Former Oxford MP Nicola Blackwood has been announced as the new Chair of Oxford University Innovation, the commercial research arm of Oxford University.

Baroness Blackwood, former MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, joins OUI at a time of record growth for the Oxford innovation cluster.

In the past year, Oxford University, through OUI, has spun out 31 new companies, more than any UK or US university in the same period.

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These companies include technology firms in areas such as artificial intelligence, digital health, vaccines, and quantum computers, as well as social ventures tackling poverty and technologies for fighting Covid-19.

In government, Baroness Blackwood held a number of roles linked to innovation and entrepreneurship.

Blackwood lost her seat in 2017 and became Chair of the Human Tissue Authority. She returned to Government in 2019 as a life peer, where she became the Under-Secretary of State for Innovation in the Department of Health and Social Care.

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She said the Covid vaccine “underlined the critical importance of Oxford University’s research and innovation in bolstering the UK’s economy and tackling some of the greatest global challenges facing us today.”