Koenraad Debackere, managing director, KU Leuven Research and Development, and chairman, Gemma Frisius Fund has received the GUV Lifetime Achievement Award 2019

Put in the driving seat of Oxford University Innovation’s new social enterprise campaign, Mark Mann – this year’s Personality of the Year – surely has one of the most fascinating jobs in academic tech transfer.

With hundreds of university venture funds, internal commercialisation vehicles and third-party firms the reality in today’s innovation ecosystem, selecting the nominees and the winner for Investment Unit of the Year is increasingly challenging.

After a year of countless exits in the ecosystem, many among the most significant yet – so much so that five nominees were not enough to recognise them all – the Award for Exit of the Year was one of the most difficult to determine.

With the growing focus on food sustainability, University of California (UC) Santa Barbara-founded food preservative developer Apeel Science is a particularly apt selection for the Technology of the Year award.

Winner of the CVC Investment in a Spinout of the Year: Ribon Therapeutics - Novartis Venture Fund, Johnson & Johnson Innovation–JJDC, Takeda Ventures, Celgene

One only has to look at the investors in the €117m ($135m) final close for Imec.xpand, the venture fund of nano-electronics research institute Imec, to see why it is worthy of GUV’s Fundraising of the Year award.

Of the strong candidates for GUV’s Deal of the Year, Lund and Edinburgh universities-founded drug developer Galecto Biotech sealed the award for a €79m ($90m) series C close that supplemented a promising set of clinical data for its lead candidate.

ETH transfer won the GUV Award 2019 for Tech Transfer Unit of the Year.

Global University Venturing will reveal the winners of this year's awards at the gala dinner as part of GUV: Fusion on May 22.