Andrew Monk appointed as Senior Associate

Transentia is pleased to announce the appointment of Andrew Monk as a Senior Associate.

Andrew has a Masters degree in Physics from the University of Oxford and 25 years of experience in senior commercial and product development roles. His experience includes licenses and spinouts from Southampton, Bath and many other universities. Andrew has built successful businesses across a wide range of markets including biochemistry; semiconductor; photonics; mobile telecommunications; compliance testing; process automation and many others.

As CEO of Innos Ltd, Andrew led the company’s turnaround after fire destroyed the £50M Southampton research fab. Innos resumed fabrication within 14 days and rebuilt the fabrication facility in a year. Andrew then negotiated the sale of the business.

Most recently he has led the commercialisation of a rapid DNA analysis technology for The Forensic Science Service. The system will revolutionise policing by checking suspects’ DNA against the database before they are released from custody.

Dr Stephen Bence, Managing Director, commented "I am delighted to welcome Andrew to Transentia. His practical experience of translating science into profitable businesses will be invaluable to Transentia’s clients."

Andrew added, "I am excited to be joining Transentia and looking forward to generating return from the investment in research excellence at UK universities.”

HEIF 2011–2015 versus HEIF round 4 - Transentia's analysis

The Higher Education Funding Council For England (HEFCE) published on 28 February 2011 indicative allocations for the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) for the period 2011-2015. Transentia has conducted an analysis comparing the new allocations with the final year of HEIF round 4.

The Government has allocated £150 million per year in HEIF funding for the period 2011 to 2015, matching the total amount for HEIF round 4. However, the allocation formula has been changed so that it is now entirely “performance-based”. In addition the maximum amount granted to any one institute is £2,850,000 compared to £1,900,000 under HEIF round 4, the minimum allocation is now £250,000, and no institution can lose more than 50% of its funding versus the last year of HEIF round 4.

Under the new allocations 48 universities (37%) have seen an increase in funding. Of these 23 have received the maximum allocation, all of which had also received the maximum allocation during HEIF round 4. The number receiving the maximum allocation is a decrease of 12 universities compared to HEIF round 4.

There was less good news for the 32 universities (25%) that have lost all funding and the 50 (38%) that have seen a reduction. Of these 12 appear to have been saved from an even greater cut by the maximum reduction percentage of 50% kicking in.

Of the universities that still have some funding, 72 (73%) have had their allocations changed by more than 20%.

In conducting this analysis Transentia found the explanatory notes provided by HEFCE highly ambiguous. The order in which the maximum allocation of £2,85m, the minimum allocation of £250k, and the maximum decrease of 50% should be applied is not stated; nor is it clear at which stage(s) in the process the rescaling to ensure the £150m total should be applied. Transentia has applied a variety of different approaches consistent with the HEFCE guidance and these lead to significantly different results. Unfortunately none of these approaches has been able to replicate HEFCE’s analysis so we are unable to report which universities have been advantaged or disadvantages by the ambiguities.

Dr Stephen Bence, Managing Director of Transentia, commented: “the new formula has certainly created a great deal of change and we look forward to working with our clients to create and implement their plans for deploying their new allocations. But the ambiguity in the HEFCE formula is very concerning especially since it appears to have profound consequences for individual universities”.

To view the comparison of HEIF allocations 2011-2015 with HEIF 4 click here (Excel).

Update, Thursday 3rd March: Transentia has now managed to replicate (approximately) the HEFCE results with a little help from our friends (thank you Ben!). However, it remains the case that there are others ways of calculating the allocations that are also consistent with the HEFCE guidance. The analysis can be found here (Excel).

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