EVENTS

 

Innovation International – a collaboration between the Japan External Trade Organisation & SETsquared

In today’s heady environment for innovation, the environmental technologies sector – so-called climatetech – is head and shoulders above the rest, with investment growing at 5x the rate of global start-up funding overall.

But does more money mean better companies, better returns, or even better solutions? As the world prepares for the pivotal COP-26 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, this Climatetech Innovation & Investment Roundtable will assess the market for investors and investees and showcase some of the most innovative companies that are working with SETsquared – plus we’ll have some exciting announcements about new funding from SETsquared for talented researchers, innovators and scale-up companies.

SETsquared and the Japan External Trade Organisation are delighted to present this Innovation International showcase of opportunities across their respective networks of entrepreneurs, innovators, investors, and corporate partners.

Agenda

8.30 Welcome & introduction to keynote speaker by Simon Bond, Innovation Director, SETsquared

Keynote speaker: Fumiko Uraki, General Manager, Venture Office, Technology and Business Development Division, Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings 

8.50 Company innovation pitches

Kelpi is a sustainable bio-tech company which is on a mission to replace single-use plastics with premium performance bioplastics that harness the novel properties and environmental benefits of seaweed.

Albotherm develop glass coatings that reversibly transition from transparent to white, to reduce solar gain in hot weather, allowing buildings and greenhouses to regulate their own temperature without electrical input, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Ecomar is on a mission to clean up the marine environment by creating clean marine engines that use electric power trains driven by zero emissions battery and hydrogen cells.

9.05 Panel discussion around the current state of talent and deal flow in the sector

Colin Stakem, Innovation Manager, SETsquared
Fumiko Uraki, General Manager, Venture Office, Technology and Business Development Division, Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings
Pippa Gawley, Co-founder, Zero Carbon Capital

9.15 Company innovation pitches

Naturbeads produce biodegradable cellulose microparticles to replace harmful plastic microbeads used in cosmetics, paints, adhesive and many other industrial and consumers applications. Naturbeads are competitively priced and are made from renewable and sustainable resources.

Nuspec Oils  is pioneering the development of biobased, biodegradable and thermo-stable base oils to produce environmentally acceptable lubricants and chemicals. These innovative base oils can replace directly mineral base oils without reformulating the finished blend and provide direct savings to the manufacturers.

Utonomy UtonomyOne combines AI and machine learning with innovative control hardware to create a smarter network for gas operators. Utonomy‘s retrofittable technologies help gas network operators achieve their decarbonisation, digitalisation and decentralisation goals, and quickly diagnose network faults remotely – from anywhere, at any time.

9.25 Panel discussion joined by Karen Brooks, SETsquared Programme Director

9.35 Interview with Masahide Sakishige, JETRO London’s Deputy Director General

9.45 Breakout rooms & networking

10.15 Events closes

Biographies:

Colin Stakem, Innovation Manager, SETsquared

Colin Stakem develops and supports innovative collaborations between the SETsquared Scale-Up Programme universities – Bath, Bristol, Cardiff, Exeter, Southampton & Surrey – industry, investors, and high growth potential SMEs. Previously, he led commercial research and enterprise activities on behalf of London South Bank University’s Sustainable Communities Institute, a knowledge centre focused on working with businesses to develop innovative products and implement low carbon technologies for the creation of a sustainable built environment. Before working for the Sustainable Communities Institute, he spent three and a half years at the Carbon Trust helping businesses and the public sector to adopt more sustainable, low carbon business models. He has a BSc. in Environmental Science from the National University of Ireland, Galway, and an MSc. in Sustainable Development from the Technological University Dublin.

Fumiko Uraki, General Manager, Venture Office, Technology and Business Development Division, Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings 

Fumiko leads the corporate venture platform of Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings, covering broad business areas from material and environment to healthcare to benefit the overall group companies including Mitsubishi Chemical, Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma, Life Science Institute and Nippon Sanso HD. She has extensive experience in technology assessment and scouting for the company’s pipeline for growth, in facilitating relationships between start-up companies, and in making decision about strategic investment. 

Prior to Mitsubishi, she worked for BASF, a German multinational chemical company for 15 years in various sections including sales & marketing, corporate strategy and new business development.  She holds Bachelor of Science in Biology and Master of Science Degrees in Molecular Biology from Tohoku University, Japan and Master of Philosophy in Environmental Science from Murdoch University in Australia. She is regularly invited to speak at events and conferences on the topics including innovations, start-ups, green chemical and circular economy.  

Karen Brooks, Programme Director, SETsquared

Karen Brooks holds a degree in Computer Science, a foundation in Psychotherapy, and is PRINCE2 qualified. In her current role, Karen has devised and run the incubation, scale-up, and entrepreneurship training programs for seventeen years. She led the team that developed the Incubation Program, which has been ranked by UBI Global as the world’s number one University Business Incubator since 2015. It has provided support to over 3,500 early stage technology companies, raising over $2.2 billion (£1.8bn) in investment and provided over $10.5 billion (£8.6bn) in economic impact. Karen has created and delivered a number of experiential training programs to allow participants to develop entrepreneurial thinking and form credible business propositions from the seeds of an idea through to creating innovation growth strategies. Karen has sat on the judging panel for many business pitch competitions in the UK and overseas and assessed hundreds of business propositions seeking for investment. 

Masahide Sakishige, Deputy Director General, JETRO London 

Masahide leads Investment and Trade operations at JETRO London, with responsibilities for promoting foreign direct investment into Japan by the UK and Nordic businesses and open innovation between Japanese corporates and foreign start-ups through facilitating collaboration and alliances. The Investment team supports over 100 companies, mainly start-ups with innovative technologies in the fields such as life science, fintech, mobility and carbon neutrality to provide solutions to challenges faced by Japan and the rest of the world. 

Pippa Gawley, Co-founder, Zero Carbon Capital

Pippa is the co-founder of Zero Carbon Capital, investors in early-stage companies on a mission to fix climate change. ZCC supports deep science, hard-tech solutions that have the potential to make half gigaton-level reductions of CO2e at scale; and vision-aligned, ambitious teams to go with them.  Pippa started angel investing in decarbonisation technologies in California five years ago, where she was an active member of the impact investing ecosystem. Prior to that, she held a variety of roles in general management, business analysis, and consumer-facing interactive user experience research and design. She holds a Masters degree in Manufacturing Engineering from the University of Cambridge. 

Simon Bond, Executive Director, SETsquared 

SETsquared is the award-winning enterprise partnership of the universities of Bath, Bristol, Cardiff, Exeter, Southampton and Surrey. Since it was founded in 2002, SETsquared has supported over 4,000 high-growth, technology innovation companies and helped them to raise over £2.7bn of investment. SETsquared member companies have gone on to deliver a positive impact for the UK economy independently valued at £8.6bn and forecast to be worth a further £26.9bn by 2030. Simon has led SETsquared and its development of university-business programmes to promote research commercialisation, student enterprise, start-up & scale-up businesses and investment since 2014.