A Year of Great Achievements

2024 has been a tremendous year right across the Southampton Science Park community.

Individual company goals and ambitions are naturally diverse, reflective of growth stage, but it’s great to see how many of our resident companies have achieved significant milestones during the year. We have seen, for example, Curve Therapeutics raising millions in investment, Lifelight’s vital signs technology adopted nationally and abroad, and Symetrica win a coveted Kings Award for Enterprise. Several companies received recognition at the South Coast Tech Awards this year with no less than nine nominations between them.

High quality support for early stage businesses has long been a central component of Southampton Science Park’s philosophy, our Catalyst business accelerator program being the cornerstone of this work. We welcomed eight new businesses to our 14^th cohort in September and it is fantastic to see several of these, including Mytender.io and QuJiT, already gaining endorsement for their concepts. Naturally, our aim is that Catalyst companies’ success builds long after they have graduated from the programme and so it’s been a great pleasure to see VapeGuardian and Labl.It achieving this.

Looking ahead, we are pleased to be doubling the number of places available on our Catalyst programme in 2025 thanks to an exciting new partnership arrangement with Health Innovation Wessex, the National Oceanography Centre and the University of Southampton’s School of Healthcare Enterprise and Innovation.

Around our wider innovation ecosystem, we were pleased to support regional initiatives such as Venturefest, the South Coast Tech and Innovation Awards and the Test Valley Business Awards. We continued our close association with SETsquared to deliver Entrepreneurs Workouts and with our colleagues at the University of Southampton to ensure that its world-class research has a home for commercialisation. Nationally, we were pleased to help the UK Science Park Association, of which we were a founder member, celebrate its 40^th anniversary.

The Science Park company itself, which I am immensely proud to lead, has accomplished a great deal.

Alongside our peers at Oxford Harwell, Cambridge and SciTech Daresbury, we were named as one of the  top UK science and technology parks. We have welcomed eight new companies to the Park community: Delsys, Elecosoft, Next Power Solutions, OHM Space, Shakespeare Martineau, Siemens ‘Farnborough Office’, SuperReel and Symetrica.  Across our site, we continue working to upgrade facilities to ever higher specifications, including this year, a complete reimagining of Kenneth Dibben House and the conversion of vacant space into new laboratories in Epsilon House.

My team has organised numerous opportunities for informal community networking this year and I would like to thank everyone who got involved to make our social programme of events like our annual sports day, BBQ, conservation area volunteer days, festive market and Christmas party fun and successful. Our new resident app has been warmly received and I encourage all employees based here to sign-up to keep abreast of news and events taking place in 2025.

Closing the year, we were delighted to receive planning permission for a breathtaking new development which will significantly enhance our region’s capabilities for research and development in life sciences and other disciplines. With a formidable delivery team in place, we cannot wait to break ground and begin bringing this vision to life early next year. Watch this space!

As many wind down to a well-deserved seasonal break, I extend my appreciation to every individual who contributed to the above achievements and the many more that we couldn’t cover here. Whether your role was big or small, the evidence is clear that it all adds up to making Southampton Science Park an unrivalled beacon of commercial success in the south central region, with much to look forward to in 2025.

On behalf of the whole Science Park team, I wish you all a happy and peaceful festive break.

Robin