Quantum Base Ltd are a company specialising in innovative security devices that span-out from Lancaster University in 2013. They create products based on their development of the world’s first nanoscale quantum physically unclonable functions (PUFs), both Optical (OPUF) and Electronic versions (EPUF), and their simple quantum random number generator (Q-RAND). These Quantum ID® devices and solutions are mass producible, scalable, and easy to integrate into existing systems.

Founded by Professor Rob Young from Lancaster University’s Physics Department and CEO Pete Wild, Quantum Base have now expanded their team to fifteen employees working across three quantum labs and have 28 patents granted. The company’s research team have been published in journals including Nature, and are backed financially by The Royal Society, GCHQ, and the U.S. Air Force.

Protecting industries ranging from luxury clothing and handbags to medical devices and pharmaceuticals, Quantum Base are a world leader in the field of Quantum Security. With six further products in patent pending, all founded on their scientific research in quantum physics, the company are looking forward to exciting future expansions.

LiNa Energy Ltd span out from Lancaster University’s School of Engineering when co-founders Dr Gene Lewis and Dr Richard Dawson combined their expertise in ceramics and technology to create a sodium-metal-chloride battery. These battery cells are the main focus of LiNa Energy, utilising a breakthrough planar design made possible through the development of their ultra-thin solid ceramic electrolyte.

Not only are these batteries an externally validated safer alternative to lithium ion, avoiding the need for flammable liquids, but they are also low cost, made from abundant materials and easy to mass manufacture. These solid-state batteries are primarily produced for use in the renewable energy storage market, where they exceed the abilities of lithium ion by functioning in hotter climates and enabling distribution companies to deliver clean power at the lowest cost-per-electron.

In 2024, LiNa Energy secured £3.5 million funding – jointly provided through equity funding (£2.7m) and Innovate UK (£0.8) – in order to scale up to automatic manufacturing through the construction of the company’s first pilot-scale production facility. This will further their ability to provide a high performance but low-cost alternative to the lithium-ion batteries so many devices now rely upon.

Founded as a spinout of Lancaster University in 2022, Mindgard Ltd is a London based deep-tech company specialising in cyber security for AI. The team share a wide range of experience in working with global tech and defence giants and driving industry policy making, and have formed multiple companies in the tech industry.

Their product allows organisations to easily undertake an automated threat assessment of their AI technology against hundreds of different attack scenarios, utilising years of research in science and engineering to produce fast results. AI assets can be safeguarded throughout their entire lifecycle through Mindgard, and it integrates seamlessly into existing security ecosystems.

Resulting from their cutting-edge approach in the increasingly important cyber security industry, Mindgard were recently recognised at the UK’s Most Innovative Cyber SME at the prestigious Infosecurity Europe 2024 event.

Established in 2023 as a spinout of Lancaster University’s Physics Department, Quinas Technology was founded by academics Professor Manus Hayne and Dr Peter Hodgson and external CEO James Ashford-Pook. The company develops advance memory technology, their invention UltraRAM combining the benefits of non-volatility of flash storage with the fast performance of DRAM resulting in what is known as ‘universal memory’.

Since bringing in an external CEO after receiving substantial support and resources from Lancaster University, Quinas Technology have successfully commercialised their research. This is exemplified by winning the ‘Most Innovative Startup’ award after presenting ULTRARAM at the Flash Memory Summit in Silicon Valley, a showcase for the memory industry worth an estimated $160 billion per year.

In 2023, Quinas Technology received £300,000 from Innovate UK funding and Innovate UK Sponsorship for a Department of Business and Trade (DBT) mission to Taiwan. Looking ahead, the team are hoping to have new memory technologies ready for market in the next five years.

CCI Photonics was established in July of 2023 and specialises in the innovation of medical instruments and supplies, in addition to biotechnology research and development. A spinout from an interdisciplinary translational research project undertaken in collaboration with Lancaster University and University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust, CCI Photonics utilises AI to quickly identify microbes from small samples.

Identifying a need for the faster detection of AMR (Antimicrobial Resistant) infections to prevent deaths, which have seen an increase of 2.2% since 2021, CCI Photonics have developed a portable diagnostic medical device. This invention can detect AMR in in-vitro and biofluid samples with over 90% accuracy in just 15 minutes, a huge reduction from the common wait time of over 72 hours.

The company was shortlisted in 2024 from over 200 Northern start-ups in a wide variety of sectors to take part in the PraeSeed programme from capital firm Praetura Ventures. The scheme provides sessions from innovation experts and the opportunity to receive an equity investment of £200,000.

IfGive began life as a major research project between Lancaster University, Edinburgh University and Northumbria University before emerging from the ICURe programme as a spinout company in 2022. The company works to transform the ways that people give to charity, utilising modern data-driven technologies to help charities nurture relationships with supporters, evidence the impact of their work, and improve the effectiveness of funding campaigns.

Exploring the reasons behind a decline in both trust and the number of people giving to charities, the team at IfGive developed a cloud-based platform that allows for a diverse range of charities to engage with automated giving. This platform is adjustable to the individual goals and missions of each charity, providing a variety of options to impact design, tone, and messaging.

Responding to a 20% drop in individuals giving to charity in the UK, IfGive are utilising university research to help solve this problem and help charities reach existing and potential supporters in innovative new ways.

