The Research Adventure Podcast

In this episode we meet Professor Richard Crisp.  Richard is the Co-Founder and CSO of InSync Labs Limited, a spinout from Durham University who are making it easier for business leaders to access the employee insights they need to make smarter, faster decisions. Based in behavioural sciences, InSync Labs also offers a glimpse of the immense commercial potential living within social science research.

In this episode, Richard shares:

• What he learned from his first failed spinout, and how his second one is different
• Why commercialisation is his preferred a route to impact
• How personally experiencing the problem he’s solving has set him up for success
• Why it's just as important to plan for success as it is to prepare for failure

Richard's story shows the great commercial potential of social science research, and how one failed startup experience can set you up for success in the long-run.

This episode is essential listening for anyone interested in commercialising their research and especially those working in the social sciences. 

In this episode we meet Rob Maunder. Rob is the Founder & CEO of AccelerCom Ltd, a spinout from the University of Southampton, that develops solutions for the space industry.  Accelercom was founded in 2016 and now has an IP portfolio of more than 55 patents with their technology on-board over 200 satellites now in orbit. 

In this episode, Rob shares:

• Why keeping on foot in academia has been an extremely valuable asset for the venture

• How he has leveraged his enterprise experience to advance his academic career

• Why he believes the founder must be actively involved in the sales process

• How he frames venture-building as just another research project, only with a different set of questions

• Why he believes culture, not capability, is the real barrier to more commercialisation of university research

• Why it’s so important for university researchers to actively engage with external  stakeholders, regardless of how “blue sky” their research is

Rob shows it’s possible to build a successful high-growth venture and advance a successful academic career at the same time. His story provides a model for others, and acts as a reminder that commercialising research doesn’t need to be an either/or decision for academics.

This episode is essential listening for any university researcher considering how to balance an academic career with the pursuit of an entrepreneurial calling. 

In this episode, we meet Suzanne Eldridge, co-founder of ReFleks, a Queen Mary University of London spinout developing a single-injection therapy for osteoarthritis, a disease affecting more than 600 million people worldwide.

In this episode, Sue shares:

• How aligning academic activity with a translational goal keeps her research group and the company pulling in the same direction.

• Why a publication only advances science, while a patent is what lets you advance a cure.

• How losing two years to a grant cycle that ended in a no finally pushed them to spin out

• Why crossing from engineering into molecular biology felt "like jumping into an ice pool," and how she pushed through that initial shock.

• How healthcare economics is impacting their global go-to-market strategy

• What it's like navigating the notorious commercialisation "Valley of Death"

Sue's story is one of true resilience, fuelled by a passion to solve a huge problem. It brings to life many of the systemic challenges that prevent world-changing innovations from getting from lab to market.

This episode is essential listening for any researcher working to commercialise a new drug, therapy or anything in the healthcare sector that must balance great science with the reality of healthcare economics.

In this episode, we meet Fozia Saleem, CEO of Magnitude Biosciences, a Durham University spinout that uses nematode worms to help pharmaceutical companies test drugs earlier, cheaper and faster during the drug discovery process.

Fozia joined the team as CEO to lay the foundation for scalable growth. In this episode she shares her experience, including the 5-month process to determine if there was a good fit, how she approached the challenge of developing a more commercial culture, and how she balanced the founders' emotional connection with investors' expectations.

She explains why it's critically important to get commercial expertise infused in a spinout as soon as possible, why it's never too early to start thinking about systems and structure, and how effective systems in a startup must always be stage-appropriate.

We explore the challenge of embedding commercial expertise in spinouts early, what can be done to help connect academic founders with experienced business leaders, and why she believes the problem isn't a lack of the right type of people, but that we're not looking in the right places.

Fozia's story offers a fascinating perspective from someone who is leading a spinout she didn't start, but has come to love as if she'd founded it herself.

This is a must listen for academic founders and anyone who supports the venture-building process of university spinouts.

In this episode, we meet Dr Dan Stewart, co-founder and CEO of ViridiCO2, a Southampton University spinout that turns waste carbon dioxide into the high-value chemicals found in the products we use every day.

In this episode, Dan shares:

• How the discovery of lab "goop" became the moment their research crossed from academic to commercial.

• Why the most technically brilliant person in the room isn't automatically the right person to be CEO.

• How keeping his supervisor and academic co-founder on as chief scientific advisor while he became the full-time CEO has been a valuable asset for the venture.

• Why bringing experienced business brains into the spin-out negotiation early helps set the company up for long-term success.

• How solving one customer's single most pressing problem first beats trying to move an entire slow-moving industry all at once.

