The 12-week Impulse Programme kicks off with the first of three intensive modules on April 20.

The University of Cambridge programme is run out of the Maxwell Centre. It started in 2017, with mentors including Hermann Hauser, David Cleevely and Jamie Urquhart.

The initiative helps businesses and research organisations develop high-potential, entrepreneurial-minded company individuals, and turn their ideas and innovations into commercial success stories.

In the last four years these ‘next generation’ entrepreneurs and world-class innovators have attracted £53.6m of funding, creating 250 jobs along the way.

Aimed at the different fields of physical sciences, technology and life sciences, the Impulse Programme is a tried-and-tested catalyst for entrepreneurship, with the participants given access to an extensive network of successful alumni including Riverlane, Sorex Sensors, Celsius Health, Waterscope and PolyProx Therapeutics, as well as VCs and business angels, experts in IP and law, and industry partners

Riverlane recently secured a further £15m of Series A funding at the start of this year.

Riverlane founder and CEO Dr Steve Brierley said he benefited greatly from having someone of the stature of Jamie Urquart – co-founder of Arm – as his Impulse Programme mentor.

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Dr Brierley said: “Having Jamie Urquart as a mentor in the early stages of Riverlane had a huge impact. I knew a lot about the technology – quantum computing – and wanted to work out how to build a great business to exploit that.

“I spent many hours meeting with Jamie, testing ideas, talking through business models, funding options and then figuring out how best to communicate the opportunity. As a result, Riverlane got off to a great start, raising a seed round from two great VC funds. Jamie is very generous with his time and, since the Impulse programme, we’ve kept in touch and he’s still one of the first people I’ll test a new idea on.

“My advice to anyone thinking about joining Impulse is simple: if you get the chance to work on your company idea with someone like Jamie who has a vast amount of experience rolling their sleeves up and making it happen, take it.”

Other beneficiaries include Dr Carmen Palacios Berraquero, national award-winning physicist and co-inventor of Nu Quantum technology, which is making ground-breaking single-photon components to enable the next generation of commercially-viable photonic quantum technologies – creating a new era of communications, simulation, computing, sensing and metrology as it goes.

Another Impulse alumnus is Dr Gita Khalili Moghaddam, pioneering medtech entrepreneur and founder/director of GlycoVue, which combines glucose-responsive smart polymers with advanced holography and AI-enabled smartphone technology for diabetes self-management.

Yupar Myint, Impulse’s head of programme, says: “Impulse is an established action-learning programme of global significance, enabling the development of high-potential technology innovation into a commercial proposition for individuals and organisations.”

Applications here. The deadline is March 19.