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
 
 

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
 
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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
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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
 
 
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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
 
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