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Inside Imperial College's ambitious new incubator fostering the latest science and tech startups

The new science and technology incubator that Imperial College London hopes will help foster the next generation of science and technology businesses officially launched last week in a ceremony led by the Duke of York.

Imperial’s 18,000 sq ft incubator includes state-of-the-art labs, office space and conferencing facilities, and the university is banking on the new hub to become the home of some of the capital’s most promising early-stage startups.

Sitting within the university’s 23 acre White City Campus, Imperial is banking on the close proximity to world-class research talent, academics and scientist community to make the incubator an impressive draw for startups and entrepreneurs.

Central to the incubator’s cross-disciplinary approach is its positioning within the College’s Translation & Innovation Hub (I-HUB), a multi-million pound hub which gives businesses a space to work alongside academics and support the translation of research into commercial products and services.

The new facility, which takes over from Imperial’s previous incubator space at its South Kensington Campus, will also provide business advice, mentoring and support services through Imperial Innovations, its publicly-listed services and commercialisation business.

At the launch, Professor David Gann, who is Vice President for Innovation at Imperial, said that the new facility represented a ‘scaling up’ of the university’s startup incubation efforts.

He commented: “This is an exciting time for Imperial. Our first incubator produced more than 60 companies, generated more than half a billion pounds worth of investment and created countless jobs.

“We are scaling up at White City with a new, vibrant environment to incubate businesses started by our staff and students. We have opened our doors to our business partners and to support entrepreneurs in the wider community.”

The new incubator was officially opened by the Duke of York last week, where the royal also met with a number of startups who have grown out of Imperial’s research and student community.

These included Mimica, a startup developing smarter food labelling which degrades at the same rate as food, and Ooho, a company founded by former Imperial student which has developed edible water bottle packaging out of seaweed.