Enterprise

The University of Southampton is dedicated to enterprise and innovation and that dedication runs through every department, but none more so than the School of Chemistry. Our strong links with industry can be seen in our impressive list of industrial collaborators and the diverse placement areas taken by our fourth year undergraduates. We run a dedicated MSc in Chemistry with Entrepreneurship in partnership with the Institute for Entrepreneurship. The University of Southampton also runs University2Business, a consultancy dedicated to uniting business with the University's skills and services.

The School of Chemistry is the most prolific part of Southampton University when it comes to the commercial exploitation of its research ideas. We are also one of the most successful in the UK. Professor Tom Brown, who has long been one of the first year lecturers in Southampton established a company called Oswel that prepared fragments of DNA in demand by large companies involved in medical research. The company was so successful that it was purchased by a much larger organisation leaving Professor Brown to establish another company that would capitalise on more research diagnostic DNA research carried out in his group by under and post-graduates.

Professor John Owen and his colleagues have set up a company called Nanotecture. They are exploiting the properties of new materials that can be prepared with regularly spaced pores just nanometers apart that might well have applications in energy storage, separation of biomolecules or as new sensing devices, depending on what they are made of. The chance to take something from the drawing board all the way to market is an exciting one for everyone. In the future we will be able to offer some undergraduates the chance to spend some research time in the environment of a spin out company.

Professor Brian Hayden has started Ilika which is investigating new materials prepared by a technology that allows for surfaces to be covered, in a highly controlled fashion, with monolayers or a variety of metal atoms. These combinations form new alloys that have interesting catalytic, electronic and magnetic properties. Ilika regularly take on vacation workers and have placed MChem students in their organisation several times in the past.

Most recently a collaboration between the School of Medicine and the School of Chemistry has led to the formation of Karus Therapeutics, which was co-founded by Dr Ganesan. This company is investigating the biological properties of a series of novel compounds that have particular interest as potential treatments for a number of different cancers.