What we offer

What sets us apart is our commitment to tailoring our support to your unique team—no cookie-cutter solutions here. We deliberately steer clear of standardized cohort classes, as our programme revolves entirely around your solution and team dynamics.  This environment naturally fuels high motivation—the kind of extraordinary drive needed for challenging endeavours, whether it's launching a venture, introducing a game-changing solution within an established enterprise, or turning rigorous research into practical reality.

Our support system

Technical acceleration: Our accelerator has a strong technical focus. No matter where you are in your development you will benefit from advice from our team of technical experts, including AWS Senior Solution Architects and UCL Advanced Research Computing specialists. They customise their guidance to enhance your technical team's capacity to build solutions and products that are secure and scalable, built on AWS Well-Architected pillars.

Business acceleration: Alongside our technical assistance, we provide specialised business mentoring tailored to your specific needs through partnerships with key players in UCL's dynamic innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem, such as UCL School of Management, UCLPartners, UCL Business, Innovate UK Edge and others. This entails access to a dedicated business consultant and a curated list of mentors via Startbook, an exclusive platform facilitating connections with industry experts, academic leaders, programme alumni, and funding contacts. Additionally, you will benefit from a valuable CDI support network, involving in-house entrepreneurial staff, the management team, and fellow programme peers. While we prioritize an individualised acceleration approach, this doesn't imply isolation; rather, we actively foster connections within our community, uniting founders, alumni, mentors, speakers, and funding partners—all dedicated to helping your venture thrive.

Research engagement: Finally, the programme focuses on bolstering and nurturing the evidence base for your digital solution. We actively foster startup-academic collaborations by providing participants with the opportunity to be paired with academics and researchers and receive support through student projects. Through these connections, we create a synergistic link between research endeavours and commercial ventures, laying the groundwork for success. By capitalizing on UCL's extensive knowledge exchange experience, we aim to enhance the overall impact and effectiveness of our collaborative efforts, utilizing frameworks like Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs) to drive innovation and research-commercial integration.

Transformative 12 Weeks: Many founders describe the 12 weeks leading up to our Demo Day as profoundly transformative. Although UCL CDI's support continues beyond the initial 3-month cycle, these 12 weeks are pivotal for taking your solution to new heights. We firmly believe that with the right conditions and dedicated support, your venture can achieve far more than initially imagined. Find out more about our programme below!

1. The Pre-Accelerator

Ignite your innovation journey in the Pre-Accelerator, where we assess your acceleration needs and collaboratively define your business and technical goals. The Pre-Accelerator forms part of our selection process, with 10–15 ventures admitted following review by the Management and Experts Committee (see Who Should Apply for eligibility criteria).

This stage provides valuable insight into your specific needs and how the CDI team can best support your success. The outputs from the workshops below are presented to the CDI Steering Committee for selection onto the Accelerator and official admission onto the full programme.

Introductory Product Development Workshop - This session marks the kick-off of the Pre-Accelerator and introduces the core fundamentals of product development. The workshop lays the groundwork for your product journey, and by the end, your team will walk away with structured insights and frameworks to guide the next stage of development. 

• Duration: 2 hours [Online]
• Output: An understanding of the programme timeline and outcomes.
• Team Members to attend: 1) Business, Innovation & Technical Decision-Maker(s) - Required; 2) Any other relevant team members - Strongly Recommended.
• Conducted by: CDI Management team, UCL Advanced Research Computing team and UCL School of Management Senior Business Advisor.

Innovation Workshop - In this workshop, you'll delve into the innovative "working backwards" methodology by AWS, guiding you to visualise your business value proposition tailored to a specific customer base and with consideration for potential partners. This culminates in crafting a futuristic press release, providing a tangible asset that showcases the distinctive value your venture offers.

• Duration: Half Day [In Person]
• Output: Press Release and an extensive Frequently Asked Questions document to be prepared by the team.
• Team Members to attend: 1) Business, Innovation & Technical Decision-Maker(s) - Required; 2) Any other relevant team members - Strongly Recommended.
• Conducted by: CDI Management team and AWS Head of Clinical Innovation or Education equivalent.

