When research leaves a university laboratory and becomes an affordable prosthetic knee, a pharmaceutical product or a new company creating jobs, the transition can appear deceptively simple. Behind it lies the painstaking work of protecting intellectual property, testing commercial potential, finding partners and persuading researchers to venture beyond familiar territory.
Nolene Singh helps make that journey possible at SU. As Deputy Director of the Innovus Technology Transfer Office (TTO), she works with researchers and students to turn knowledge into products, services and businesses with social impact.
In 2025, SU recognised Singh’s leadership and contribution with the Chief Director’s Award for Exceptional Contribution to SU Technology Transfer at the annual Innovus Inventors Awards ceremony. The honour came as she approached her tenth year at the University and acknowledged nearly a decade spent strengthening innovation and commercialisation work.
From scientist to technology-transfer leader
“I’m a scientist at heart. I’ve always been a scientist,” Singh says. She trained in biotechnology in KwaZulu-Natal and completed a master’s degree in the field. She spent 12 years in the plant genetics industry, working in research and establishing and commercialising laboratories.
She loved the science, yet she became increasingly interested in what happened after discovery. “I realised that research is only what you do with it. How can you take your research and create impact? That’s what drove me to technology transfer.”
A youth development programme that helped science graduates acquire entrepreneurial skills showed her how scientific knowledge and business thinking could combine to meet South Africa’s needs. After consulting for start-ups and helping build laboratories from the ground up, she joined SU in 2016. She was promoted to Deputy Director in 2023.
Today, Singh is a registered technology transfer professional and a director or alternate director of several SU spin-out companies. Her work spans patenting, licensing, commercialisation strategy and entrepreneurship support, though its purpose is straightforward: helping research travel further.
Where research meets the real world
“What we do is take research from the University and translate it into something that can be commercialised. In simple terms, we help university staff and students create impact from their research,” Singh explains.
She says one of SU’s strengths is its support for what she calls “entrepreneurial research”. Through skills development, coaching, leadership programmes, networking and access to opportunities, academics receive the guidance they need to grow. Singh believes SU’s approach stands out nationally. “If you look at other universities in South Africa and you compare it to what we do, we really are the leaders.”
Among the projects closest to her heart is NAVU Mobility, founded in 2024 by SU master’s student Amohetsoe Shale to develop affordable prosthetic knee technology for people with limb loss. Singh also highlights a research-developed bacterial strain that is currently used in a pharmaceutical product.
Then there are the spin-out companies that begin as research projects and grow into ventures employing people and creating new skills. Accompanying founders through that uncertain journey is one of the most rewarding aspects of her work. “There are so many of these stories,” she says. “Every one of them is inspiring. We have wonderful spin-outs and working with them throughout the journey is a joy.”
Singh has learnt to recognise the drive behind a promising idea. Failure is common in commercialisation, yet she sees it as “a stepping stone to success” because it builds knowledge and new skills. Researchers sometimes struggle when they first move beyond academia, she notes, and sometimes the unlikely candidates find their footing and flourish.
The confidence to step forward
That instinct for possibility shapes Singh’s message to women during Women’s Month. “In our ecosystem, we’re seeing women growing, becoming bolder and taking chances. The female researchers at SU are very inspiring.”
Innovation doesn’t have to be a world-first invention, she argues. It can be anything capable of creating meaningful impact. Her advice is to ask questions, keep learning and speak about an idea, even when the answer may be no.
It’s a lesson she has shared with her 19-year-old daughter, a BSc student at SU. Singh’s husband and daughter often provide affectionate running commentary on her other great passion: plants. They joke that one more addition could turn their home into a nursery.
Her garden, filled with ornamental plants, trees, herbs, vegetables and bonsais, offers stillness after fast-paced days. She reads and watches videos to learn how to revive struggling plants, while friends have come to expect a plant as a birthday or Christmas gift. “Gardening is my calm space,” she says. “When I’m doing that, I’m not thinking 10 steps ahead about what I need to do tomorrow.”
Whether nurturing a plant, a researcher or an early-stage company, Singh is drawn to latent potential. Her philosophy is rooted in steady action: Small contributions accumulate and confidence grows through practice. Her motto is that ideas make a real difference in the world when someone is willing to carry them beyond the laboratory.
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