Question: What links does the Institute have with industry?

Yes, this is something which I really feel is very important. I mean, over the last maybe 30-40 years of my career we’ve always been interested in actually taking one’s science right the way through into commercial reality. And it’s partly because I want to see the science developed, but it’s also partly because, of course, it creates employment, it creates wealth, it creates interest within the United Kingdom as well, so that’s been a very important part of my philosophy over the years.

Coming to the Institute here, it was an opportunity to actually develop that concept a lot further and over the years, not only have we had major contact with industries worldwide, not just local or national, but worldwide, we also, of course developed a number of spin off companies which have taken the scientific developments out of the Institute and actually developed them further into commercial reality.

We have now from the Institute, directly from my own research group, ten companies that have spun-off. Until very recently these were worth actually a lot of money and, of course, with the credit crunch that’s been reduced a little bit now. But, they have created a lot of employment, both locally within the region, plus now internationally as well.

Our first company, for example, is now a public company, it sits on both sides of the Atlantic, it has a research base here in Cambridge, employs about 60 or 70 people. It has activity in Montreal, in Canada, Washington DC, plus the Isle of Man where the manufacturing site is. And that would be a fairly typical example of the type of work we would be going.