February 14th 2011 - The University of Exeter has joined the SETsquared partnership, one of the UK’s most successful and long running university collaborations. The partnership has a considerable track record of achievement in the commercialisation of academic research, stimulating the UK economy and creating jobs through its support for high tech, high growth early stage companies.

Exeter joins the partnership’s founder members – the Universities of Bath, Bristol, Southampton and Surrey – which have ten years’ experience of driving value from academic research. Over the last five years, it has supported around 650 companies, raised more than £150m in capital and created over 1,000 jobs.

The partnership supports new businesses – both university spin-outs and from the wider community – through its business incubation and acceleration centres, provides support on intellectual property and IP licensing and access to industry specialists. It also works with established industry partners through research collaboration and consultancy. Between them, the 7,000 plus academics at the five universities are responsible for nearly nine per cent of the UK’s research budget.

Keith Robson, Chair of the SETsquared Management Group, said: “In these lean economic times, it is essential that our academic institutions maximise their contribution to the wider economy and expanding our membership will support this goal.

“Exeter is an institution that produces outstanding research and is strongly engaged with its regional business community. It will be an excellent fit with SETsquared’s existing members.”

Sean Fielding, Director of Research and Knowledge Transfer at the University of Exeter, said:
“SETsquared is the leading university enterprise collaboration in the UK and we can achieve more working together than we can alone. Joining widens our reach. It will help us to share best practice, to be more efficient, and to deliver better services and networks to our incubating companies and industry partners.”

Fielding has joined SETsquared’s Management Group. Professor Nick Talbot, the University of Exeter’s Deputy Vice Chancellor for Research and Knowledge Transfer, will be joining SETsquared’s Executive Board.

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Note to Editors

About the SETsquared Partnershipwww.setsquared.co.uk :
The SETsquared Partnership (an enterprise partnership between the universities of Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Southampton and Surrey) has five business acceleration centres supporting companies both from within and outside the universities. These centres have a track record for accelerating high tech, high growth potential businesses into the market. They offer access to industry specialists, investors, business mentors and provide guidance from centre-based experts as well as physical office space.
The SETsquared Partnership supports access to UK and US markets through international collaborations with 40 new technology startups being supported into international markets. It also seeks to promote the impact, economically and socially, of the research and enterprise activities of each of its institutions.

About the University of Exeterwww.exeter.ac.uk
The University of Exeter has 17,000 students based on three campuses: two in Exeter and one in Cornwall. It has a large Innovation Centre on the main Exeter campus, which currently hosts 53 companies that employ over 165 people. 90% of these companies are receiving incubation support. Since 2007 the centre has assisted a further 89 organisations and 57 prestart-ups. Over the past 10 years, Exeter has spun out 18 businesses and is currently managing 27 patent families. It has commercial exploitation partnerships with QinetiQ, Syngenta, Shell UK, PCMD and the UK Met Office.

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