This month, we were delighted to have two staff members from our department be awarded for their innovation, entrepreneurship and industry partnerships as part of the Creating Impact Through Knowledge Exchange Awards 2025.
Prof Dean Baratt has received a Commendation as part of the Provost’s Spirit of Innovation Award. Since joining UCL in 2005, Dean has been instrumental in translating new image analysis algorithms for cancer diagnosis and treatment into clinical practice. One of his major achievements is the creation and commercialisation of SmartTarget, an AI-powered image-guided surgery system for precise prostate tumour targeting during needle biopsy and treatment. After receiving regulatory approval in 2017, the technology was acquired by Intuitive Fusion (now Focalyx) in 2019 and is now used in thousands of patient cases each year in 14 centres globally.
Dean also founded a service at UCL in 2017 to assist researchers and spin-outs with medical device regulatory compliance and quality management. This service, now part of the UCL Hawkes Institute, offers resources, software, and educational materials to support the commercialisation of medical technologies.
Throughout his career, Dean has fostered innovation, entrepreneurship and industry partnerships, providing support and resources to UCL staff and students and continues to promote knowledge exchange beyond the university.
Find out more about Dean’s work
Prof Quentin Pankhurst has won the Commercialisation Achievement of the Year for his work on Endomag.
Built on Quentin’s research, the spin-out Endomag has revolutionised breast cancer treatment with its magnetic-materials-based technology. Their injectable magnetic nanoparticles allow for accurate and instant assessment of disease progression in lymph nodes, and their tiny magnetic ‘seeds’ help pinpoint tumours, reduce the extent of surgery and levels of discomfort.
Endomag’s technologies have helped over 550,000 patients in 1,350 hospitals across 45 countries to date. The company’s success led to its acquisition by U.S. diagnostics company Hologic for US$310 million. Its technology is now being explored for staging other cancers, expanding its potential impact and demonstrating the power of research-driven commercialisation.
Find out more about Endomag
Find out more about Quentin’s work
Upon learning of his commendation, Prof Barratt said:
I’m delighted to win this award – it’s wonderful recognition and hopefully will help inspire others in the UCL community to engage in innovative knowledge exchange activities.
Knowledge exchange and enterprise activities are hugely rewarding since they can provide a direct route to real-world impacts outside of academia. Sometimes working on enterprise and knowledge exchange projects can feel secondary to the demands of research and education but I would encourage others to try to see if you can devise projects in the first that both complement and potentially enhance your research and/or teaching.
Start small and build on your progress and connections. You might be surprised by how many areas of your professional development benefit.
Prof Pankhurst, upon learning of his award win, added:
I’m very grateful to have received this award. Although it marks a specific commercialisation event, actually this was far from being an overnight success. Medical technology is a slow-moving sector, and we’ve been working on the translation of our products since 2003.
That said, it has been a tremendous experience to have worked with so many dedicated and super-talented individuals over those years, and it really has been great fun, and, ultimately, very rewarding.
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