ChemEng Enterprise Day will return on 30 April 2025 with more spinoffs to showcase!

The much-anticipated third annual ChemEng Enterprise Day will make a grand return in 2025, showcasing and celebrating continued achievements in the world of spinouts. Interested? Get in touch with Geetanjali Bathina for further information. 

Recap | ChemEng Enterprise Day 2024

The event included an update on spinouts that have arisen out of the Department in the last few years, presentations from pipeline teams working on new launches, an engaging panel session with leaders in the entrepreneurial domain led by Jim Totty of Viridis Capital, and plenty of networking.

The event had an excellent turnout, with 66 in-person early-stage investors, accelerators, alumni/mentors, spinout members and senior Imperial Enterprise commercialisation professionals, in addition to 47 remote attendees on Teams.

The day kicked off with networking and poster presentations from the department’s strong research community, showcasing spinoffs currently in the pipeline. Topics ranged from thermo-stable vaccine delivery technology (AlphaVectors Biotech, presented by Apanpreet Kaur), critical materials recovery (Vanadion, by Amir Mohammad Dezashibi), high performance membranes for batteries and energy storage (IonMem, by Qilei Song) and much more, with a keen level of interest shown by investors.

The event was officially opened by Victor Dillard (serial entrepreneur and Chair of the department’s Strategic Advisory Board), followed closely by Professor Sandro Macchietto, Director of Enterprise in the department and event organiser.

Professor Sandro Macchietto, organiser of the event, states: 

Successful enterprise is about people as much as technology. This showcase event is all about bringing together the key players required for success-researchers, founders, investors, mentors, university commercialisation teams, to get to know each other at the earliest opportunity, and letting sparks fly. Sandro Macchietto Director of Enterprise, Department of Chemical Engineering

"The department has always been at the forefront of research, but we are now turbocharging the launch of IP-intensive spinouts.

A number of KPIs highlight the exceptional results we are achieving: as many spinouts in last 4 years as in previous 20 with >£10m raised, with 1 spinout for every £18.5m of research (beating by some margin the equivalent figure not just for Imperial as a whole, but also Cambridge, Oxford, MIT, Stanford and other leaders), and a very long and exciting pipeline of future companies". 

At our 2024 ChemEng Enterprise Day, attendees were given updates on the progress of recent Chemical Engineering spinoffs. These included, amongst others, DyeRecycle, that offers a unique low-cost circular model for the extraction, recovery and recycle of dyes and fibres in the textile industry; Bioataraxis, a green solution technology providing sustainable, biobased surfactants for cleaning products and industrial applications; Quaisr, offering a cloud technology platform than enables companies to easily build and distribute reliable digital twins of their assets and processes.

This was followed by a panel discussion, Investable DeepTech, chaired by Jim Totty, Managing Partner of Viridis Capital. The panel session focused on the characteristics for and creating the best supporting environment leading to spinout success. The panel comprised of:

• Rob Hargrove, Angel Investor
• Simon Hepworth, Director of Enterprise at Imperial
• Marco Pantaleo, Programme Manager, European Innovation Council
• Luke Rajah, Investor, Early stage, Business Growth Fund
• Mark Richardson, Investor
• Isabel Thompson, Product Lead, ARIA

ChemEng Enterprise-a rich history, an exciting present, a bright future

Translating scientific discovery and research results into applied solutions is not easy, but the Department of Chemical Engineering has a rich track record of translating its innovative research into successful deep-tech companies, including Process Systems Enterprise, the top exit from Imperial in the last 20 years (and one of the top 10 exits from any UK university in the last decade).

To further harness the value and potential of our world-leading research, Chemical Engineering launched in 2019 a strategic initiative, ChemEng Enterprise, unique within Imperial’s departments, to locally support students and staff in developing their entrepreneurship skills, talent,expertise and business formation.

We are extremely proud to have some highly innovative start-ups emanate from the Department, including DyeRecycle, Lixea, p.Happi and more.

To register interest in attending ChemEng Enterprise Day 2025, contact Geetanjali Bathina.