Creating investible founders and ventures

The University places importance on supporting academics through the process of research innovation.

This is evidenced through the University’s Enterprise Investment Fund (EIF), a significant annual fund which is dedicated to supporting entrepreneurial projects. Funding is available for staff to de-risk technologies developed at the University, ideally following validation via other internal Proof of Concept funds (e.g. UKRI Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) funding), and provide start-up investment to our spin-out companies.

Since 2018, the University has been part of a consortium of eight Universities in the Northern UK, called ‘North by NorthWest’, providing our academics with access to external accelerator programmes, such as the Innovate UK funded Innovation-to-Commercialisation of University Research (ICURe) Discovery and Explore schemes. 

To date, over 70 of our academics have taken part, securing nearly £2.4m of Innovate UK funding and contributing to the formation of nine spin-outs, including SenseAI, PhenUtest  (know known as Innotive Diagnostics), Plasma2X Ltd and ReNewVax.

The Enterprise Team also offers in-house training including: 

‘Future Founders’ - a pioneering programme designed by the University of Liverpool to provide ongoing professional development and bespoke coaching that can help researchers make the transition from the academic to the start-up environment.

Commercially Curious - for those unfamiliar with research commercialisation. A 6-week programme providing insight into how your IP can generate impact.