Dr Jim Shaikh has been appointed as the Managing Director of Innovate Surrey Ltd and will now be responsible for leading the commercialisation of the University’s research innovation activity – supporting academics to leverage their intellectual property through licensing and the development of spin-outs, spin-ins, start-ups, and scale-ups. He joins Surrey from Imperial College, London, where he is Head of the Greenhouse at Undaunted – the innovation arm of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment.
An engineer by trade, Dr Shaikh combines academic expertise with hands-on entrepreneurial and industrial experience. After earning a PhD in Fluid Mechanics at Cambridge University, he held academic roles at Queen Mary University of London before joining BMW in the UK and Germany. He later built a virtual product design business within a consultancy, which sparked his passion for entrepreneurship. This led to an MBA at London Business School and a 15-year career running and scaling technology businesses, including inventing, patenting and manufacturing a novel consumer product range and scaling the business prior to an eventual sale. Most recently, including in his current role at Imperial, he has focused on commercialising university intellectual property and accelerating the progress of early-stage technology start-ups.
Innovate Surrey Ltd is designed to bridge the gap between groundbreaking research and real-world applications. By fostering strategic partnerships and supporting entrepreneurial ventures, Innovate Surrey Ltd aims to transform innovative ideas into impactful licensing opportunities and enterprises that address global challenges and drive meaningful change.
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