Scientists forge links with US

VISITS from two major players on the international innovation scene has underlined the strengthening links between scientists in the Warrington area and the United States.
Silicon Valley’s Plug and Play Tech Centre and Arizona State University’s SkySong Innovation Centre have both visited the Daresbury Science and Innovation Campus
The Plug and Play Tech Centre is a business incubator for the digital sector based in the heart of Silicon Valley in Sunnyvale, California. It provides a community of more than 200 technology start-up companies in the areas of Web 2.0, software, systems, semiconductors and telecoms.
Since its inception in January 2006 the Centre has helped the start-ups raise in excess of $400 million in venture funding, with start-up companies having created a cumulative value of $2 billion.
Leading the Plug and Play delegation, Maud Pasturad, its business development manager, met with 11 companies from the Daresbury Campus and its wider network. The companies were keen to explore opportunities to expand their business into the large US marketplace.
Ms Pasturad said: “Plug and Play is the right partner for the top start-ups in Europe for global acceleration. We are keen to partner with Daresbury Science and Innovation Campus to identify start-ups with potential and accelerate their success in Silicon Valley.”,
After this came the Arizona State University visit. Augustine Cheng, managing director of Arizona Technology Enterprises, ASU’s technology venturing organization and Julia Rosen, associate vice president for innovation and entrepreneurship at SkySong, spent a day with the Daresbury SIC team.
Arizona, one of the largest universities in the US and ranked in the top 10 in research among US universities without a medical school, has created SkySong Innovation Center to be a two-way global portal that commercialises the university’s technology globally, as well as attracts companies from around the world who seek to enter the US market.
Opened less than one year ago, SkySong currently works with more than 40 companies from 12 countries.
Central to their visit was how to provide opportunities to Daresbury SIC based companies looking for a route into the US market and a supportive environment through which to operate.
SkySong also wants to further internationalise its commercialisation and technology support and expertise, which they described as “rubbing shoulders with partners worldwide.”
Since the visit, SkySong has already identified potential investment into the UK and are identifying a number of Daresbury SIC companies well placed to take advantage of their offering stateside. The visit followed a referral by a member of the Daresbury SIC network active in the U.S. who described SkySong as “the Daresbury of the U.S.”
Ms Rosen said: “Working together, SkySong and Daresbury SIC can leverage scientific, business and investment networks in our respective regions on behalf of all our enterprises. We were pleased to learn how vibrant the Daresbury platform is today, and how wide-reaching the vision is for the future.”
The visits are part of a strategy to forge US links for the campus and its companies.
General Manager of Daresbury SIC John Leake said: “Core to our mission as a campus is to develop strategic international relationships, enabling effective knowledge exchange and enhancing our awareness of global market opportunities. “Both visits have also offered exciting new opportunities for a number of our companies, which, by the nature of their products and services, will no doubt find the US a very attractive market.”