Address Industrial biotechnology (IB) is in a golden age of opportunity, bolstered by the fields response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the urgent need to tackle the global climate emergency. IB is expected to have a significant contribution towards replacing societys addiction to fossil fuels with sustainable ways to biomanufacture everyday products such as medicines, chemicals and food. The strategic aim of IBIC is to leverage our science, research, innovation and teaching asset base to build a large-scale cluster of high-value activity to drive regional growth and create a more productive, more R&D intensive community that benefits business and residents across the region and helps deliver a low carbon economy.
The University of Manchester (UoM) has been a key driver of the evolving IB ecosystem in the North West and has been awarded an EPSRC Place-Based Impact Acceleration Account grant to create a
North-West Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Catalyst (IBIC). The Catalyst was co-created with the University of Liverpool, and has research spokes at Manchester Metropolitan and Salford Universities as well as a breadth of interconnected anchor partners that span businesses (SMEs to corporates), commercial organisations, community builders, accelerators and investors across the North-West region.
IBIC is now seeking to recruit a Programme Manager to deliver its external engagement activities, help deliver a cohesive translational strategy and support technology exploitation. This exciting new role is also essential in providing the interface between IBIC academics and researchers and in overseeing the submission, management, operation, and business development of industry interfaced research projects. The post holder will network regionally and nationally with relevant academic and industrial partners to develop new associations and drive the strategic development, management and delivery of engagement activities and will link with governmental agencies, technology transfer networks, scale up partners and other appropriate organisations to grow the industrial biotechnology innovation ecosystem across the North-West region, and beyond.
The role holder will be based in the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology (MIB) at the University of Manchester (UoM) and will be integrated into the wider University of Manchester Business Engagement and Knowledge Exchange (BEKE) Team. The role holder will also interact regularly with the Research Development and Innovation (RDI) team which also consists of PS functions supporting research impact, internationalisation, and research strategy. Working closely with the IBIC Director (Prof. Aline Miller) and wider university partner stakeholders, they will nurture and expand the network of external partners, promote industrial engagement and commercialisation activities both internally and externally, drive the development/execution of a translation strategy to maximise the impact of IBICs industrial biotechnology science, and help secure additional funding and collaborations.
In the longer term, the role holder will build on IBICs outputs by ensuring UoMs industrial biotechnology translation, industry engagement and impact from research are on a sustainable footing through closer integration with the relevant functions in the Faculty of Science and Engineering.
