Manchester University’s technology transfer office (TTO) UMI3 is celebrating its tenth birthday, and has taken the opportunity to look back at its impact.
Since founding in 2004, UMI3 has created 30 spin-out companies, brokered 800 licences, seen its spin-outs raise £245m ($384m) in external fundraising, and seen £70m returned back to the university through licensing income, contracts, and sales of shares in spin-outs.
One of UMI3’s most recent successes comes in the form of 2-DTech, a graphene spin-out sold to advanced engineering group Versarien. Looking forward to the next ten years, the TTO will undoubtedly look to capitalise further on Manchester’s graphene scene, with the opening of the institution’s £61m National Graphene Institute next year fuelling further development of the material.
Clive Rowland, CEO of UMI3, said: “The work that we carry out with our academic colleagues is very exciting and rewarding. We have weathered the external financial shocks well, which is a testament to my colleagues’ persistence and the scale and quality of the University’s inventions and software, which gives us confidence for continued progress over the next ten years.”
