SETsquared Bath Innovation Centre News

The climate emergency is the greatest threat humanity has ever faced. Collaboration is no longer optional, it is essential. Businesses must accelerate decarbonisation to meet the UK Government's 2050 net zero target and adoption of the Paris Agreement.

SETsquared Bath member Spherics is offering members a FREE 3-month licence of their software which measures and helps you reduce your business carbon emissions in minutes. The net zero toolkit for businesses, large and small!

We’re pleased to announce that Cardiff University has joined the SETsquared Partnership.

Cardiff University has been collaborating with SETsquared since 2018 as part of the Research England and HEFCW-funded Scale-Up Programme. This programme gave the partner universities the opportunity to work together on activities such as the launch of the the SETsquared healthy ageing innovation campaign at the NHS Expo.

The SETsquared IKEEP programme provides businesses with fresh perspectives and skills, by matching businesses with teams of proactive students to tackle innovative project briefs through a four-week, part-time placement.

Placements run across four weeks and will run in November 2021, February 2022 and June 2022. You will be assigned a team of three or four students who have been specifically matched with your project based on their skills and preferences.

Congratulations to our member Tickitto who has announced the closure of an oversubscribed $4.5m seed round led by Berlin based Vorwerk Ventures, with participation from TriplePoint. A number of previous investors in the company, including well-known early-stage investor SeedCamp, have followed on their investment in this round.

As part of the University of Bath’s Business Acceleration Hubs project, the University of Bath can offer grants of £1,000 to participating SMEs to spend on products/services that will help their businesses to grow.

To be eligible for support, the project must be a new activity that will help your business grow by developing a new product/service, improving your processes or systems or giving you new access to markets. You will need to show how the product or service that you buy will help your business to grow.

Silicon Gorge Investor Showcase is back for Autumn 2021. If you’d like to apply to pitch in front of a room of investors and enablers of investment applications are open until 17th September.

Be sure to let your dedicated Entrepreneur in Residence, Pete, Garry or Sean know that you have applied so they can support you through the process!

Innovate UK’s Women in Innovation 2021/22 competition, that aims to get more women with excellent ideas innovating within UK businesses, will open on 23rd August. Through the Women in Innovation Awards 2021/22, 20 female entrepreneurs will be awarded with a cash injection of £50K each, as well as a bespoke package of business support, coaching and mentoring.

We encourage our members to enter the national Go:Tech Awards 2022! Now open to applications with a closing date of the 1st October.

The categories cover all tech verticals – including tech start-up- and are open to businesses of all sizes. It’s also straightforward to enter and there is a prestigious panel of judges

SME funding and support to meet innovation ambitions and bring new products, processes and services to market.

The Business Innovation Fund supports businesses from a wide range of sectors to help develop innovative projects and products that not only fulfil market demand, but also deliver industrial growth.

The SETsquared IKEEP programme provides businesses with fresh perspectives and skills, by matching businesses with teams of proactive students to tackle innovative project briefs through placements.

If you are a company in the local region who would like to put forward a project brief for a student placement team to tackle, please email us and we will send you the information pack. Placements run across four weeks and are typically held remotely every 3-4 months. You will be assigned a team of three or four students who have been specifically matched with your project based on their skills.

Iksuda Therapeutics raises $47 million in latest funding round to support the development of a new generation of therapeutics for the treatment of cancer.

Iksuda Therapeutics was spun out from the University of Bath in 2007, originally under the name Glythera Ltd, based on technologies created in the Department of Pharmacy and Pharmacology to develop antibody-based therapies for the treatment of cancer.

We’re looking for partner organisations to work with us, helping to improve our students’ experience and innovative thinking when faced with real-world cyber threats.

Could you provide our teams of students with a real-world cyber security threat challenge? In teams of four our students will spend two days tackling your organisations’ cyber security threats providing you with innovative solutions for you to take forward.

The Earswitch was developed by a UK GP (Primary care doctor) to help people with severe communication problems to activate virtual keyboards to allow them them to communicate.

The support Earswitch received through the Digital Innovation Business Acceleration Hub was pivotal for the business and product development. DBAH facilitated contacts with enthusiastic and interested academics at the University of Bath, who’s fields overlapped with The Earswitch. This allowed early discussions and support, and pilot surveys, prior to formal grant funding, and also provided support & input with formulating the NIHR i4i Grant application.

DBAH also facilitated engagement with the SETsquared Scale-up Programme, that funded a bid writer for each of the 2 stages of the i4i application.

SETsquared, a world-leading business incubator, alongside the University of Bath has launched a new business support programme aimed at small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in the West of England interested in exploring how innovation to become more sustainable can benefit their business or who are already developing a sustainable technology.

Congratulations to SETsquared Bath member, The Washing Machine Project who has announced that it has secured a three-year fundraising commitment from Electrocomponents plc.

The essential funding will enable the deployment of at least 7,500 washing machines in 10 countries, to positively impact 100,000 people. Electrocomponents’ support will extend to encouraging its employees, customers and suppliers to contribute through fundraising and volunteering activities.

SETsquared has released data which shows that companies supported by University of Bath including SETsquared Bath, have raised £25.5m worth of investment from private and public sources in 2020. This is also reflected in the national picture whereby companies in the SETsquared Partnership ecosystem raised a record level of investment totalling £616m in 2020, which represents a 40% increase on 2019.