How to create
an innovation
hotspot
The University of Cambridge is well-known as a hotbed of innovation. But how does it maintain its pipeline of promising spinouts?
Entrepreneurial PhD students and early career researchers are one of its not so secret weapons.
For Karishma Jain, Teaching Professor of Sustainability and Innovation at the Department of Physics and Co-Director of Cambridge's Doctoral Training Centre in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (NanoDTC), a critical element of scientific training is to make sure her PhD students get an understanding of entrepreneurship from the outset, even if it's not a path they had previously considered.
The approach has clearly worked.
Since 2009, 14 companies have been founded by NanoDTC alumni, achieving a collective valuation of just over $500 million in 2025-26.
The secret of its success?
According to Jain, it's a lot to do with the fact that they "made entrepreneurship a compulsory course for all of our first-year students."
"Lots of them told us that they didn't think it was for them until we showed them not only how much impact they could have but how complicated a challenge the commercialisation process can be."
"And then it starts to register with these very bright young people that it might be an interesting path for them to take."
None of this has happened by accident. When Jain was appointed to the DTC in 2013, she brought with her a longstanding interest in, and experience of, applying research to real-world problems.
"At that time," she explained, "our students were taking a course in technology and innovation. While the course was great at the business side of things, it didn't help them think through the detailed decisions they would need to make about the technology in order for it to be commercialised."
Jain responded by designing a completely new course, taking an approach which she describes as "akin to problem-solving in the sciences but with some notable additions to the problem space, namely the social, ecological and commercial factors running alongside the technical challenges."
"If you think about it in that way, it makes innovation and entrepreneurship a much more exciting prospect for a scientist."
Support for promising ventures
Another ingredient Jain and colleagues have sprinkled into the mix is the creation of a Translational Prize which gives the winner a year-long fellowship to take forward their research into a commercial proposition.
"We felt that if students finish their PhD with an idea of what they want to pursue, they still need time and space to develop that idea before they are ready to talk to investors."
The Prize, launched in 2016, requires students to give a presentation to the whole NanoDTC community. They are then given feedback and encouraged to adapt their idea accordingly.
If it still looks promising at that stage, the student is invited to submit a detailed application which is reviewed by the DTC Co-Directors, Jain and Professor Stephan Hofmann, as well as the University's innovation arm, Cambridge Enterprise, and other experts in research translation.
Jain explains: "We have created a very positive culture, which involves a lot mentoring but also a lot of crowdsourced critique."
"An important part of the process is helping the students take constructive criticism on board. Successful entrepreneurs need to be able to absorb feedback from a wide range of perspectives and incorporate it into their thinking."
The winner is funded for up to a year, has both an academic mentor and a mentor specialising in translation from Cambridge Enterprise and they are enrolled on the Impulse accelerator programme.
Professor Karishma Jain
Professor Karishma Jain
Grow your own proteins: Dr Gemma Swan
Gemma joined the NanoDTC as a PhD student and won last year's Translational Prize. She is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge, building on her PhD to develop a commercial device for 'growing' protein in plants on an industrial scale. She has just been recognised as one of Cambridge's most exciting early-stage innovators, winning a coveted Cofinitive's #21 to watch 2026 award.
How did the NanoDTC's programme help you? "By exposing us to absolutely every avenue of science they can think of. It's terrifying and rewarding all at the same time because it opens up areas of science and pathways that you never knew existed."
Gemma's personal epiphany was plants, which - given sunlight and water - make their own proteins.
"We are asking the plant to make an extra protein which we can then extract. It's such an exciting proposition which could, for example, be used to 'grow' vaccines in low-cost, energy efficient biofactories."
What are you working on? "The bit we call the transfection mechanism which is the process of getting the DNA into the plant without killing it."
"The approach I've developed is more effective than the standard technique by several orders of magnitude. I'm now at the point of thinking about commercialisation and patenting, working closely with the University's innovation arm, Cambridge Enterprise."
As well as instilling in you a translation mindset, has your Nano DTC training helped in other ways? "The rooms that you walk into at entrepreneurship events are still very male dominated. Seeing fantastic female role models going ahead of you, such as NanoDTC alumna Carmen Palacios-Berraquero (co-founder and CEO of Nu Quantum), has been really helpful."
Anything else? "When you are trying to set up a company, you're essentially learning how to communicate confidence in an idea while being honest about what is and isn’t yet proven.
"It's very much selling a vision of what could be which is quite different from scientific training, where we’re taught to speak only when the evidence is fully in place."
"When I joined the DTC I was petrified of public speaking but I was forced to do it so often that it's become much less stressful. That's been huge."
Jain said: "There are lots of other innovation hotspots around the University - that's what makes our ecosystem so rich and diverse - but at the NanoDTC we believe we have created a really successful environment in which the next generation of deep-tech entrepreneurs can thrive.
"While it is gratifying that we can demonstrate our impact through some impressive numbers, what's really exciting is the positive effect these spinouts can have on all our lives."
Professor Karishma Jain's tips for first-time entrepreneurs
- Be honest with yourself about why you are doing this. You will need a genuine interest in the problem you are trying to solve to keep you going through the tough times.
- Learn how to take criticism positively and incorporate it into your thinking.
- Be adaptable. Having a good idea is just the beginning - it will definitely change over time.
- Entrepreneurship can often seem to be something only for extroverted and overtly confident people. Don’t worry if that doesn’t sound like you. Quiet confidence in your abilities is far more important for success.
- Don’t worry about failing. A failed start-up is an immense learning experience that you will draw upon during the rest of your career. Many investors are more likely to invest with founders who are launching a new start-up after having failed at a previous one.
Published March 2026
Image credits:
From top: University of Cambridge, Karishma Jain, Echion, StillVision, Semarion, Gemma Swan
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.