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Facilitating Entrepreneurship in RDM

Simon Davis

Simon Davis

5 February 2025

Professor Simon Davis, RDM's Entrepreneurship Lead, reflects on his role and shares some plans.

I took on the new role of RDM Entrepreneurship Lead in November 2023. Since then I've made two discoveries:

  1. RDM is already characterised by remarkable levels and types of entrepreneurial activity (but there is always scope to do more!).
  2. There are lots of resources available to support entrepreneurship across the University (why not start with the University's Entrepreneurship Hub, if you're interested?).

My own experience of entrepreneurship started in 2019 when I formed a company called MiroBio Ltd with Richard Cornall from the Nuffield Department of Medicine. MiroBio was based on insights into receptor signalling in immune cells, and plans to take autoimmune disease therapeutics into the clinic. The company was bought by Gilead Sciences in 2022.

I'd like to tell you a little bit about some of the activities I've instituted in RDM in order to promote awareness of the importance and value of entrepreneurship. If you're keen to learn more about how to translate your research findings in this way, please consider getting involved!

OSE-RDM Seminar Series

Together with Dr Katya Smirnyagina, Senior Partner (Life Sciences) at Oxford Science Enterprises (OSE), I've inaugurated a new programme of seminars: the OSE-RDM Entrepreneurship Series.

As well as giving inspiring talks about their own experiences, the speakers also spend time with staff and students discussing their work and/or their commercial and career aspirations. Key members of the Life Sciences Team at OSE also come along to the seminars and make themselves available for discussions with students and post-docs over lunch.

So far, we've had outstanding seminars from the following speakers:

  • Mike Ehlers, CSO of venture capital firm, Apple Tree Partners (24 April, 2024)
  • Harren Jhoti, co-founder and CEO of Astex (30 May, 2024)
  • Jan van de Winkel, CEO of Genmab (22 October, 2024)

In February-May of this year we're looking forward to hearing from:

Keep an eye on the RDM weekly Bulletin to find out when these seminars are coming up.

RDM Entrepreneurship Workshop

This year, we're planning to organise an RDM Entrepreneurship Workshop in order to further inspire entrepreneurial activity and to demystify the process of company formation.

The plan is to invite local entrepreneurs from across the RDM to tell their stories, and for colleagues from Oxford University Innovation (OUI) and OSE to present a technical overview of how to start a company, and how our venture partners approach University-sourced commercial opportunities. Ideally, this will coincide with the publication of an OUI primer on this subject.

Internships with start-ups

Longer-term, I'll be looking to set up a programme of internships for students to spend a term at local start-ups.

Get in touch

I'm available to support and advise anyone in RDM on IP, commercialisation and spinouts. Feel free to email me on simon.davis@imm.ox.ac.uk

With thanks to Jacqueline Pumphrey for her help in putting this blog post together.

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