialisation of research

Dundee has been ranked 6th in the UK and 1st in Scotland for our success in converting research into successful companies.

The Entrepreneurial Impact Ranking measures UK universities’ effectiveness in terms of their production of intellectual property, creation of spinout companies and successful exits from such spinout companies, relative to their total funding. The ranking is based on data aggregated from 2009-2018 from the following points:

1. Total funding per university
2. Total spinouts created per university
3. Total disclosures per university
4. Total patents per university
5. Total sales from spinouts per university

Research and Innovation Services at the University support the commercialisation of a diverse portfolio of academic intellectual property via licensing or spin out company formation. “This is a reflection of the very high calibre of Intellectual Property generated by the innovative academic staff at the University, and we’re delighted that as well as past performance being recognised, the University is currently experiencing a major increase in the number of new ventures about to spin out over the coming months.” Dr Karen Sullivan, Interim Director, Research and Innovation Services.

A number of companies have been generated from the School of Life Sciences since 2009. A leading example is Exscientia, a pioneer in automated drug design methodologies that enhance the efficacy and efficiency of drug discovery for the pharmaceutical industry. They have multiple collaborative projects with leading pharmaceutical companies such as Sanofi, Evotec and GSK. They currently employ 19 full time staff across their sites in Dundee and Oxford and will double this headcount by year end.

More recent School spin-outs include Platinum Informatics who develop software solutions for managing complex laboratory infrastructure and for interactive data exploration and analysis and Amphista Therapeutics who develop drugs using innovative targeted protein degradation technology.