Oxford spinout focused on bio-inspired vehicles

7th September 2015

Oxford University Innovation, the University of Oxford’s technology commercialisation company, has announced the formation of Animal Dynamics, a spinout from Oxford’s Department of Zoology. The Company, which will build bio-inspired vehicles, has been co-founded by Dr Adrian Thomas, Professor of Biomechanics and founder of the Animal Flight research group, and entrepreneur Alex Caccia, who will be CEO.

The company has raised seed investment from angel investors Oxford Technology and the University of Oxford Isis Fund (UOIF) to build and test its first products.

Animal Dynamics’ CEO Alex Caccia said: “This is an exciting opportunity for Adrian and I to build a technology business based on a field that we are passionate about. Our engineering team will be focused on perfecting designs derived from evolutionary optimisations that produce significant speed and performance gains over current solutions.

“The process of forming the spin-out and raising seed capital has been done with great support from Oxford University Innovation, and we are looking forward to joining an ecosystem of successful companies that that have been germinated out of Oxford University.“

Dr Andy Robertson from Oxford University Innovation said: “Animal Dynamics is an example of entrepreneurship and academia combining forces to develop commercial applications that derive from research. It’s been a privilege to work with the team and support the formation of such a promising Oxford spin-out.”

Read The Economist’s profile of Animal Dynamics

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