Technical Workshop - This workshop is tailored to assess your product’s current standing and identify technical needs. Before the session, you’ll prepare a Technical Needs Report for the AWS and UCL Advanced Research Computing (ARC) teams to review and offer guidance on during the workshop. By the end, you’ll walk away with a comprehensive development blueprint for your product—laying the foundation for the following stage of the programme – the Accelerator.

• Duration: 2 hours [Online] (plus time pre‑workshop to create Technical Needs Report) 
• Output: Technical Needs Report reviewed by the AWS Solutions Architect and UCL Advanced Research Computing (ARC) teams.
• Team Members to attend: 1) Technical Decision-Maker(s) - Required; 2) Technical Team - Required.
• Conducted by: CDI Field CTO and AWS Solutions Architect and UCL Advanced Research Computing teams.

Next steps: Your active engagement and commitment during the Pre-Accelerator, along with the quality of the assets you produce, will be evaluated by our Steering Committee (SC). The SC then selects the teams that will officially advance to the Accelerator based on the alignment of goals and needs that correspond with the support that UCL CDI can offer.

2. The Accelerator

This is where your acceleration journey takes off, working closely with a range of UCL and AWS experts to transform your vision into a reality, enabling you to achieve technical and business acceleration with a real societal impact.

Kick-off Day - The stage begins with a Kick-off Day featuring presentations from the programme delivery team—including both technical and business experts—who will guide you through the journey. You’ll learn about the extensive support and resources available, present your solution, and network with fellow cohort members.

Following Kick-off, the Accelerator includes:

Discovery - Engage in a comprehensive exploration of new technical and business solutions to adopt.

Prototype - Begin crafting your solution prototype, bringing your ideas to life.

Build, Test & Refine - Enter a trial-and-error phase to optimise and refine your prototype.

Deploy - Launch your Minimum Lovable Product (MLP), Proof of Concept (PoC), or open-source build—taking your working prototype public and engaging your target audience.

A Programme of AWS Technical Training Workshops - Intro to AWS, Amazon Sagemaker Workshop – ML DevOps, Building Intelligent AI Agents with AWS and others tailored to your team’s technical needs.

Demo Day - Pitch and showcase your accomplishments, impact, and insights.

• Duration: 12 weeks – Begins with a half day [in person] workshop, followed by weekly 1-2 hour sessions [Online]
• Output: Product acceleration, case study, technical blueprint.
• Team members to attend: 1) Business Decision-Maker(s) – Required for business acceleration sessions; 2) Technical Decision-Maker(s) & Technical Team – Required for weekly technical meetings.
• Conducted by: A range of domain experts tailored to your specific business needs.

3. The CDI Ecosystem

In this final phase, teams fully integrate into the CDI ecosystem and learn about post-programme support and collaborative opportunities, enabling them to continue optimising their solutions and explore potential success stories.

These include:

Case Study Development - Programme participants are required to work with the UCL CDI team to create case studies showcasing their journey and achievements, which will be featured on UCL's website and social media channels, as well as being at teams’ disposal to use in their own marketing and communications.

Monthly Technical Office Hours with AWS - Access to AWS Solutions Architects for technical guidance and optimisation

• Duration: 3-6 Monthly sessions [Online]
• Output: AWS blog posts, reviewed architecture, and potential improvement plans

Collaboration with UCL ARC - UCL CDI connects teams with Research Software Engineers, Data Stewards and Research Infrastructure Developers, providing technical consultation and collaborative support to advance their ventures.

Monthly Events & Workshops - UCL CDI hosts events and workshops tailored to the needs of the CDI ecosystem. Teams can suggest topics relevant to their startup journey, from funding readiness to medical device certification — whatever support they need to succeed.

Innovate UK Business Growth - UCL CDI can connect teams with the Innovate UK Business Growth team at UCL Innovation and Enterprise who empower innovation-driven companies to grow and scale their businesses through actionable advice, access to vital resources and opportunities to enhance their abilities.

IDEALondon Community - Teams can access workspace at IDEALondon with an exclusive discounted offer, along with curated events, tailored business guidance, and partnership opportunities supported by WilbeLAB and UCL Engineering.