11 December 2009
Funding success for solar power firm as investment in University of Reading spin-out companies passes £5 million
Last month, University of Reading spin-out companies reached a new landmark with the completion of a £2.7 million funding round by Whitfield Solar. This takes the total investment raised by companies spun out from the University above £5 million.
Significantly, more than £3 million of this investment was raised during 2009. Since early-stage investment has declined substantially during the recession, this is a particularly impressive achievement which demonstrates investors’ recognition of the exciting potential of the University’s research.
Whitfield Solar was incorporated in 2004 with seed investment from the Cascade Fund, as a vehicle to commercialise the research work of Dr George Whitfield and Dr Roger Bentley from the University of Reading into low-cost solar concentrators. In November 2009 it received further investment from the Cascade Fund, as part of an overall injection of £2.7m by a private syndicate of new investors along with existing investors Carbon Trust Investments Limited and Kilsby Limited.
Whitfield Solar has successfully proven its solar concentrator platform at test sites in Spain and now has one of the only commercially available roof top concentrator platforms on the market.The new funding will enable it to expand its workforce and build on existing commercial success in Spain, extending its sales strategy in both existing and emerging solar markets. It is fast demonstrating the potential to become a UK clean tech export success story.
Stephen Bates, Chief Executive at Whitfield Solar, said: “Since Whitfield Solar incorporated in 2004, we have proven the technology that came out of three decades of research into low-cost solar concentrators. We are now planning to tap into a wealth of commercial opportunities, both in Europe and farther afield. We are confident that this additional funding will provide the catalyst for us to grow the business in our existing European market and make significant inroads into the rapidly expanding solar market in Asia-Pacific.”
ENDS
Press information: University press office contact details……………………
Notes to editors:
For further information on spin-out companies and the University of Reading - please contact Dr Sue O’Hare, Head of Technology Transfer at the University of Reading, via email on s.c.ohare@reading.ac.uk or by telephone on 0118 935 7198.
About the University of Reading
- The University of Reading is rated as one of the top 200 universities in the world (THE-QS World Rankings 2009).
- The University of Reading is one of the UK’s top research-intensive universities. The University is ranked in the top 20 UK higher education institutions in securing research council grants worth nearly £10 million from EPSRC, ESRC, MRC, NERC, AHRC and BBSRC. In the RAE 2008, over 87% of the university’s research was deemed to be of international standing. Areas of particular research strength recognised include meteorology and climate change, typography and graphic design, archaeology, philosophy, food biosciences, construction management, real estate and planning, as well as law.
- The University is estimated to contribute £600 million to the local economy annually.
- The University of Reading is a member of the 1994 Group of 19 leading research-intensive universities. The Group was established in 1994 to promote excellence in university research and teaching. Each member undertakes diverse and high-quality research, while ensuring excellent levels of teaching and student experience. www.1994group.ac.uk
- The Technology Transfer Office manages the University’s portfolio of intellectual property as a vital component of Open Innovation, offering companies access through licence agreements or creating spin-out companies to develop new products and bring them to market.
- More information at www.reading.ac.uk
About Whitfield Solar:
For more information, visit www.whitfieldsolar.com
About the Cascade Fund:
Cascade is an early stage or seed fund available to five partner universities in the South East of England: Brunel, Reading, Royal Holloway, Surrey and Sussex. It invests in activities that have moved beyond the scope of Research Council funding but which are still too early for conventional funding sources. The Cascade Fund has £4 million, 75% funded by the Office of Science & Technology (with contributions from the Wellcome Trust and the Gatsby Charitable Foundation) under the second round of the University Challenge Scheme, and 25% by the partner universities. The Cascade Fund is managed by an independent fund manager, Chord Capital Limited.
For more information, visit www.cascadefund.co.uk
About Chord Capital Limited:
Chord Capital Limited is an independent fund manager that invests in technology-based opportunities to provide both early-stage and development funding, with a particular emphasis on exploiting intellectual property and early commercialisation of new technologies. It invests across a range of technologies where it can bring commercial, technical and financial experience. Chord Capital is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority.
Chord Capital helps with the commercialisation of technologies, both internally and through external collaborations with partners, to the stage where they can generate licence revenue or be transferred to a new business. In addition, the company has links to a wide range of independent collaborative partners to provide access to new funds, corporate finance skills, specialist technology development services and corporate development expertise.
For more information, visit www.chordcapital.co.uk
University of Reading
Press Release - 26th September 2008
Cascade Fund invests in high performing Wireless USB technology developed at the University of Reading
Eur Ing Dr Simon Sherratt, Head of Electronic Engineering at the University of Reading, has received an investment from the Cascade Fund to commercialise his work within the University of Reading's Instrumentation and Signal Processing Group (ISP) in the area of WiMedia compliant (ECMA-368) Wireless-USB. This is a next generation international standard that can be used to wirelessly connect PCs and TVs to peripheral equipment. Designed to move huge amounts of data quickly, yet retain the ease of operation and set up associated with wired USB, Wireless USB can replace the quagmire of tangled cables behind for example, a PC or an HDTV system.
