University of Strathclyde, Glasgow – Tuesday 29th September 2015
Photon Force Limited from the University of Edinburgh has picked up the £60,000 first prize after beating off strong competition from five other finalists to win the coveted 2015 Converge Challenge Award for 2015 - Scotland's premier company creation competition jointly funded by The Scottish Funding Council and Scotland's eight research-intensive universities.
Richard Walker who created Photon Force at the University of Edinburgh was announced as the 2015 winner of the 6th Converge Challenge at a gala event in front of 200 guests at The Barony Hall, the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, addressed by Deputy First Minister, John Swinney MSP.
Richard received £35,000 to start his business - a significant financial injection at a vital stage in a young company's development, plus a further £25,000 in business support from Converge sponsors - legal firm Morton Fraser, patent attorneys Murgitroyd and accountants, Baker Tilly.
Photon Force Ltd will design, build and supply scientific sensors that can precisely detect and measure, single photons – the tiny building blocks of light.
In second and third place in the 2015 Converge Challenge Award were Caroline Barelle with her company Elasmogen Ltd., from the University of Aberdeen. Her company will look to create the next generation of drugs for the treatment of disease and Rebecca Pick from the University of Strathclyde with her business Pick Protection, a revolutionary personal attack alarm.
The event also produced four further Converge Challenge winners on the evening with Salman Tahir from University of Edinburgh winning the Converge KickStart Award with his company Xi software for protein cross-linking analysis.
Salman has identified a market opportunity for a specialist software that studies the cross-linking interactions in proteins to perform crucial data analysis of interest to molecular and structural biologists.
James McIlroy, from the University of Aberdeen picked up the Converge Social Enterprise Award for his company EuroBiotix, a social enterprise company that aims to make a specialist alternative treatment for Clostridium difficile (C.diff), a common hospital-acquired infection, more accessible.
Hannah Dimsdale from the University of Edinburgh won the Entrepreneurial Spirit Award for her business idea, Teadough - a doughnut 'recipe' kit directly inspired by that one of her ancestors, Elizabeth Dimsdale, who invented the doughnut, back in 1803 and Susan Mitschke from the University of Glasgow won the KickStart Digital Entrepreneur Award for her business, MindMate, a fun and interactive App developed to ease life for those with dementia. MindMate has been designed and optimised specifically for elderly people and is based around world leading university research and consultation by Glasgow University's Geriatric Medicine department.
Overall, this year, the prize fund extends well beyond £100,000 which includes a comprehensive support, mentoring and training package available to the winners.
To give an indication of scale and the exponential growth of Converge Challenge since its inception on 2010, the competition this year engaged with 17 of Scotland's Universities and Research Institutes with entries up 68% on last year - the total amount of applicants standing at 186, up from 111 in 2014. Overall, since it was established in 2010, Converge Challenge has received over 450 applicants covering all sectors, product and service-based businesses, commercial and social enterprises.
“Scotland’s schools, colleges and universities have a crucial role in helping our young people to realise their entrepreneurial potential."
"Converge is a great supporter of our Scotland CAN DO initiative. Investing in entrepreneurial education will mean that Scotland will be fostering the next generation of Scottish entrepreneurs and help the Higher Education sector fulfil its vision for Scotland to be a world-leading entrepreneurial and innovative nation, a CAN DO place for business."
Deputy First Minister John Swinney
"Converge Challenge remains a great motivator to help encourage more academic staff and students to exploit the commercial potential of their inventions and continue our remarkable quest for technological innovation.
This year has been quite exceptional. The diversity of applications from a wide geographical spread across Scotland universities and research institutes has shown our campuses remain full of inspirational innovators wanting to adopt Converge Challenge's array of bespoke learning and business mentoring support programmes that forearm these budding entrepreneurs with the appropriate skill-sets to get their business idea off the ground. I congratulate all our winners this year."
Olga Kozlova, Director of Converge Challenge
This year’s judging panel was once again headed by Converge Challenge Chairman, Mervyn Jones, together with Anton Ziolkowski is Professor of Petroleum Geoscience at the University of Edinburgh, Gillian MacAulay, who established the Strathclyde University Incubator Limited (SUI) ) as one of the leading environments for young companies looking to develop and grow, Douglas Anderson, a healthcare technology product design and product commercialisation process specialist, Professor David Milne, founder of Wolfson Microelectronics and Mary Jane Brouwers, an Investment Executive at Archangels.
Converge Challenge attracts a growing number of applicants year-on-year. As well as the largest cash prize of its type available, it gives students and members of staff of any Scottish university and research institute access to training and support to develop their entrepreneurial skills and explore commercial potential of their inventions.
A selection of FREE photographs from this year’s Awards Dinner can be found here.
