Submitted by Administrator on Thu, 30/06/2016 - 15:57
The event took place from 21st June to 25th June. Solutions were judged on innovative nature and commercial viability. Teams presented their solutions on stage at CUTEC’s flagship Technology Ventures Conference (TVC) in front of investors, academics, students, and incubators.
The winners of the UK’s first Bio-Hackathon are teammates Evgeny Hana, Pablo, Claus, Kelvin and Shannon part of, self named, team-alpha. During 72 sleepless, caffeinated hours of biology prototyping, in the University of Cambridge state-of-the-art biology labs, they devised an idea, built a prototype and then pitched their idea, in front of a crowd of 300 people. 5 industry judges selected Team-Alpha based on their product an "alpha brick". It is a means of completely automating the design and fabrication of complex DNA parts called "bio-bricks". The potential application of their invention is the increased efficiency/speed of development of antibiotics, disease resistant crops and even new strains of yeast for more delicious beer!
You can find their presentation slides and video here >>>.
The juding panel was made up of industry experts and investors. The judges were: Richard Hammond (Head of biology at Cambridge Consultants - engineering consultancy), Kasia Ladds (Cambridge Enterprise, University technology transfer), Mark Hammond (Imperial Innovations a publicly listed investment firm), Steven O'Connell (Head of startup factory - Indiebio) and Paul Hughes (Head of Future Business Centre - Startup company factory). They are experts in the commercialisation of ideas that come from amazing minds.
The team won £1500 and a place at the Judge Business School accelerator. The team is now going to enter the Judge Business schools autumn accelerator program to build a business and take their technology to market. They are beginning discussions with investors on attracting funding.