Imperial College has a well-established track record of commercialising its research for public and patient benefit, and the NIHR Imperial BRC supports this process in several ways:
We contribute to the Faculty of Medicine’s Joint Translation Fund, which supports the flagship Imperial Confidence-in-Concept scheme to provide ‘seed’ funds for innovative ideas, often with high commercial potential.
We support commercialisable projects through our BRC Themes and ITMAT calls, thereby providing a funding ‘bridge’ to develop ideas, gather necessary evidence or provide salary support.
We support ESPRC Centres for Doctoral Training at Imperial, by providing funds and supervision for next-generation innovative PhD projects that bring together life scientists, engineers, chemists and clinicians. This investment is aligned with initiatives such as our Molecular Sciences Research Hub and the Imperial College Advanced Hackspace, to nurture entrepreneurial talent.
We embedded commercial sector expertise to help Imperial researchers with commercialisation through ‘Translators-in-Residence’ – highly experienced individuals with diverse industry expertise. Translators-in-Residence assist BRC researchers navigate the pathway of commercialisation, ‘translate’ jargon and feed into Imperial Innovations, our commercialisation partner.
Commercialisation examples
The following products and companies were supported by the NIHR Imperial BRC:
You can find out more about Imperial’s Enterprising activities, case studies, accelerator programmes, and White City possibilities, here. You can read about work of Imperial Innovations, their activity and portfolio on their website.