Women Researcher’s Enterprise Network
WREN
WREN is the Women Researcher’s Enterprise Network at the University of Glasgow. We want to be at the forefront of championing women-led research and innovation to ensure the potential for real-life societal impacts can be fully realised.
Women make up only 30% of leadership roles in the UK; this Network will be a steppingstone towards empowering women to help create a more equal society. Our aims are to:
1. INSPIRE
Host a series of speakers, including women researchers who have founded companies, and those who have commercialised their research via other mechanisms. We’ll hear from the individuals, their varied motivations and experiences of setting up a company and what’s involved. We’ll hear from investors in women-led enterprises and from grant funders with a focus on encouraging women-led innovation. We are also welcoming any suggestions for speakers and topics for discussion.
2. COMMUNICATE
Provide a principled space which thrives on respect, discussion, support, and collaboration. All events will include an element of networking to facilitate discussion between members and create a sense of community amongst women researchers at the University.
We are also planning to set up a digital space to allow WREN members to exchange ideas and information.
3. SUPPORT
Showcase opportunities and training that allow researchers to develop their skillset and gain an understanding of how they can leverage their research to create positive societal impact, and the University of Glasgow’s mechanisms that support and facilitate translational research and commercial activities.
This Network is not exclusively for researchers who intend to set up a business; the intention is for women researchers to join the Network and have the chance to consider ways in which their research might be developed into innovative products or services of use to industry or wider society.
If this piques your interest, then please join us at one of our upcoming events:
WREN Presents: online webinar with Nicola McMillan, Team Leader of the Scottish Enterprise High Growth Company Creation team, 11th November (12:00-13:00)
Join WREN for an Insightful Webinar on Navigating the Spinout Pathway with Scottish Enterprise
The Women Researchers' Enterprise Network is excited to invite you to an informative online session featuring Nicola McMillan, the Team Leader of the Scottish Enterprise High Growth Company Creation team.
Scottish Enterprise is the national agency for economic development in Scotland. It supports businesses in driving innovation and growth to help transform the Scottish economy.
During this webinar, Nicola will share insights on how Scottish Enterprise aids budding businesses with a variety of financial support options, including grants, loans, and venture capital investments.
Additionally, we will learn about Scottish Enterprise's upcoming initiative designed to empower female entrepreneurs.
Ensure your spot in this virtual lunchtime event on the 11th November (12:00-13:00) by securing your webinar link through Eventbrite.
About the speaker:
Nicola McMillan leads the High Growth Company Creation Team which delivers the High Growth Spin Out Programme at Scottish Enterprise, supporting the commercialisation of world class research from Scotland’s Universities, Research Institutions, and the NHS. The programme supports academics to develop their commercial proposition, spin out and raise investment with the ambition to become internationally competitive scaling businesses. Previously Nicola managed a portfolio of Scottish Enterprise’s High growth Venture’s clients, supporting Scotland’s ambitious start-ups and early-stage scale ups raise significant equity investment.
Nicola has worked in Economic Development, with a specific focus on Innovation and the early-stage high growth sectors for the last 15 years in a range of positions nationally and internationally.
Scottish Enterprise’s High Growth Spin Out Programme works with Scotland's Universities, Research Institutes, and the NHS to create spinout projects and commercialise leading-edge technologies that demonstrate commercial milestones - leading to spinout, company formation and investment being secured. The programme has an intensive support structure and includes a mix grant and investment funding which sit alongside in-depth advisory support to secure a spin out that has the capability to scale internationally and bring new and disruptive technologies to the market.
Past Events
WREN Presents: Emma Morris 10th October 2023 4-5:30pm The Clarice-Pears Building
Our first event to launch the network will feature Professor Emma Morris, Professor of Clinical Cell and Gene Therapy at UCL. Emma is one of the founders of Quell Therapeutics, a spin out company from UCL in 2019 which develops cell engineering technology to treat autoimmune diseases. Recently, Quell Therapeutics announced it is to collaborate with AstraZeneca in a deal worth over £1.6bn. Quell previously raised about £175 million in series A and B funding.
