The UK university has ramped up partnerships with corporates and opened global offices in a bid to improve the success of its spinouts.
UK university Imperial College London has restructured the way it commercialises academic research, focusing on industry partnerships as it seeks to increase the economic impact of its spinouts.
Over the past 12 months, the university’s tech transfer office, Imperial Enterprise, has carved out two distinct teams: a group focused on developing IP, spinout creation and investments; and a team focused on industry partnerships. Previously both functions were under one team. The reshuffle brings more focus to each activity.
Alex Elkins, who leads the industry partnerships team, was brought on six months ago and is working to expand corporate investments in spinouts.
The London university ranks third among the top UK universities for creating ventures based on its research, behind the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. It is unique among UK universities for expanding tech transfer activities globally, having recently opened a series of hubs around the world, including in Silicon Valley, where it can be closer to VC investors
In the past year Imperial College has launched a number of large research projects with corporations with an eye to spinout creation. A recent one was the opening of a research and development centre with mining group Rio Tinto. Imperial College London was the lead university partner on the launch of the Rio Tinto Centre for Future Materials, which will look at ways to sustainably source and process critical minerals.
Rio Tinto has invested $150m over 10 years in the UK-based initiative, which includes the University of British Columbia; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of the Witwatersrand; and the Australian National University as partners.
The programme will initially focus on research into the sustainable extraction of copper, a material critical to the electrification of products and services. Imperial College London has partnered with startup accelerator and venture studio Founders Factory to create spinouts based on the centre’s research.
Co-creating spinouts with corporates
The university’s partnerships team are also keen to co-create more spinouts with industry. Last year, it launched a spinout, SOLVE Chemistry, with pre-seed funding from German chemicals maker BASF and VC firm Creator Fund. The spinout, based on research carried out by an Imperial PhD student, uses AI to optimise the sustainable manufacture of chemicals. The technology was tested in an industrial project at BASF. The chemicals company has since become a customer of the spinout.
The co-creation of a spinout with a corporation was the first of its type at Imperial. It was also the first time in BASF’s 150-year history that it launched a spinout jointly with a university and invested its own funds. The company was formed in less than three months, a much faster turnaround than is typical for university spinouts. The fast set-up was credited with the fact that the researchers were able to test their technology with a corporate partner at such as early stage.
“It has very much carved out a pathway for us to do this again,” says Elkins. “Where the opportunity is right, we would like to do more of this. That is part of our strategic aim, to support academics and our academic community to be able to access different pathways to found ventures.
“This is something that corporate partners want to see more of. If they can derisk technology with a spinout that is joint founded by the academic partner and the corporate, that is an attractive offer for any corporate,” says Elkins.
Global hubs
A recent big undertaking is Imperial’s creation of global hubs in strategic cities of San Francisco, US; Bengaluru, India; Ghana, Africa; and Singapore.
At the heart of its decision to open an office in San Francisco was the ability to increase access to VC capital for its spinouts. The hub, opened in October 2024, also serves as an avenue to showcase the university’s academic research and its spinouts to US corporates. Elkins recently met representatives from tech companies Nvidia, Google and Meta, as well as pharmaceutical firms Gilead and Eli Lilly.
One its student-led startups, Notpla, which makes sustainable packaging from seaweed, secured investment through one of the team’s trips to the US to showcase Imperial spinout and startup technologies.
Imperial startup OSSTEC, which is developing a joint replacement system using 3D printed material, recently raised £2.5m, which it will use to gain regulatory approval for its medical device in the US. OSSETEC was introduced to the US market through a visit to Imperial’s San Francisco’s hub.
Another tech hub where Imperial is seeking to expand is in the heart of India’s equivalent of Silicon Valley, Bengaluru. In May this year, Imperial opened a hub in the city with the aim of building research partnerships with universities and corporates. Many large corporations have research and development bases in India that Imperial is trying to tap into.
Multinationals in this camp include oil and gas companies BP and Shell, and consumer goods company Unilever. Elkins has also met Indian corporations such as Tata, Reliance and Infosys to discuss how the university can partner on large research programmes. “One of the opportunities that we have there is how can we support the development of more academic spinouts in that market,” says Elkins.
One of its corporate partnerships is with Tata Steel to develop new manufacturing processes to decarbonise steel production. Imperial partnered with the Indian steelmaker on a £10m Centre for Innovation in Sustainable Design and Manufacturing to develop new sustainable materials for use in car making and clean energy generation.
Imperial has spun out a number of companies that seek to decarbonise manufacturing processes, including Deep.Meta, which uses AI to reduce to the environmental impact of steelmaking through more efficient production, and Polaron, an AI solution to speeding up the creation of new materials.
“We are really focused on our mission to drive science-led impact,” says Elkins. “You can’t deliver meaningful impact unless you’re working with partners.”
