UCLB News

UCL Business wins in the KE Awards 2020

25 June 2020

Award

LONDON – 25th June 2020 – UCL Business (UCLB) has won the Knowledge Exchange External Initiative of the Year in this year’s KE Awards organised by Praxis-Auril. The nomination was for the successful global dissemination of design and manufacturing information for the UCL-Ventura breathing aid developed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, via its online licensing platform, e-lucid.

Following the development of the breathing aid, a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) device, by University College London (UCL), UCL Hospital (UCLH) and Mercedes-AMG High Performance Powertrains (Mercedes-AMG HPP), the UCLB team rapidly enabled a customised e-lucid storefront to manage the free of charge, licensed dissemination of the design files.

UCLB is now offering free use of its dedicated COVID-19 e-licensing storefront to any university or researcher that wishes to license under controlled conditions, technologies that could help battle, model or better understand the pandemic.

The new COVID-19 research storefront was designed, implemented and fully operational for UCL within just four days. In the first 48 hours of being live, over 1,100 requests for the files had been reviewed and 700 licences granted immediately. To date there have been over 1,800 licences granted to organisations in over 100 countries around the world. The UCL-Ventura licence can be requested via covid19research.uclb.com.

Dr Anne Lane, CEO, UCLB said: “The way the team came together quickly and supported UCL and Mercedes to safely disseminate critical design files is pioneering and no straight-forward feat. We have a long running history of fostering innovation that positively impacts lives and this is a great example of how academics, business and industry can collaborate.”

Marina Santilli, Associate Director, UCLB said: “The e-lucid online licensing platform has played a critical role in getting the instructions for building this life-saving technology to all corners of the world within days of it being developed.  This embodies everything we strive to achieve at UCLB. The KE Awards win acknowledges how important deep collaboration is, especially when working to very tight timescales and when every day means more lives saved. We’re delighted to now offer the same capability to any university globally, through our new e-licensing storefront dedicated to COVID-19 technologies”

UCLB’s entry in the KE Awards category was up against a host of impactful initiatives from University of Hertfordshire, Birmingham City University, University of Hull, Queen Mary University of London and Anglia Ruskin.

The KE Awards celebrate the best Knowledge Exchange achievements from across the PraxisAuril community.

 

-ENDS-

 

Media enquiries for UCLB

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+44 7710 858023

 

About UCL Business Ltd (UCLB)

UCL Business Ltd (UCLB), part of UCL Innovation & Enterprise, is the commercialisation company for UCL. Working with UCL’s globally renowned faculties and associated hospitals; University College London Hospitals, Moorfields Eye Hospital, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children and the Royal Free London Hospital, it brings together exceptional ideas, innovations and industry to benefit society and the economy.

UCLB’s track record of success includes over £1.5 billion raised in investment for UCL spinouts, and its Portico Ventures Programme is enabling the next wave of technology-based businesses to thrive in a fast-moving ecosystem. Its fund offerings –  Apollo Therapeutics (in partnership with leading UK universities and pharmaceutical companies), UCL Technology Fund, and Social Ventures fund – help to bring pioneering technologies from the laboratory to market, enabling academic entrepreneurs to tackle global challenges, from energy and engineering  to healthcare and the environment.

 

About UCL Innovation & Enterprise

UCL is one of the world’s top 10 universities, a powerhouse of academic excellence. A story less frequently told is its track record in working with industry, government, and other innovators. Partnerships that have generated many of the ground-breaking solutions and critical thought leadership required to address some of the most challenging problems facing society. Specialist teams at UCL Innovation & Enterprise, help make these partnerships happen.

 

About e-lucid

E-lucid (www.e-lucid.com) is UCLB’s successful online licensing platform that provides Universities and other research organisations an off-the-shelf solution to manage their non-exclusively licensed intellectual property for everything from design files, to material transfers, software products, physical devices, images and much more. E-lucid’s many UK customers include UCL, Sheffield University, Edinburgh University and Leeds University and in the United States, the Universities of Washington and New Hampshire.