Our previous winners

Take a look at our previous winners!

2025 winners press release

Who are they?

We are very proud of the achievements of our winners, who have been selected from hundreds of applicants over more than a decade.

In that time, our winners have gone on to raise a combined total of over £200m in equity investment and grant funding, one has announced a £28m trade sale. We’ve also seen the winners expand overseas, enter commercial contracts, conduct clinical and industrial scale trials, and collectively double their number of employees.

Read about all our winners’ cutting-edge technologies below.

2025 winners

PlantSea

Plastic-free water-soluble films to replace PVOH for packaging applications

2025 Environment winner

Plantsea have developed a unique and scalable seaweed biorefining process to produce a new raw material to replace PVA/PVOH for the encapsulation of laundry detergents and chemicals. The product is cost comparative with PVOH, elastic, heat sealable, has a long shelf life, and is compliant with dissolution standards.

https://plantsea.co.uk/

“The standard of competition, the technologies that everybody's working on this year are so incredible, so amazing, so we’re really grateful, and a bit in shock. The prestige is immense for us. We're currently going through an investment round, so hopefully it's something that really helps us finish off. And of course, the cash is always super helpful for a startup company. It’ll help with legal fees, as we'd like to file a couple more patents, and we're now doing some more commercial deals with some potential customers, but also it will fund some key trials that we need to do.”

Alex Newnes, CTO and Co-Founder, Plantsea

Imperial College London

Electro-recycling of spent batteries for sustainable critical materials supply chain

Energy

We have developed a sustainable electro-recycling technology that selectively recovers high-value materials from end-of-life lithium-ion batteries. Using electricity instead of harmful chemicals, the process produces battery-grade materials for reuse, addressing critical mineral supply shortages, reducing carbon emissions, and enabling a circular battery supply chain to support net-zero goals.

https://profiles.imperial.ac.uk/xiaochu.wei16

Our finalists

Take a look at the finalists across the four competition categories.

CDotBio

Sugar-based delivery platform enabling next-generation crop protection

Enabling Technologies

We have developed a sugar-based delivery platform that helps crop protection products work more effectively at lower doses. It improves uptake, stability, and performance of both biological and chemical solutions, enabling more sustainable, precise, and scalable agriculture without changing how farmers apply products.

https://www.cdotbio.co.uk/

Our finalists

Take a look at the finalists across the four competition categories

Demeter Bio Limited

Bio-based water and oil repellent coating for textiles

Environment

AguaShield is a biodegradable and bio-based coating that replaces toxic "forever chemicals" (PFAS) used to make textiles water- and oil-resistant. Made from biopolymers, it matches the performance of conventional coatings without harming the environment, and works with existing manufacturing equipment.

https://www.demeter-bio.com/

Our finalists

Take a look at the finalists across the four competition categories

R3V Tech

Green solvent from biodiesel waste— 50× value uplift.

Environment

R3V Tech developed a green process technology that enable undesired crude glycerol from biodiesel process to be converted into green solvent and high-value chemicals in a single step through electrochemical transformation, increasing 50 times its market value, reducing waste management burdens and creating circular economy opportunities for biodiesel producers.

www.r3vtech.com

Our finalists

Take a look at the finalists across the four competition categories

Cardiff Catalysis Institute

Hydro-Oxy: in-situ hydrogen peroxide synthesis for sustainable chemical production

2025 Enabling Technologies winner

Hydro-Oxy is a new innovative catalytic technology decoupling chemical synthesis from industrial hydrogen peroxide production. Generating hydrogen peroxide in-situ, we can achieve significant improvements in process intensification, safety and efficiency, reducing environmental impact and lowering manufacturing costs, whilst rivalling the performance metrics of the state-of-the-art industrial processes.

https://hydro-oxy.com/

“We’re absolutely flabbergasted. This is recognition of this technology and over 20 years of hard work from previous students and members of the team – it’s fantastic. The first thing is the recognition for such a prestigious award from the RSC. This will allow us to have very meaningful conversations and give us that clout, to show that we know what we’re doing and that we are a big players in this field.”

Richard Lewis, Entrepreneurial Lead, Hydro-Oxy (Cardiff Catalysis Institute)

Lancaster University

OSPC: the new carbon material for safer, longer-lasting lithium-ion batteries

Energy

OSPC is a newly discovered porous carbon material that improves the safety and durability of lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles and renewable energy storage. When added in small amounts to graphite anodes, it suppresses lithium dendrite formation, reducing fire risk while remaining compatible with existing battery manufacturing processes.

Our finalists

Take a look at the finalists across the four competition categories.

University of Manchester

DEUTEROSE: enabling research and diagnostics with clean cheap isotopic sugars

Enabling Technologies

Deuterose is a new biotechnology for clean manufacture of speciality isotopically labelled sugars. These sugars are essential for a range of research and medical applications, but their high cost makes them prohibitively expensive. Deuterose reduces costs by an order of magnitude - enabling frontier bioscience research and cutting edge diagnostic techniques.

https://www.deuterose.co.uk/

Our finalists

Take a look at the finalists across the four competition categories

University of Liverpool

Synthetic Teixobactins: multitargeting antibiotics to combat resistant superbugs

2025 Health winner

The Univeristy of Liverpool have pioneered a robust, scalable, and automated synthetic platform to develop a new class of antibiotics—synthetic teixobactins. These antibiotics effectively eliminate drug-resistant bacterial pathogens without detectable resistance. Leveraging cost-effective components, our technology offers a compelling solution to antimicrobial resistance, potentially saving millions of lives around the world.

https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/people/ishwar-singh

“It's an amazing feeling. It was a very tough competition so I'm actually in shock at the minute that we won. This will have a huge impact for us in the sense that it gives us recognition, but also gives us a structure at the same time. We're already planning to open a spin-out, so this is going to help in the sense that I can free my time in lab and focus more on the business side of things.”

