Aberdeen graduates reach Converge Challenge final

Aberdeen graduates reach Converge Challenge final

The University of Aberdeen has finalists in all three categories of this year's Converge Challenge.

Scotland’s leading company creation competition and entrepreneurial development programme for students, graduates and staff from the country’s universities offers a £170,000 prize pot to the winners.

This year’s Aberdeen finalists are all recent PhD graduates from the University and include two Royal Society of Edinburgh Enterprise Fellows in Rotimi Alabi and Fiona Rudkin, who have been shortlisted in the Converge Challenge category.

The Converge Challenge award categories and nominees are:

  • Converge Challenge (for those with an established idea) – Fiona Rudkin, mycoBiologics; Rotimi Alabi, RAB-Microfluidics
  • KickStart (for early stage ideas) - Liam Mc Morrow, Insulin PenPal
  • Social Enterprise (for ideas that will have a positive impact on social and environmental issues) - Rana Abu-Mounes, Al Mushkah

The University has a strong track record in the Converge Challenge in recent years.  Last year’s competition saw Erika Grant win the Social Enterprise category with Project TurnKey, a social enterprise that empowers people to see a life beyond prostitution.

Commenting on the finalists, Dr Olga Kozlova, Director of Converge Challenge, said:

“Every year the Converge Challenge competition gets stronger and this year looks like being the most competitive yet. Participants have put a lot of effort into describing their markets and customer interactions rather than focus on technology development. There is a strong ethical focus in many applications aiming to improve quality of life through innovations targeting nine sectors of the Scottish Economy.”

Dr Ann Lewendon, from the University’s Research & Innovation team, said: “It is encouraging to see the success of four recent PhD students from the University in the Converge Challenge competition.  All of the businesses being developed by our shortlisted entrepreneurs show great promise in their different fields.”

Business descriptions:

Fiona Rudkin - mycoBiologics

Invasive fungal infections (IFIs) kill 1.5 million people every year.  A major problem is the lack of accurate, discriminative diagnostic tests and ineffective treatment options.  mycoBiologics has a platform for generating monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) designed to combat these issues.  Our current portfolio of IP-protected mAbs target Candida - one of the ‘Big Four’ major human fungal pathogens - and have already been validated in early stage diagnostic and preclinical therapeutic settings.  Initially these will be marketed as fungal diagnostic products through partnering with existing companies to incorporate appropriate mAbs into a new generation of single and multiplexed portable, point-of-care diagnostic tests.  There is also significant potential for future development of mAb-based therapeutics using this platform.    

Rotimi Alabi – RAB-Microfluidics

Diagnosing early, potential failure of heavy machinery is critical to operations across many industries. For this reason, industrial businesses in 2016 spent £1.84Bn on state-of-the-art Oil Condition Monitoring (OCM) techniques. These techniques however, are inefficient, expensive and environmentally unfriendly. For example, additional £2.1Bn was spent in 2016 on breakdowns, repairs and costs associated with downtime losses, highlighting inefficiency of current OCM technologies.  RAB-Microfluidics offers cutting-edge microfluidic ‘Lab-on-a-chip’ technology that delivers OCM analysis a 1000x faster and 10x cheaper than the current approaches.  This offers customers real-time continuous monitoring, early problem diagnosis, rapid decision making, enhanced efficiency and cost savings.

Dr Liam McMorrow - Insulin PenPal

Adelie Health is a health technology company which aims to make life easier for people self-managing chronic diseases. We apply insights from behavioural economics to improve individual decision making resulting in better health outcomes. Our initial focus is on type 1 diabetes with the intention to apply our solutions to type 2 diabetes and other chronic diseases in the future.  Insulin PenPal, our flagship product, helps users administer more accurate insulin doses solving two existing problems. First, it increases usage of insulin dose calculators which can improve diabetic control. Second, it captures data enhancing healthcare professionals’ ability to remote monitor and deliver patient centred care.

