Academic Innovation Category
Academic Commercial Enterprise
For the QMUL spin-out company or commercial agreement with an industrial partner that has generated the most revenues and/or reached a significant commercial milestone, leading to an increase the value of the opportunity.
Winner
Vision Semantics Limited
Vision Semantics Limited (VSL) spun-off from QMUL in 2007, based on Professor Sean Gong’s research into visual computation. VSL developed the computer vision technologies and world-leading commercial platform for intelligent video analytics solutions for security and business intelligence domains.
Finalists
Actual Experience PLC
Actual Experience’s analytics provide a real-time, data-driven view of what end-users would say about the quality of a company’s digital products and services, and why. Their customers can analyse everything that impacts the experience quality in their digital supply chains, for any service, type of user, or the Internet of Things.
Non-Invasive Early Detection of Pancreatic Cancer in Urine Samples
Pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is one of the deadliest cancers, for which no significant improvements have been made in the last several decades. Biomarkers have recently been discovered that can differentiate early stage PDAC patients from healthy individuals.
Academic Non-Commercial Enterprise
For non-commercial Impact activity.
Winner
Creativeworks London
CreativeWorks London (CWL) was London's Knowledge Exchange Hub, funded by the AHRC. Researchers, creative entrepreneurs and businesses have been brought together to explore the issues impacting on the capital's creative economy. The £4.8M project has, over four years, funded collaborative research, innovative knowledge exchange and provided substantial knowledge for SME's, policy makers and researchers.
Finalists
Centre for Studies of Home
The Centre for Studies of Home (CSH) was established in 2011 in partnership between QMUL and The Geffrye Museum of the Home. It's an international hub for research, learning and public engagement on past and present homes and spans work on the domestic sphere (including everyday life, architecture, interior design and material cultures) to the significance of home beyond the domestic (including broader ideas about dwelling, belonging, privacy and security).
Multilingual Capital Project
Multilingual Capital is based in the School of Languages, Linguistics and Film, and it aims to engage with all groups impacted by multilingualism — parents, children, support services, school and the general public. It takes a particular interest in East End communities, but also welcomes dialogue with groups across London and the UK, and indeed cross-national dialogue, to share and develop insights about multilingualism.
Proof of Concept Project
This award is for the proof of concept project which has achieved one or a number of milestones that could lead to a significant commercial or non-commercial enterprise in the future.
Winner
Locomotion System for a Robotic Active Capsule Endoscope
The pill-shaped mini-cameras called ‘capsule endoscopes’ (CE) that the patients swallow to allow the inside of their intestines to be examined by the doctors have revolutionised the landscape of gastrointestinal (GI) investigation. Since 2012, the QMUL team in a joint collaboration co-led by Dr Shaheed, a robotics scientist from SEMS and Dr Mo Thaha, a bowel cancer surgeon from SMD, Blizard institute has developed the first prototype of a novel locomotion system for a CE. The prototype system when steered through a phantom colon, achieved speeds faster than existing CE, could be steered and controlled from the outside.
Finalists
High-Strength, Light-Weight Materials by Length-Scale Engineering
In collaboration with Morganic Metal Solutions Ltd, a UK based SME, a manufacturing technique that can create 3D shaped engineering components to their final form that can be ‘length-scale engineered’ to have extraordinary strength. The process is relatively cheap and energy efficient and allows components to be design in new ways that were not possible using traditional methods. The process is scalable and can be automated to give a high degree of microstructural control for ‘tuneable’ mechanical and physical properties.
Qm107 A Novel Therapy for Wet Age Related Macular Degeneration
Wet age-related macular degeneration (Wet AMD) is the leading cause of vision loss amongst the aging population. Using funds derived from a Queen Mary Innovations Proof of Concept grant we have discovered a potently anti-angiogenic drug, QM107 which targets an alternative pathway to VEGF, can be chemically synthesized and is small enough to be administered as eye drops. This molecule shows efficacy in the leading murine pre-clinical model of this disease and we are now looking to obtain funding to perform comprehensive pre-clinical toxicology with a view to taking this drug towards phase 1 and 2 clinical trials.
Bela: The Embedded Platform for Ultra-Low Latency Audio and Sensor Processing
Bela, formerly known as BeagleRT, is an embedded hardware and software platform for creating musical instruments and interactive audio systems. Aimed at the maker community of hobbyists, engineers and electronic musicians, Bela features high-performance audio, analog and digital I/O on a small embedded computer board. The software environment features latency (delay) of less than 1ms, far lower than any comparable platform, and an easy-to-use development environment which loads in the user's browser.
The Bruce Dickinson Award for Academic Entrepreneur of the Year
This award is for an individual that has demonstrated significant in-year entrepreneurial activity.
Winner
Dr Hamit Soyel
Dragonfly is at the forefront of visual science, featuring an innovative biological computational model that replicates how the human eye and brain process visual information in the first few seconds of viewing content. Supported with initial funding from the college EPSRC funded Impact Acceleration Account, Dr Sovel undertook a secondment at Black Swan to help develop the product. Dragonfly soon took off within the company attracting lots of client interest.
Finalists
Dr Josh Reiss
Dr. Reiss and his team have created intelligent processing tools that automate much of the audio production process. Novel systems were devised that exploit advances in audio engineering and knowledge of human sound perception in order to manipulate audio much the same way a professional would operate a mixing desk. A spin-out company based around this, LandR, was formed in 2012 with QMUL as a major shareholder. LandR has experienced continual and rapid growth in its user base, company size and valuation since founding.
Prof Morag Shiach
With an extensive experience of leading complex multi-partner projects, Dr Morag has been the director of Creativeworks London and is responsible for its successful trajectory. The platform, created in 2012, sought to provide a strategic overview of London’s creative economy in partnership with many existing national and local hubs and networks. It was a massive challenge as CWL had a unique opportunity to observe, research and support London’s changing relationship with the creative economy.