Member Article

Newcastle University launches business programme to help startups

Newcastle University has launched its Founderships programme today, offering recent graduates advice, support and funding to help them commercialise their research.

Graduates joining Founderships will receive funding of up to £10k and a dedicated workspace at the University for six months to work on their projects.

The Founderships initiative is the latest addition to Newcastle University’s Rise Up scheme, set up by the Careers Service to support student and graduate entrepreneurs choosing to stay in the North East.

As well as supporting business start-ups, Newcastle University Careers Service organises a paid internship scheme for graduates aiming to place 220 graduates with locally-based SMEs.

The programme, called Graduate Apprentices, has seen 167 recent graduates start a three-month paid internship so far this year.

Dr James Callaghan, Director of Research and Enterprise Services at Newcastle University, said: “At Newcastle University we have been working with the North East Local Economic Partnership to help support innovation in the region to create new businesses.

“An important element of this is encouraging graduates to commercialise their research and our role as a University is to ensure that IP arising from our research and the work of our students is given the best possible opportunity to be exploited.

“We actively encourage our students to think about using their IP as the basis on which to build a business and we have a range of support to help them do this.”

Image used under creative commons licence. Credit: Peter McDermott

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ellen Forster .