Cambridge institute wins Queen's Anniversary Prize

The Institute of Biotechnology has been recognised with The Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education for its unique combination of innovative multidisciplinary research, education and entrepreneurialism.

Professor Lowe was accompanied at the ceremony by Vice-Chancellor Professor Alison Richard, Head of the School of Technology Professor Ian White, and representatives of the Institute's PhD research and Bioscience Enterprise postgraduate business programmes.

In just two decades, the Cambridge University Institute has successfully demonstrated that entrepreneurial scientists can be selected, trained, nurtured and encouraged within an academic environment.

It filed 19% of the University's new UK patents in 2005/6 and has helped to create nine spin-out companies with a current market capitalisation of approximately £250 million. Products range from sensitive holograms that are chemically, biologically and physically sensitive and can be used to detect everything from biological weapons to food pathogens, to novel biomarkers for health disorders, glucose-sensing contact lenses for diabetics and therapeutic drugs for the treatment of cancer.

It has pioneered a holistic approach to research-inspired entrepreneurship and the formation of a “halo” of spin-out companies exploiting research arising from its science base and creating employment in the UK. From modest beginnings in 1988, with a recurrent grant of £50,000, the Institute now operates at an annual turnover of £3.5 million and generates some £125 million in research-related income.

The engine of growth for both technological innovation and highly-skilled manpower is now largely accepted to be centred on the outputs of higher education institutes which foster spin-off high technology companies, form a natural interface with global players and support much of the business and service infrastructure.

The EU Lisbon Summit of 2000 set a goal for Europe to become the most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010. Knowledge as a prime driver of innovation, productivity and economic growth is thus centre stage.

“Research-based entrepreneurship is playing an increasing role in driving the UK's economic growth,” said University of Cambridge Vice-Chancellor Alison Richard. “The choice of the Institute of Biotechnology for The Queen's Anniversary Prize is testament not only to its success in putting research at the heart of entrepreneurial learning, but also to its status as a model for others.”

The Institute's key concept is to gather together inter-related biological, chemical and physical sciences and medical and engineering disciplines generate imaginative research at their boundaries and then use these advances to develop entrepreneurial training and business activity.

The Institute operates a full academic postgraduate research programme, including M.Phil, Ph.D and Master's of Bioscience Enterprise (MBE) courses, and targets developments in both the biological and clinical sciences and complementary novel research in the physical, applied and engineering sciences.

The MBE is an intensive 9-month multidisciplinary biotechnology and business degree course with few direct rivals on the world scene. It is designed for individuals with enthusiasm for entrepreneurship within the life sciences sector and who intend to pursue a career at the interface of technology and commerce.

Professor Chris Lowe, Director of the Institute, said, “Entrepreneurially-inclined business trained graduates rarely have sufficient fluency in science and technology to recognise opportunities or to gauge the intrinsic value of emerging developments in high technology. The Institute of Biotechnology is a global exemplar of how to ensure that entrepreneurial scientists can be nurtured within a well-managed academic environment”.