• Why he takes an almost dispassionate view of failure, treating resilience as something built through repeated rejection rather than raw talent.

Dan's enthusiasm and ambition for delivering impact is infectious. But what's most impressive is the clarity of thinking around the how. He has a plan.

This episode is a must listen for anyone taking on a BIG challenge and thinking about how to break it down into practical, manageable steps.

In this end-of-season episode, Zach and Rachel reflect on the biggest insights from Season 4.  They explore what it really takes to succeed as an academic entrepreneur, including making a conscious decision about the role they play in their own venture, to learning that the "how" of commercialisation only comes from doing, not from reading about it.

The conversation explores the importance of funding as a strategic decision not just a cash injection, why founders should be wary of advice without accountability, and how mapping your sector's supply chain early can be one of the simplest risk-reduction moves a founder can make. 

They also dig into the talent and infrastructure side of the ecosystem, reflecting on how ECRs are an underutilised commercialisation resource, why sponsorship is such a powerful support mechanism, and why universities need to make themselves easy to work with if industry is going to engage.

This episode provides a great summary of the highlights from a fantastic series of conversations with academic entrepreneurs at different stages of their journey as well as those who are supporting others to translate university research into commercial impact. 

In this episode, we meet Joe Hedley, CEO of NunaBio, a Newcastle University spinout that delivers high-complexity DNA constructs.

Joe's path is different from the traditional academic entrepreneur's journey. He trained as a chemist, helped scale a startup, then added an MBA and deliberate stints in business development. Then a coffee-shop conversation with two academics led to him taking the leap and becoming the CEO of NunaBio.

Joe shares his views on what it takes to build a successful venture, why companies can only scale with systems and processes, why the first thing that breaks in a growing company is decision-making, and how he treated raising investment as an exercise in intelligent volume.

Joe is strikingly open about the human side, sharing how he went all-in during a family crisis, the loneliness of being a CEO, and how he maintains belief for himself and his team through the inevitable tough times of a startup journey.

If you want to know what it's like to be the CEO of a high-growth startup, this conversation offers an honest take from someone living it as we speak.

In this episode, we meet Vanissa Wanick, senior lecturer in Interaction Design and co-founder of Nucleolus, a spin-out games studio from the University of Southampton.

Nucleolus was founded by a group of like-minded academics and together they design and build  meaningful, player-centred experiences, from games that solve health-care challenges to increasing citizen engagement.

Vanissa’s path is different from most academics. She started as a designer in Rio de Janeiro, worked in industry, completed an MBA in marketing, and then earned a PhD in Advergaming.

Vanissa shares practical thinking on turning research into products people actually use and how to leverage your institution’s commercialisation support systems rather than feeling the need to be an expert in everything.

She speaks openly about the challenges and opportunities of commercialisation in Arts & Humanities, why the word “commercialisation” is off-putting for many researchers, and how formally establishing a company has created a powerful vehicle for delivering impact.   

This episode is a great reminder that there's no one-size-fits-all approach to commercialising university research. 

I hope you get as much out of this conversation as we did.

In this episode, we meet Matt Freeman, Centre Director at FutureSpace, the University of the West of England's innovation centre, where he works to bring academia and industry together to drive innovation and business growth.

Matt's perspective is shaped by having lived on both sides of the divide, a decade as an academic, a university spinout founder, and now leading an innovation centre that embeds high-tech businesses into the heart of a university campus.

He shares how he came to see commercialisation as a behaviour change challenge, not a knowledge problem, how FutureSpace packages up the university assets into products and services businesses actually need, and why he believes the future is less about spinning out and more about spinning with.

We also explore the book he's writing on the translation gap, why the same questions are being asked by academia and industry and what it takes to facilitate effective collaborations.

This episode is essential listening for anyone working at the interface between universities and industry.

In this episode, we meet Professor Rob Young, quantum physicist and CSO and co‑founder of Quantum Base, a university spinout on a mission to tackle counterfeiting at a global scale. 

Rob’s journey starts with a childhood dream of being an inventor in a shed, leading to a degree in physics at Oxford, a PhD  at Cambridge, and then a Royal Society fellowship at Lancaster University, which gave him the freedom to pursue practical quantum technologies and develop Quantum Base. 

In our conversation, Rob explains how Quantum Base moved from lab demos to more than 1 billion of their QIDs being used globally,  the long and hard work of aligning technical performance with user behaviour and commercial reality, why Quantum Base chose to raise funding with angels investors and then an IPO over traditional VC funding, and what it means to be the first Lancaster University spin‑out listed on the London Stock Exchange. 

This is a true spinout success story and is filled with fantastic insights about the company-building process as well as the personal journey of a founder.