Manchester reinforces Masood Enterprise Centre

University of Manchester has reassigned personnel from its UMI3 tech transfer office to its Masood Enterprise Centre in a bid to consolidate the latter’s enterprise and innovation capacity.
UMI3’s innovation optimiser team joined Masood Enterprise Centre yesterday. The team provides university-sponsored innovators with resources to help make their concepts a commercial reality.
They had already partnered the centre on a number of services, including the university’s social enterprise creation platform and entrepreneurship contests such as the Duchy of York-sponsored Pitch@Palace.
Masood Enterprise Centre also hired two additional team members:  Fatemeh Salehi, previously a lecturer in marketing at the university’s Alliance Manchester Business School, which hosts the enterprise centre, and Jacob Salder, previously a research fellow at Birmingham City University’s Centre for Enterprise, Innovation and Growth.
University of Manchester expects the move to bring Masood Enterprise Centre greater expertise in startup building, specifically in supporting university talent with action-oriented learning activities that help unlock the potential of their ideas.
Over the past two years, the innovation optimiser team has engaged more than 1,400 people through its events and helped generate more than 30 startups and social enterprises.
Luke Georghiou, deputy president and deputy vice-chancellor of University of Manchester, said: “This new collaborative approach is testament to the university’s commitment to enterprise and innovation.
“It supports our vision of creating a critical mass of expertise in this area and will provide the foundation to take enterprise support for students and staff to a new level though an enhanced program of activities.”