About Us
The Research Commercialisation Team are part of The Business & Innovation Services (BIS), comprising expertise in Intellectual property, licensing and spinouts, and a broad experience of working with internal and external clients.
Sharing our Knowledge
Through BIS, The Research Commercialisation Team has drawn upon a broad range of industrial, investor and business contacts to take business ideas forward and acts as the key point of contact for businesses to engage with the World Class research outputs of the Durham University.
We proactively protect IPR generated by research and currently have interests in over 70 discrete patent families. Healthcare and Life Sciences represent a significant proportion of our portfolio. Projects are taken forward as spin out companies, licensing deals or industrial collaborations. (More about Durham's Research Strengths).
Angel Alliance
Durham and Newcastle Universities have joined forces in a ground-breaking agreement aimed at giving North East England a leading edge in the commercialisation of research. The two research intensive Universities, together with One North East, have formed the Angel Alliance, a partnership designed to maximise the exploitation of the scientific discoveries being made at both institutions. (Read more about the Angel Alliance)
Blueprint: The North East Universities Business Planning Competition
Through DBIS, the Research Commercialisation Team is responsible for coordinating Blueprint: The North East Universities Business Planning Competition, an annual event involving Durham, Newcastle, Northumbria, Sunderland and Teesside Universities. Each University hosts its own student competition and the winners progress into the Regional Grand Final. Staff entries from each of the Universities are also eligable for the competition, entering straight into the Regional Final, via the Pilot Your Pitch event. Please visit Durham Blueprint for more information about Durham's student competition. Members of staff who would like to enter the competition should visit our 'Advice for Staff' page to find out more. The official website can be visited at blueprintcompetition.co.uk which provides more detailed information about the Regional Competition.
Knoweldge Transfer Account (KTA)
The KTA is a knowledge transfer scheme that takes outputs from research undertaken at Durham and Newcastle Universities, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), and commercialises them in the healthcare sector. The scheme's unique feature is that we seek to use the clinical base of the Newcastle and South Tees NHS Trusts, which have strong links with the universities, to translate the engineering and physical science research results into a position where they can be exploited by the healthcare industry. (More information about the Knowledge Transfer Account).
University Strategy 2010 - 2020
The TTO supports both main threads of the above strategy, namely research and education as well as the subsiduary thmeme of regional economic support. (Read more)