Martin Gilmore appointed to support creative and practice-led commercialisation across Scotland’s universities
Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh has welcomed the appointment of Martin Gilmore as Commercialisation Manager for ShaKEs: Shared Knowledge Exchange Services, a national consortium supporting more collaborative approaches to research commercialisation and knowledge exchange across Scotland’s higher education sector.
Supported by the Scottish Funding Council, ShaKEs is helping smaller, modern and specialist institutions access the legal, contractual, intellectual property and commercial expertise needed to turn research, expertise and creative practice into real-world benefit.
Martin joins ShaKEs with extensive experience in knowledge exchange, partnerships and innovation. He spent more than 17 years at Lancaster University, most recently as Head of Partnerships and Engagement across Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, Materials Lancaster, Energy Lancaster and Quantum Innovation Lancaster. His work has included industry partnerships, collaborative R&D, Innovation Projects, research infrastructure access models, strategic sector development and new approaches to translating academic expertise into external impact.
Within ShaKEs, Martin will be hosted by the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and will work closely with colleagues at the Glasgow School of Art and Queen Margaret University to support emerging creative, cultural and practice-led commercialisation pathways. His work will focus on helping partners develop proportionate approaches to intellectual property, consultancy, collaboration agreements, creative opportunity triage, funding-route assessment and new routes to value for sectors where traditional commercialisation models do not always fit.
The ShaKEs pilot brings together six small, modern and specialist universities; Queen Margaret University, Robert Gordon University, Abertay University, Glasgow School of Art, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and the University of the Highlands and Islands, alongside Edinburgh College. Martin will work alongside Dr Rachel Simpson, Director of ShaKEs, and Dr Imke Mulder, Commercialisation Manager, to help develop shared models of support that are practical, collaborative and responsive to the distinctive strengths of the partner institutions.
It is exciting to join ShaKEs at a point where the consortium is beginning to test what genuinely shared knowledge exchange and commercialisation support can look like. My recent background is in partnerships and knowledge exchange rather than an explicit technology-transfer model, so I am particularly interested in how we support sectors where value and impact emerges through creative practice, consultancy, cultural assets, digital content, social impact, specialist facilities and external relationships.
“The work with RCS, GSA and QMU is already showing that traditional commercialisation language and processes do not always fit. There is a real opportunity through ShaKEs to develop more proportionate, practice-led and sector-sensitive approaches that help staff, students and partners translate ideas and expertise into economic, social and cultural benefit.”
Martin brings a strong track record in knowledge exchange, partnership development and sector-facing innovation. His experience of building industry-facing research platforms and working across complex institutional partnerships will be valuable as ShaKEs develops new shared approaches to commercialisation and knowledge exchange across the consortium.
The ShaKEs pilot aims to reduce barriers to commercialisation and strengthen knowledge exchange by pooling expertise and resources across institutions, helping research, innovation and creative practice deliver meaningful economic, social and cultural benefits.
For further media information contact: Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, E: pressoffice@qmu.ac.uk.
