Beyond the Breakthrough with Thierry Heles

Paul Devlin: Cardiff is at the forefront of social sciences commercialisation


Listen Later

Commercialising social sciences research is such a new area of technology transfer that when you spin out a company “you might be the first to do that type of deal,” says Paul Devlin, the head of research commercialisation and impact at Cardiff University.

And Cardiff is going all in: the institution is a founding member of Aspect, a UK-based multi-university organisation that was set up to drive the creation of social sciences spinouts. Two years ago, Cardiff opened a six-storey incubator, called sbarc|spark, which is dedicated to social sciences and home to the tech transfer office itself.

Devlin — who’s been in the job for 18 months — can already claim early successes such as HateLab, a platform to detect online hate speech and crime, that began as a social sciences research project but last year was spun out as Nisien.ai.

Devlin is also working with his boss Vanessa Cuthill and vice-chancellor Prof Wendy Larner to make sure tech transfer is measured by impact, rather than just VC investment raised — a metric that makes sense for life sciences or software spinouts, but not for social sciences.

Further listening

Learn more about SETsquared in our interview with the enterprise partnership’s interim executive director Marty Reid.

Get in touch
Follow Thierry Heles on LinkedIn.
...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

Beyond the Breakthrough with Thierry HelesBy Mawsonia


More shows like Beyond the Breakthrough with Thierry Heles

View all
Science Magazine Podcast by Science Magazine

Science Magazine Podcast

816 Listeners

BBC Inside Science by BBC Radio 4

BBC Inside Science

404 Listeners

a16z Podcast by Andreessen Horowitz

a16z Podcast

1,063 Listeners

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch by Harry Stebbings

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

522 Listeners

Conversations with Tyler by Mercatus Center at George Mason University

Conversations with Tyler

2,419 Listeners

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy by Colossus | Investing & Business Podcasts

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

2,291 Listeners

Cold Call by HBR Presents / Brian Kenny

Cold Call

193 Listeners

Equity by TechCrunch, Rebecca Bellan, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, Max Zeff, Theresa Loconsolo

Equity

339 Listeners

Inevitable by an MCJ podcast

Inevitable

170 Listeners

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg by All-In Podcast, LLC

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg

9,304 Listeners

ACQ2 by Acquired by Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal

ACQ2 by Acquired

257 Listeners

The Rest Is Politics by Goalhanger

The Rest Is Politics

3,099 Listeners

The News Agents by Global

The News Agents

931 Listeners

The Rest Is Politics: Leading by Goalhanger

The Rest Is Politics: Leading

878 Listeners

The Rest Is Politics: US by Goalhanger

The Rest Is Politics: US

2,216 Listeners