Anish Parmer, CEO and Co-Founder, University of Liverpool

AlphaVectors Biotech

Fridge-free nanoparticles for global RNA-based vaccines and therapeutics delivery

Health

We have developed virus-inspired nanoparticles that deliver RNA-based vaccines and therapeutics without refrigeration. By mimicking how viruses naturally protect and deliver genetic material, our platform achieves room-temperature stability and lower doses, eliminating cold-chain dependence and making next-generation RNA medicines accessible to patients worldwide, including in low-resource settings.

Our finalists

Take a look at the finalists across the four competition categories

NANOPLUME

Scalable Bio-Aerogel platform for cold chain and thermal insulation applications

2025 Energy winner

Nanoplume are scaling the manufacturing of Bio-Aerogel, a nanoporous, ultra-light biomaterial with industry-leading thermal insulation. Initially engineered for cold chain packaging, its fine-tuned structure ensures precise temperature control across logistics, packaging, and construction. Made from renewable feedstocks, it enhances energy and space efficiency whilst promoting circularity in sustainable thermal applications.

https://plantsea.co.uk/

“It's a very nice recognition from a prestigious institution like the Royal Society of Chemistry. It's actually kind of a push and we feel that we are doing really well, so we are very happy with this kind of recognition.”

Theresa Hoffmann, CEO and Co-Founder,NANOPLUME

University of Bath

Drugs for undruggable proteins using intracellular peptide discovery

Health

Revolver Therapeutics develops peptide drugs against “undruggable” proteins such as transcription factors. Our platform generates and tests drug candidates directly inside living cells, ensuring they are functional and cell-active. This enables new treatments for cancer and neurodegenerative diseases where conventional drug approaches have failed.

https://www.revolvertherapeutics.com/

Our finalists

Take a look at the finalists across the four competition categories

Brilliant Dyes

Low-energy, closed-loop algae dyes extraction and sustainable fixation in textiles

Environment

We have developed two patent pending technologies: a continuous low-energy, closed loop natural dyes extraction process and a sustainable dyes fixation using green chemicals. Together, it reduces energy use over 80%, cut water pollution in textile dyeing by 90% and saves the costs by 50% over other natural dyes.

https://www.brilliantdyes.com/

Our finalists

Take a look at the finalists across the four competition categories

2024 winners

Ignota Labs

SAFEPATH: Causal AI-driven mechanistic understanding of drug safety failures

2024 Health winner

Ignota Labs have developed a novel AI platform to understand the root causes of safety problems in drug discovery. By combining Deep Learning models to predict how the drug interacts with the body, with algorithms over complex data, we can understand the biological impact of those interactions, enabling drug failure turnaround.

ignotalabs.ai

“We're currently raising our seed round so being able to tell investors that we've won such a prestigious award from this institution is definitely going to help us along our way and really give that validation that we need.”

Layla Hosseini-Gerami, Chief Data Science Officer, Ignota Labs

Imperial College London

Re-inventing Solid-Phase Peptide Synthesis

2024 Enabling Technologies winner

Imperial College London have innovated solid-phase peptide synthesis (SPPS) to allow the synthesis of multiple peptide fragments on a single bead, departing from the conventional method of synthesising only one fragment per bead. This advancement promises to significantly boost the productivity of existing peptide analogues and facilitate the synthesis of first-in-class analogues.

https://www.ncl.ac.uk/pharmacy/people/profile/othmanalmusaimi.html

“It's a very nice recognition from a prestigious institution like the Royal Society of Chemistry. It's actually kind of a push and we feel that we are doing really well, so we are very happy with this kind of recognition.”

Dr Othman Almusaimi, Lecturer in Medicinal Chemistry, Orthogonal Peptides

ThioTech

Sustainable sulfur containing technologies for capturing toxic metal compounds

2024 Environment winner

ThioTech utilise the low-cost and abundant industrial waste product, elemental sulfur, combined with sustainably sourced chemicals, to make high sulfur content materials that can be used as next-generation absorbents to remove toxic metal residues from water, oil, and gas, thereby preventing environmental release and contamination, potentially outperforming incumbent technologies.

www.thiotech.co.uk

“The competition was really stiff, everybody in there deserved it, and I'm really honoured and also emboldened to see that finally a panel of true experts value the technology as much as we do. It's incredible, and that really gives us the motivation to go forward.”

Liam Dodd, Chief Operating Officer, ThioTech Ltd

University of Cambridge

H2Upgrade - hydrogen production from industrial waste gases and solvents

2024 Energy winner

Hydrogen is a promising carbon-free fuel but its current production methods rely on fossil methane or expensive electrolysers. In contrast, H2Upgrade converts zero-value industrial wastes into high-purity H2, enabling the waste-producing companies to become H2 producers and consumers, thus, promoting the H2 economy and distributed manufacturing.

“The prize money is obviously a big help to us - we'll be using that to help us incorporate as a business, do more micro-research and help us find partners - but I think as well, there's the recognition. This gives us an opportunity to go out, get some traction and really speak to new partners and build the company. It's really great to win this award.”

Professor Stuart Scott, University of Cambridge

Previous winners

We are delighted to announce our winners!

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