Whether through research or University initiatives, Queen Mary works with local, national, and global businesses of all sizes to drive the exchange of knowledge between the education and commercial sectors.
Queen Mary ranked 4th amongst UK Universities in the Entrepreneurial Impact Ranking in 2019 and 2020 (Octopus Ventures), demonstrating its strong track record working with businesses and driving the economy forward.
To get involved or find out more, you can contact the business and development team.
The University has partnered with Paragraf, an electronics firm, to find a suitable replacement for indium - a rare, scarce and highly expensive metal used in electronics such as solar panels and televisions.
One material that could potentially take indium’s place is graphene, on account of it having a number of similar characteristics, for instance high electrical conductivity.
Queen Mary is working with Paragraf on an ambitious project studying and developing numerous graphene devices that could ultimately lead to a safer, cheaper, and renewable solution for electronics. If successful, it would be both environmentally friendly and a game-changing breakthrough for the electronics industry.
A cost-effective replacement for a rare metal
South Asian people are more likely than other population groups to develop certain health problems, including type 2 diabetes and heart disease. However, they are seldom represented in clinical research studies. Genes & Health, which includes the University of Manchester, Bradford Teaching Hospitals and Barts Health NHS Trust, aims to redress this balance. Having recruited more than 55,000 South Asian research volunteers, their ground-breaking health programmes are changing lives.
Queen Mary formed an award-winning Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) with LMK Thermosafe to develop conductive polymer composites for use in specialist industrial heating applications.
Since the conclusion of the KTP, LMK’s sales and profits have both increased, and the company have been granted worldwide patents on the technology developed. These outputs were celebrated at the KTP Best of the Best Awards 2019, where the project was recognised with the Engineering Excellence Award.
Developing new heating solutions
Queen Mary partnered with FormFormForm, a materials company based in Hackney, East London, to improve the cure chemistry of its mouldable glue product Sugru. This led to the introduction of a new product which generated sales of over £2.5m, benefitting the local economy.
Sugru is an innovative silicon composite that sticks to almost anything and then turns into a strong flexible rubber overnight. The product is now used by people in over 175 countries and territories around the world, given its potential for a wide variety of DIY applications.
Award-winning materials development
Queen Mary University of London has partnered with Exscientia, MSD and Heptares Therapeutics to deliver a doctoral training programme that will train researchers to apply cutting-edge AI expertise to the discovery and development of new drugs.
Students work closely with researchers from Queen Mary as well as industrial partners. This allows them to build research expertise in AI and its relevance to drug discovery whilst developing transferrable skills through industrial placements.
Graduates from the programme will help to bridge the existing skills gap and support this rapidly growing sector of the UK bioeconomy.
Training the next generation of ‘AI-native’ biological scientists