Hugo Villanueva passed his PhD viva on 6th December 2019, having studied in Dr Renos Savva’s research group at Birkbeck, co-supervised by Dr Vitor Pinheiro and Prof Elena Orlova. Hugo had recently successfully been awarded an IPF award by LIDo to pursue commercialisation of his research.
Hugo has made the most of that opportunity by successfully being awarded his application for ICURe (Innovation & Commercialisation of University Research – funded by InnovateUK). The award is one of the very limited places on the programme in Cohort 26. The requirements are very high for the programme and Hugo will join a small number of teams who have been accepted on to the Cohort.
During the programme (approximately 3 months) Hugo will be able to claim up to £35,000 of expenditure, to enable him to carry out market validation of his research-based business idea and receive intensive support in developing a structured business model. At the end of the programme, Hugo will present to a panel of innovation experts and entrepreneurs. He may then be invited to apply for spin-out/start-up funding or carry out some further market validation.
Dr Hugo Villanueva will start his full-time activity on Monday 6th January 2020, until Tuesday 31st March 2020. His team consist of himself, Dr Renos Savva (senior research adviser), Dr Mark Fisher (UCL-B), and Dr David Lunn (Revenant Bio, business adviser). The team begins its quest to launch a start-up biotech at the opening symposium in Reading from 6th to 9th January.