Transforming lives through collaboration and knowledge exchange
Working with others to transform lives is at the heart of what we do at UCL.
Knowledge exchange is a two-way exchange of research, ideas and expertise between universities and organisations and communities outside of academia, to solve societal problems, and accelerate innovation and change.
Knowledge exchange can take many forms. From working with businesses and the public and third sectors, to public and community engagement, to students starting their own ventures, and staff commercialising their research into spinout companies.
UCL is one of the top universities in the country for knowledge exchange, as recognised in the annual Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF). More detail about UCL's KEF results can be found in our KEF news story.
We've highlighted below, and in this video, some examples of what UCL has been doing.
We work with industry and academia, and public and third sectors, to solve complex problems, challenge our understanding and shape the world around us.
Prof Geraint Rees, UCL Vice Provost of Research, Innovation and Global Engagement, and Yunjin Lee, Senior Deputy Director, Industry Technology Policy Division, Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, at the launch of GITCC. Photo by Alejandro Walter Salinas Lopez.
The UCL Global Industrial Technology Cooperation Centre
In July, UCL launched the UK’s first Global Industrial Technology Cooperation Centre with partners from South Korea, to advance terrestrial, maritime and aerospace technologies.
A new London Quantum Technology Cluster, bringing together UCL, Imperial College London and King’s College London with other partners, aims to position the capital as a global hub for quantum technology.
Professor Paola Giunti (Head of the Ataxia Centre at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology and at UCLH) and her team have collaborated with pharmaceutical company Biogen to progress a new treatment for a rare genetic disease called Friedreich’s ataxia.
In June the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency approved the drug Omaveloxolone (Omav) to treat the condition in those aged 16 and over. UCL’s Translational Research Office (TRO) worked closely with the UCL researchers and the industry partner to advance the research and bring the new therapy to market.
Our thriving entrepreneurial community creates startups that attract millions of pounds of investment, creating jobs and spearheading innovation that boosts the UK economy.
Stasher provides a secure, budget-friendly solution for travellers, allowing them to book insured luggage storage at vetted local businesses like hotels and shops. The startup has partnered with companies including Booking.com, Premier Inn and Expedia.
Co-founded by Jacob Wedderburn-Day (MSc Economics 2016), Stasher now operates in over 1,000 cities across 75 countries, with plans to expand further this year.
Nodanni's necklace, called Vactraca, offers mothers in low-income countries a new way to keep track of their children’s routine immunisation records and avoid vaccine preventable diseases.
Nodanni LTD was founded by Victoria Ndoh (MSc in Ethnographic Documentary Filmmaking 2019), who is now working with the government in South Sudan to pilot 2,000 Vactracas in refugee and displaced person camps.
Our spinouts solve complex global problems and attract investment into the UK and stimulate economic growth. In addition to creating spinouts, we support academics to license ground-breaking technologies for commercial development and manufacture.
Many of these businesses have been spun out with support from UCL Business (UCLB), UCL’s commercialisation company. Find out more about UCLB.
UCL spinout Endomag has used UCL research into breast cancer staging and surgery to come up with a less invasive and more efficient treatment for breast cancer staging and surgery.
Endomag products are now used in over 1,000 hospitals in more than 45 countries with more than 500,000 women benefitting from the more precise and less invasive treatment to date. In July 2024 the company was acquired by Hologic Inc., a U.S med-tech company primarily focused on women's health.
Autolus, founded by Dr Martin Pule from the UCL Cancer Institute in 2014, is helping adults with leukaemia benefit from a new CAR-T-cell therapy. CAR-T is a new form of cancer treatment which takes a patient’s own T-cells and reprograms them so they can fight cancer cells in the body.
Autolus has raised over $1 billion to develop the new therapy, which has now been made available to patients in the US, UK and EU.
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