Rana Abu-Mounes - Al-Mushkah

Al-Mushkah will be a social enterprise that provides consultation and training services to public and private sectors to help improve the integration, cultural assimilation and economic development of Muslim and BME women (including refugees of Muslim background) in Scotland. The business organises and delivers workshops and events for supporting Muslim and BME women in general and Syrian refugees in particular to develop better a quality of life for themselves and contribute positively to the local economy and their host community in Scotland.    Al-Mushkah is a joint endeavour between students from the Universities of Aberdeen and Dundee.

 

Search News

Browse by Month

2024

  1. Jan
  2. Feb There are no items to show for February 2024
  3. Mar
  4. Apr There are no items to show for April 2024
  5. May There are no items to show for May 2024
  6. Jun There are no items to show for June 2024
  7. Jul There are no items to show for July 2024
  8. Aug There are no items to show for August 2024
  9. Sep There are no items to show for September 2024
  10. Oct There are no items to show for October 2024
  11. Nov There are no items to show for November 2024
  12. Dec There are no items to show for December 2024

2023

  1. Jan There are no items to show for January 2023
  2. Feb There are no items to show for February 2023
  3. Mar There are no items to show for March 2023
  4. Apr There are no items to show for April 2023
  5. May There are no items to show for May 2023
  6. Jun There are no items to show for June 2023
  7. Jul There are no items to show for July 2023
  8. Aug There are no items to show for August 2023
  9. Sep There are no items to show for September 2023
  10. Oct
  11. Nov There are no items to show for November 2023
  12. Dec

2022

  1. Jan
  2. Feb There are no items to show for February 2022
  3. Mar
  4. Apr There are no items to show for April 2022
  5. May
  6. Jun There are no items to show for June 2022
  7. Jul
  8. Aug
  9. Sep There are no items to show for September 2022
  10. Oct
  11. Nov There are no items to show for November 2022
  12. Dec There are no items to show for December 2022

2021

  1. Jan There are no items to show for January 2021
  2. Feb
  3. Mar
  4. Apr
  5. May
  6. Jun
  7. Jul
  8. Aug
  9. Sep
  10. Oct
  11. Nov
  12. Dec

2020

  1. Jan
  2. Feb
  3. Mar
  4. Apr
  5. May
  6. Jun
  7. Jul
  8. Aug There are no items to show for August 2020
  9. Sep There are no items to show for September 2020
  10. Oct There are no items to show for October 2020
  11. Nov
  12. Dec

2019

  1. Jan
  2. Feb
  3. Mar There are no items to show for March 2019
  4. Apr
  5. May
  6. Jun
  7. Jul
  8. Aug
  9. Sep
  10. Oct
  11. Nov
  12. Dec

2018

  1. Jan There are no items to show for January 2018
  2. Feb There are no items to show for February 2018
  3. Mar There are no items to show for March 2018
  4. Apr There are no items to show for April 2018
  5. May There are no items to show for May 2018
  6. Jun There are no items to show for June 2018
  7. Jul
  8. Aug
  9. Sep
  10. Oct
  11. Nov
  12. Dec

2017

  1. Jan
  2. Feb There are no items to show for February 2017
  3. Mar
  4. Apr
  5. May
  6. Jun
  7. Jul
  8. Aug There are no items to show for August 2017
  9. Sep
  10. Oct There are no items to show for October 2017
  11. Nov
  12. Dec There are no items to show for December 2017

2016

  1. Jan
  2. Feb
  3. Mar
  4. Apr
  5. May
  6. Jun
  7. Jul
  8. Aug There are no items to show for August 2016
  9. Sep
  10. Oct
  11. Nov There are no items to show for November 2016
  12. Dec

2014

  1. Jan
  2. Feb
  3. Mar
  4. Apr
  5. May
  6. Jun
  7. Jul
  8. Aug
  9. Sep There are no items to show for September 2014
  10. Oct
  11. Nov
  12. Dec

2012

  1. Jan There are no items to show for January 2012
  2. Feb There are no items to show for February 2012
  3. Mar There are no items to show for March 2012
  4. Apr There are no items to show for April 2012
  5. May There are no items to show for May 2012
  6. Jun There are no items to show for June 2012
  7. Jul There are no items to show for July 2012
  8. Aug There are no items to show for August 2012
  9. Sep
  10. Oct
  11. Nov There are no items to show for November 2012
  12. Dec There are no items to show for December 2012