Students at the School of Business and Management have the opportunity to become social entrepreneurs of the future as they compete for the coveted Hult Prize.
The HULT Prize, also known as the “Nobel Prize for Students”, is the world's largest competition for social good start-ups emerging from universities. Each year, a HULT Prize challenge is announced, aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, inspiring and enabling the world's brightest minds to solve its greatest problems.
The competition started with over 130,000 teams representing 150 countries and 3,500 universities in the first round. Dr Evangelos Markopoulos from the School of Business and Management (SBM), organised the on campus competition at QMUL. Seventy two QMUL students participated in 18 team and five of our teams made it to the second (regional) round of the competition. The regional winners get to advance to the accelerator phase.
Team AlgaX, made up of three SBM students (Lucas Bagdadi, Abdinasir Sharif and Marcos Ulloa) and one student from SEMS (Ahmad Alquaid), made it to the accelerator phase. They will be pitching their innovation to investors and high-tech companies in Boston (USA) in August this year. This is an amazing achievement - only 1 in 200 teams participating in the regionals make it to the accelerator.
This year, AlgaX will be competing in the accelerator phase with only one other UK team. AlgaX are developing sustainable modular photobioreactor algae panels for capturing CO2 emissions whilst producing Omega 3 oil and plant-based protein (super foods).
Marcos Souto Ulloa, Team AlgaX member and MSc Entrepreneurship and Innovation student, said: 'The School of Business and Management has been really helpful for boosting our new startup. Providing us with workshops & funds designed to improve our chances of winning international competitions such as the Hult Prize and helping us with mentors willing to guide us in several ways. We won a place at the Hult Prize accelerator thanks to the support of SBM.'
Dr Evangelos said about the team: ‘I could not be more proud and happy for my students, and words cannot express their transformation during this 11 month journey. Reaching the final stage of such a global competition indicates their intelligence, commitment, dedication, passion, endless hard work but more than that their values, ethos and respect to each other, to SBM and to QMUL.'6 of the 30 teams that take part in the accelerator will be chosen to pitch their innovation at the United Nations in September 2020, with the chance of winning the Hult Prize Trophy and US$ 1,000,000.