You’ll hear about Emma’s motivations for founding a company, what the experience has been like and how she’s been able to balance this alongside her academic roles.
WREN Presents: Dr Nicola Banks 28th November 2023 4-5:30pm The Clarice-Pears Building
Nicola is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Manchester’s Global Development Institute and Co-Founder and Chief Steward of One World Together C.I.C. After many years of researching continued challenges in an unequal system of funding for global development, she felt frustrated enough at the inability of existing international charities to make substantive steps towards equity for local organisations to launch One World Together as a radical alternative to this. One World Together pools affordable contributions from its Global Citizens and channels these on a long-term and unrestricted basis to its local partners in the UK and globally.
After winning the 2022 ARC Accelerator training programme, she successfully launched One World Together with her co-Founder Chibwe Henry and an incredible Youth Board in the summer of 2023. A University of Manchester Students’ Union Society followed shortly afterwards. Alongside these successes she will be happy to share the fuller story of her pathway to commercialisation, which remains a long journey as well as a destination now reached.
WREN Presents: Caroline Barelle 18th January 2024 4-5:30pm Advanced Research Centre (ARC), Room 237C
Professor Caroline Barelle is the CEO and CSO of Scottish based biotechnology company, Elasmogen. In 2018 she won the Scottish Life Sciences Award for Rising Star – Extraordinary Talent, Entrepreneurial Scotland’s Summit Award for Academic Entrepreneur of the Year and Most Innovative Company at BioFit2018’s Start-up Slam. Elasmogen Ltd itself is a next generation therapeutic biologics company developing small antibody-like drugs called soloMERs to treat autoimmune, inflammatory diseases and cancer.
We’ll hear about Caroline’s journey, her motivations, the challenges and what support she received to achieve success.
WREN Presents: Meet the Investors, Wednesday 27 March 4-5.30pm in The Advanced Research Centre
Join us for a session with Mary Canning from Epidarex and Sarah Hardy from Archangels where they will discuss the differences between VC and Angel investing, provide tips as to what they are looking to invest in and tell us about what the investment community is doing to invest more in women-led enterprises.
WREN Presents: Dr Fozia Saleem, CEO of Magnitude Biosciences June 27th@4pm, The Advanced Research Centre
Fozia will share her journey from research scientist to CEO, navigating male-dominated boardrooms with grace and determination. Dr Fozia Saleem is CEO of Magnitude Biosciences, a spin-out from Durham University founded in 2018.
Born to first generation migrant parents who instilled in her the values of education and resilience, she’s no stranger to blazing her own trail as the first in her family to pursue higher education and obtaining a PhD in molecular physiology from the University of Edinburgh. Fozia's professional journey includes transformative leadership roles steering high-growth commercial strategies, global product launches and orchestrating cross-functional restructures. Beyond her role as CEO, Fozia is a fervent advocate for empowering women, championing diversity, and catalysing social change. Fozia recently appeared on the ‘We Are Power’ Future List 2024 and is passionate about levelling the playing field for women in business.
Fozia’s journey to CEO is a testament to the transformative power of education, perseverance, and inclusivity.
WREN Presents: Dr. Anastacia Ryan, 9th September 2024 5-6:30pm in The Advanced Research Centre
Anastacia Ryan has researched and been an advocate for marginalised women for over a decade in various roles at national, regional and international level. Following completion of her PhD, Anastacia took up an international role focused on health and HIV. This involved working with community-based organisations across Africa, South East Asia, Central Asia and Eastern Europe, developing community leadership in health and HIV programming and supporting the in-country roll out of global best practice guidance. Anastacia then founded a nationwide charity, which operated for six years providing holistic support to women at the margins, whilst influencing policy and practice through amplifying women's lived experience and voices.
In returning to University as a lecturer, Anastacia is now in the process of redeveloping the charity into a social enterprise. Named ‘SISU’, meaning ‘Resilience through Adversity’ in Finnish, the enterprise creates an alternative system of care and support for women who find current services deficient. SISU aims to combine academic evidence with women’s lived expertise, whilst co-creating training and toolkits for practitioners in the care, support and justice sectors in Scotland, and to raise vital funds for the frontline holistic support of women at the margins.