Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine has highlighted its ongoing commitment to advancing women-led innovation and entrepreneurship.
This week, Innovate UK announced ten pledges to address barriers to representation, open up opportunities and ensuring lasting impact for women-led innovation.
In an article published to announce the commitments, Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) said that if “women started and scaled businesses at the same rate as men, it could add up to £250 billion in new value to the UK economy.”
LSTM is committed to supporting women innovators. As part of this work, this week the Research England-supported Sustainable Innovation in Global Health Technology (SIGHT) project concluded with an intensive bootcamp on investment readiness and pitch development.
SIGHT was a pilot project designed to develop a new model to commercialising global health research, tackling the barriers to start-up and scale-up and supporting budding innovators with resources and training. The programme has supported many innovation projects led by women to progress to the next stage of development.
LSTM led a 'Women in Innovation' learning and networking event as part of International Women’s Day, and has supported the establishment of a Women in Innovation network and an innovation apprenticeship scheme with Global Health partners at MLW in Malawi. At an institutional level, LSTM holds a Silver Athena Award, which is an international charter to support and transform gender equality within higher education and research.
Dr Becky Jones-Phillips, Director of Enterprise and Innovation and Chair of LSTM’s Gender Equity programme said: “The recent announcement of UKRI’s ten commitments to support women innovators is a very welcome and much needed step in levelling up the playing field for female innovators navigating the process of taking their technologies from ideation to impact. As our SIGHT programme ends, it has been fantastic to see so many women-led innovations progress towards spin-out, whilst simultaneously equipping these talented innovators with the skills and networks to fast-track their technologies that will improve public health for the most disadvantaged populations globally.”
SIGHT
At the bootcamp, led by programme partner LYVA Labs, attendees were encouraged to ‘pitch’ to potential investors.
Adriana Adolfi, Technical Manager in Vector Biology at LSTM, said: “Taking part in the SIGHT program has tremendously broadened my understanding of the investors perspective when thinking about pitching ideas for the commercialisation of innovative products and services. I am hopeful that the new skills acquired this week by me and my fellow female colleagues will contribute to the continued growth of the proportion of successful women-led applications in the innovation space.”
The SIGHT project brought together the infectious disease and public health expertise of three leading specialist higher education providers—LSTM, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), and Brighton and Sussex Medical School—in collaboration with innovation experts at Oxentia. The project’s goal was to develop and pilot a shared technology transfer and venture-building model tailored to global health research, addressing longstanding barriers in bringing university-based innovation to market in sustainable and impactful ways.
Professor Christine Goffinet, Professor of Virology at LSTM, who was also involved in SIGHT, said: “Participating in the SIGHT programme has enabled us to view our research outputs through the lens of an investor and has exposed us to pathways which enable translation and application of research findings.”
Amy Guy, Programme Manager in iiDiagnostics at LSTM said: “SIGHT has enhanced my understanding of the business landscape, the markets, and trends we operate in, while also prompting me to reflect on potential customer segments. I believe the program has provided valuable insights into the opportunities for expanding the commercial services we can offer.”