ADTechOptima spun out from the Lancaster Environment Centre in June 2024. Working on delivering technology for high-performance anaerobic digestion processes, the team aim to enhance methane productivity from biogas plants.

ADTechOptima provides an ultra-low energy sanitisation process technology which functions at the same temperature as an associated mesophilic methanogenic digester and achieves up to 8 log10 kill of marker pathogens. The company was established by Dr Bhushan Gandhi, Professor Kirk Semple, Professor Alastair Martin, and Dr Paul McKenna.

Developed through the Innovate UK ICURe Programme, ADTechOptima were recently awarded a £300,000 grant from ICURe Exploit to further their commercialisation efforts.

LitCraft CIC is Lancaster University’s first Community Interest Company, founded by Professor Sally Bushell of the English Literature and Creative Writing department. Utilising the popular Minecraft gaming platform, the project provides accurate scale models of authorial maps from classic literature, including Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, and Kensuke’s Kingdom.

An immersive experience achieved through a structured framework that involves prior reading, an in-game activity, and a writing task, LitCraft aims to help children with key areas of reading such as empathy, contextualisation, and reading for pleasure.

Accessible worldwide through a partnership with Minecraft.edu, LitCraft CIC work with The British Library to make the platform available through a number of library systems. They have also gained partnerships with organisations such as Wandering Wizards, The Wordsworth Trust, and Seven Stories.

Hybrid Instruments emerged from Lancaster’s School of Engineering as a spinout company specialising in the development and design of high-speed embedded systems for real-time digital acquisition and analysis of signals arising from radiation detectors. The real-time discrimination of mixed radiation fields has applications in a wide range of fields, from defence and security to medicine and scientific research and development.

Since forming in 2003, Hybrid Instruments have designed, manufactured and supplied nuclear instruments of this kind internationally within both public and private sector organisations. To maintain an innovative approach, undergraduates and postgraduate students, as well as graduates employed by Hybrid Instruments, have worked on company projects. Instruments developed by the company have been used by international nuclear centres of excellence including (but not limited to) Sellafield (UK), Los Alamos National Labs (US), and The Rokkasho Reprocessing Site (Japan).

The company have been successful in securing funding from bodies like Innovate UK. For example, their 2015 project TRIBECA (Tritium detection By ElectroChemically Assisted radiometrics) developed by Ghebrehiwot Behane during his PhD studies at Lancaster received £123,313 from the organisation.

Fabrikator, a spinout of Lancaster University’s Management School and ImaginationLancaster, are the developers of EViD, a novel collaborative tool for exploring and designing project evaluations. The outcome of a three year interdisciplinary research collaboration between Lancaster and Curtin University, EViD is a virtual user-friendly tool that aims to revolutionise the project evaluation process.

Free for non-profit and educational organisations, EViD can be utilised as both an online tool and a printable poster. It is also flexible enough to be used for project evaluations in a range of sectors, from knowledge exchange and outreach to communication and marketing.

Established in 2023, Fabrikator have been successful not just in their development of EViD, but in their creation of bespoke workshops and training programmes that aim to teach individuals and organisations how to use this innovative tool most effectively.

The first company to combine plasma gas and materials for therapeutic delivery, Plasma4 spun out from Lancaster University in 2021 and draws on research from across chemistry, materials science, microbiology, and infection and immunity.

Utilising over 50 years of expert knowledge and research in world-class plasma and materials, Plasma4 combines cold atmospheric plasma with novel materials for the on-demand, targeted delivery of drugs for a variety of skin conditions. The technology can be used to treat a range of illnesses and conditions, from infections to autoimmune disease and cancers.

Plasma4’s patented technology is proven to be safe, versatile, effective, and precise in a variety of applications, promoting healing in an innovative way.

Lancaster Materials Analysis spun out from Lancaster University in 2014. Founded by Professor Manus Hayne, Professor Oleg Kolosov, and Dr Alex Robson from Lancaster University’s Physics Department, LMA continues to work closely with the university as well as with commercial partners.

Providing commercial access to materials analysis techniques for industrial and academic clients, LMA specialise in cross-sectional analysis and scanning probe techniques. Their world leading team of experts work closely with academics and industry in the semiconductor and coatings industries to develop these techniques further.

With end users in both academic institutions and industrial companies, LMA is able to tap into the considerable knowledge and expertise of researchers actively engaged in the study of a wide range of materials due to their close and ongoing links with Lancaster’s Physics Department.

Lancaster Helium Ltd was founded by Dr Mark Giltrow, Professor Peter V E McClintock, and Dr Malcolm Poole, and span out from Lancaster University’s Physics Department in 2018, specifically from the Low Temperature Physics Group.

The company is the world’s first commercial supplier of isotopically pure He-4 gas for use in a variety of applications, including as a coolant gas in nuclear reactors, as the down-scattering medium for ultra-cold neutron (UCN) production, and for experiments on quantum turbulence. The team remain based in the Lancaster area, but supply helium for research and experiments around the world.

Lancaster Helium’s method of isotopic separation involves a powerful wind of normal fluid component in superfluid helium (He II) to blow away the He-3 impurity atoms, leaving the He-4 behind. This process has been described further in publications for journals including Cryogenics and Physica. As stated by Professor McClintock, the He-4 they produce is ‘perfectly pure’ and was even featured in the Guinness Book of Records for this reason.