The University of Southampton is one of five UK universities to receive praise for its involvement in the SETsquared business incubator project.

Its SETsquared Incubation Centre has been named the number-one university business incubator in Europe and the second-best in the world. This ranking puts it one place ahead of the SCUT Science Park at South China University of Technology; the winner was the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship at Rice University, Houston.

Alan Scrasse, Southampton University’s SETsquared business acceleration centre manager, said: “I am very proud of everything we and our supported companies have achieved, from increasing the number of jobs created, company turnover increasing to the large amounts of external funding raised. The contribution that SETsquared centres make to economic development in our regions is especially rewarding.”

At Southampton, SETsquared success stories include a number of companies in a wide range of sectors — from established companies such as Ilika, which specialises in the rapid development of new materials for energy and electronics applications, to emerging businesses such as SoftIron, which has developed what is claimed to be the world’s most energy-efficient computer hardware.