UCL in the News: New home for innovation at UCL

Peter Wrobel, Science|Business More than 20 years ago Steve Currall was over in the UK doing a masters at the LSE.

Now the American professor is back just three blocks away from his old hall of residence, having just moved into the brand-new £11 million Engineering Front building constructed by UCL to house the Department of Management Science and Innovation that he set up last year, as well as UCL Advances, the company he set up to stimulate collaboration among researchers, business and investors. …

Currall has been in London on a joint professorship since December 2005, lured over from Rice University, Texas, by UCL and the London Business School (LBS) to replicate his success there in setting up what he calls an "ecosystem" of scientists and engineers, entrepreneurs, and investors. …

"LBS is a world-class pool of management talent, so we have a number of activities designed to promote interaction between technical students and UCL and LBS students." …

Currall's approach to tech transfer and innovation has sometimes been called one of social networking, but, he says, it's more than that. "Social networking is a necessary but not sufficient condition for success. I bring a philosophy based on building an ecosystem of scientists and engineers, entrepreneurs, and investors. And what I am seeking to do is to create that ecosystem." Then he pauses: "Create is perhaps not quite the right word … expand, deepen, extend the existing environment in London." …

Currall is clearly excited by what he calls the "explosion of interest" in the new undergraduate degree at the department, Information Management for Business, which started taking students in autumn last year. "In our first year we had 180 applications for 51 slots. This year we had over 400 applications for 60 to 70 slots."

"It's a new course that is not a computer science course nor is it a straight business course, but it's a hybrid of the two. There is a good dose of technical activity through partnership with Department of Computer Science and the School of Library, Archive and Information Studies. And so the students are getting a terrific mix of both business and technical material."

But, he says, "the other even more compelling element of this is that it is a course that is sponsored by e-Skills, an IT and telecoms consortium comprised of all the household names such as BT and IBM and HP and Oracle and all the others." …

The new department also teaches on business and management topics around the UCL campus, with about 2,000 student registrations a year on the courses. And, adds Currall, "of course, we do scholarly research on innovation and technology management".

The second element is UCL Advances, which unlike the department does not do degree courses or research. Instead, says Currall, it does non-degree education for scientists, engineers and medical researchers on the commercialisation process. And it plays an important catalyst role in bringing together its three main stakeholder groups: scientists and engineers, business people, and investors. …