Tearing Down the Ivory Tower: Edinburgh's Data-Driven Innovation Fellows projects Span Wildfires to Women's Health

The 2025 cohort of DDI Fellows has shared its learnings at a showcase event at the Bayes Centre, marking the culmination of six months of support, mentoring and learning.

Delivered by the Bayes Centre and Edinburgh Futures Institute, the programme acts as a bridge between research and entrepreneurship. Rather than accelerating established businesses, it helps University staff assess whether their research or innovation has genuine commercial potential and equips them with the tools, networks and confidence to pursue it further. 

The wider DDI initiative is a partnership with Heriot-Watt University which created six innovation hubs (five at the University of Edinburgh and one at Heriot-Watt) as part of the Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region Deal, in recognition of regional strengths in supercomputing and data science.

The Fellowship cohort runs over six months and combines in-person workshops, online learning and one-to-one support. Participants receive guidance on commercialisation, intellectual property, venture creation and storytelling, alongside mentoring from investors, innovation specialists and founders. They also have access to £5,000 in seed funding with £40,000 awarded to the Fellows in this first cohort. 

From ideas to impact

For many participants, the DDI Fellowship means taking a giant leap into the unknown, moving beyond the initial concept and learning how to communicate their idea to potential users, customers or investors.

Dr Zak Campbell-Lochrie has been developing a low-cost, robust fuel moisture sensor to support wildfire risk management.

He said the programme took him out of his comfort zone, which is exactly what he was hoping for. 

“The weeds are where we like to live,” he said. “We spend our lives passionate about our research and proving it. You have a sea of ideas swirling around your head and these shiny new things everywhere, but it’s about seeing the bigger picture and figuring out which ones are worth pursuing.”

Claire Sowton who is creating a tool which uses data to help people create personalised designs linked to meaningful life moments, agreed.

“It's definitely a different skill set. It's about thinking about your business as a whole, not just the product that you're working on at the moment. From marketing and visual identity to your brand values, everything is covered in a very practical way.”

Trial and error

Ultimately, the programme is not about instant success. As any entrepreneur will attest, failure is sometimes part of the journey, as is the willingness to adapt your idea. 

Tara Capel is developing an app to help women track their health and better communicate issues with their clinicians. Her product evolved significantly through the programme.

“It definitely shifted. I just had a little gem of an idea, but I worked out that the most important feature of my app is having data that someone can take to a GP or an appointment with a specialist.”

“My ethos, and this very much aligns with the programme, is ‘Plan, play, pivot, persist’,” adds Claire. “It’s putting an idea down on paper and being willing to change it as you learn new lessons. It’s just about having a go, that's all it is.” 

“The programme creates a safe space to test an idea,” says Lynne Craig, EFI’s academic lead for the DDI Fellowship. “We are not necessarily interested in the outcome, but in the knowledge that comes from testing and the permission to make change in a business context. That learning is never wasted.”

Dr Vaishak Belle, the Bayes Centre’s academic lead for the DDI Fellowship, echoes that philosophy.

“We're not closing doors to anybody. A lot of the Fellows probably started off thinking ‘maybe this is not for me’ and through the course of the journey they may well find that, which is completely fine.” 

“People have interesting ideas; that’s the big thing. The question is what does the journey look like?”

Entrepreneurial mindset

The programme also explores the differences between academic research and entrepreneurship, with speakers discussing the challenge of moving from theory to practical application.

Eva Steele, co-founder of tech startup Amytis, spoke to the cohort about her entrepreneurial journey and the realities of building a business.

“There’s a difference in mindset between the world of academia, which is basically the world of theory, and the world of entrepreneurship, which is the world of reality and getting your product into the real world,” she said.

“Trust me when I say what you've got right now is an amazing solution in theory, but it's the skeleton of a solution, the bare bones of the thing. What you really learn when you're out there in the real world is exactly how far that is from being a sellable product.” 

“It’s about testing your product. There is no comparison to giving it to your end users and saying, ‘What do you think? What do I need to improve about this?” 

Diverse perspectives

The range of ideas showcased at the event is testament to the diversity of the 2025 cohort which the programme leads say is one of its greatest strengths.

“Bringing different perspectives together in a cohort really helps make for a better programme. It’s about peer-to-peer learning as much as anything else,” said Ruth King, Director of the Bayes Centre. “The DDI Fellowship is about breaking down those barriers between the ivory tower of a university and the practical outside world.

“We've found that the broader the cohort, the more networks we've got to amplify each other's projects,” added Lynne Craig. “The diversity of ideas and thought is a key part of the course, and we've found that the candidates themselves gain a huge amount just working with each other.”

Applications opening soon 

Applications for the next cohort of the DDI Innovation Fellowship will open soon.

University of Edinburgh staff on open-ended contracts, including academic and professional services colleagues from across Schools and departments, are eligible to apply.

Those interested can register their interest below.