This is the ninth investment made by the Cascade Fund in technology from Reading and will enable an intensive licensing exercise to be carried out. The Cascade Fund, managed by Chord Capital Limited, was created to stimulate entrepreneurial activity and provide financial and business assistance to help commercialise the inventions and ideas arising from research undertaken in the five partner universities.
Dr Sherratt has developed a software model that details the complete physical layer (transmitter, receiver and propagations channels) of ECMA-368, which can be used to predict the performance of various receiver configurations and act as a reference for generating test data. Dr Sherratt has also developed a sophisticated signal processing technique that boosts performance of the data link over a 4 metre transmission distance to the full 480Mbit/sec needed for High Definition TV. This is complemented by a novel parallel convolutional coder that reduces the extremely high clock rates required by Wireless-USB chip-sets. This will allow implementation in FPGA (programmable ics) and will give a significantly useful reduction in power consumption. These techniques are the subject of a filed patent. Dr Oswaldo Cadenas, also from Electronic Engineering, has been working with Dr Sherratt to build the technology into an FPGA; this will give companies to opportunity to license a fully engineered solution.
Dr Sherratt's work was initially supported by a feasibility award from the University. This latest Cascade investment will support a programme of activities from market engagement through to negotiations with companies keen to utilise this leading edge technology.
Part of the University's School of Systems Engineering, the ISP research group works towards the development and use of new instrumentation and techniques for the acquisition and processing of information from both natural and man-made signal sources.
In particular, the group is concerned with the development and application of new instrumentation and techniques for use over much of the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio frequencies for communication, through the terahertz (millimetre and sub-millimetre wave), infrared and optical regions, to X-rays for medical imaging.
The group has extensive collaboration with over thirty other institutions, including the Georgia Institute of Technology, the European Space Agency and the Dublin Institute for Advance Studies and is supported by a number of industry and University funded state-of-the-art laboratories and an IBM supercomputer which is the most powerful academic computer in Britain.
The School leads the strategic field of computational science in areas of modelling of complex systems, scalable algorithms, collaborative tools and environments and is at the forefront of the most accurate research into air pollution modelling, climate change, financial modelling, drug discovery, computational biology and environmental modelling.
Note to Editors
The Cascade Fund
Cascade is an early stage or seed fund available to five partner universities in south east England: Brunel, Reading, Royal Holloway, Surrey and Sussex. It invests in activities that have moved beyond the scope of Research Council funding but which are still too early for conventional funding sources. The Cascade Fund has £4 million, 75% funded by the Office of Science & Technology (with contributions from the Wellcome Trust and the Gatsby Charitable Foundation) under the second round of the University Challenge Scheme, and 25% by the partner universities. The Cascade Fund is managed by an independent fund manager, Chord Capital Limited.
Web:www.cascadefund.co.uk
Chord Capital Ltd
Chord Capital Ltd is an independent fund manager that invests in technology-based opportunities to provide both early stage and development funding, with a particular emphasis on exploiting intellectual property and early commercialisation of new technologies. It invests across a range of technologies where it can bring commercial, technical and financial experience.Chord Capital is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority.
Chord Capital helps with the commercialisation of technologies, both internally and through external collaborations with partners, to the stage where they can generate licence revenue or be transferred to a new business. In addition, the company has links to a wide range of independent collaborative partners to provide access to new funds, corporate finance skills, specialist technology development services and corporate development expertise.
The University of Reading
The University of Reading is rated as one of the UK's top research-intensive universities. The quality and diversity of the University's research and teaching is recognised globally and it is ranked among the top 200 universities in the world.
The University is home to more than 50 research centres, many of which are recognised as international centres of excellence. It takes a real-world perspective to its research and pursues an ambitious and innovative enterprise agenda. The University of Reading's work with both young and established businesses focuses on translating academic knowledge into real competitive advantage. Sharing the University's expertise and resources in this way contributes to the knowledge economy and brings benefits to the local community, employers, students and the University itself.
Web:www.reading.ac.uk
Eur Ing Dr R Simon Sherratt
Dr Sherratt is currently the Head of Electronic Engineering, at the University of Reading and is Vice President (Conferences) of the IEEE Consumer Electronics Society. Past employment includes Principal DSP Engineer for Panasonic Wireless Europe. He has been working on Multiband OFDM Alliance technologies since 2003 and has 8 patents and over 70 publications. He has a number of awards for this technology, including two first place Best Conference Papers and an International Outstanding Service Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.
Dr Oswaldo Cadenas
Dr Cadenas is a lecturer in Digital Systems, Electronic Engineering at the University of Reading. His experience is in VHDL, Verilog, FPGA synthesis and Linux in FPGA. He has been working on the Wireless-USB project since 2005 and published topics in Hardware implementation of MBOA. He has also been a consultant to Industry (e.g. Schlumberger) and developed FPGA prototypes of innovative CPU's for the University.
For further information editors should contact:
Sue O'Hare, Head of Technology Transfer, University of Reading. Tel: +44 (0)118 935 7198, Fax +44 (0)118 378 4190, Email: s.c.ohare@reading.ac.uk
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