Vikas Shah is set to chair a new Innovate UK ICURe Advisory Board.
Innovate UK ICURe now runs across three strands: the Core ICURe Programme, the UKRI Research Council ICURe Pathways and the IUK Venture Builder. The new independent Advisory Board, chaired by Shah, will advise on its strategy across all three.
Innovate UK ICURe has grown from a single programme into three strands, and at that point of expansion has established an Advisory Board to advise on its delivery and future strategy.
Chaired by Professor Vikas Shah MBE DL, the board brings together senior independent figures from investment, knowledge exchange and the UK spin-out ecosystem, alongside senior representation from Innovate UK. It will advise across all three strands: the Core ICURe Programme, the UKRI Research Council ICURe Pathways and the IUK Venture Builder.
The UK has a growing landscape of accelerators, incubators and support programmes for researchers and founders. ICURe occupies a specific place within it. Before a researcher commits to building a company or licensing their work, the programme funds a structured period of market validation to test whether there is real commercial demand for it. That early, evidence-based test is what distinguishes ICURe: it puts targeted public funding behind the question of whether a piece of research can support a business, before larger sums and years of effort follow.
As the UK's leading early-stage research pre-accelerator, working with researchers from any discipline, it has supported the creation of 405 companies and £1.68bn of additional investment over the period 2014 to 2026.
The Advisory Board exists to keep that role effective. Its members join to review, advise, challenge and champion the programme, supporting its work in growing the UK's spin-out ecosystem. The role is voluntary and advisory, and carries no formal governance responsibilities. Their task is to keep ICURe fit for purpose: focused on the research with genuine commercial potential and aligned with Innovate UK, UKRI and the UK's Industrial Strategy. That includes ensuring the programme uses its funding to drive economic growth and deliver value for the UK, and advising on how it produces high-quality, investable propositions from the UK research base.
Professor Shah is an entrepreneur and investor, an Honorary Professor at Alliance Manchester Business School and a non-executive director across several boards. As Chair, he leads the board and acts as an ambassador for the programme.
Professor Vikas Shah, Chair of the Innovate UK ICURe Advisory Board, said:
“The UK produces some of the best research in the world, but turning it into companies that can scale is still where too much of its value is lost. ICURe has spent more than a decade closing that gap, across every discipline and every part of the country. I took on the Chair because the programme is now operating at a scale where independent challenge genuinely adds something, and because getting research commercialisation right matters too much to leave to chance.”
Joining the Chair on the board are senior figures from across investment, knowledge exchange and the wider innovation system. Anne Dobrée, Investment Director at Parkwalk Advisors, built the University of Cambridge's Seed Funds over 15 years and helped establish its first university EIS fund.
Hassan Mahmudul, Investment Manager at Future Planet Capital, supports the UK Innovation and Science Seed Fund, which backs early-stage deep tech and life sciences from the UK research base, and previously founded a venture-backed start-up.
Dr Simon Hepworth, Director of Knowledge Exchange at Research England, spent a decade as Director of Enterprise at Imperial College London, where the spin-outs he helped create have raised more than £500m, and led the sector's USIT spin-out investment terms guide as President of TenU.
Dr David Wilkes, Director of Innovation Infrastructure at Innovate UK, oversees the Catapult Network and UK Agri-Tech Centre and sits on the agency's executive leadership board.
Brian McCaul, Founder of Innovation Commons, has worked across the UK innovation and commercialisation ecosystem for more than 30 years and built the spin-out portfolio at Queen's University Belfast as chief executive of QUBIS, the university's commercialisation company.
The board also includes two members of the ICURe executive at Innovate UK: Geeta Nathan, Deputy Director for the Start-Up Ecosystem, and Tony Walker, Head of Hubs for the Northern Region.
Membership runs for a term of three years, renewable once to a maximum of six. The board will meet four times a year and held its first meeting in June.
