Thank you to Veronica Hera, MCR President, for her summary of the event.
This year’s Hughes Hall Enterprise Award Final pitching session took place on the 6th June at our wonderful college! On the day, four teams competed against each other to convince the judges that their business idea is the one worth investing in and win the £1000 prize sponsored by Cambridge Digital Innovation (CDI).
The first team to take the floor was MOFTech Therapeutics, presenting a targeted drug delivery system developed by Erin Holdsworth, Tariq Hussein, Mia Charlesworth, Adrian Ho and Noppasorn Suphannarat – a group of passionate NanoDTC students wishing to make a difference in the treatment of pancreatic cancer.
The MOFTech Therapeutics team and the DiscoTech team present their pitches to the judges.
Next, we heard from DiscoTech, a platform to develop new drugs by unlocking the potential of natural products, created by Joshua Newington, Matt Greening and Emilia Taylor – a team based on an Oxford-Cambridge collaboration. Although Emilia was unfortunately unable to join us on the day, this team is a perfect example of what Oxbridge students can achieve when working together.
The third team up for consideration was Hebe technologies – an app which uses machine learning for sleep improvement. This idea, put forward by Yizhou Yu, Civia Zi-Yu Chen, Suleyman Noordeen and Poh Wang with advice from their mentors is based on cutting-edge research in psychology and aims to bring everyone one step closer to a good night’s sleep.
Hebe Technologies and Renewable Road present their enterprise ideas at the 2023 HHES final.
Last but not least, we had Renewable Road, a globally scalable initiative tackling the energy crisis through the use of solar panels. The team – Orlando Timmerman, Felipe Begliomini, Peisong Zheng and Andrés Gonzaléz – was also previously shortlisted in the Carbon Zero Climate Challenge and presented an ambitious plan to solve one of the most pressing issues of our times.
After an evening of exciting pitches and lively Q&A sessions, all participants were able to relax over some food and drinks, while the judges made their final decision.
In the end, after a lengthy deliberation, Karl Prince, Direct of Knowledge Innovation at the CDI, announced this year’s winner: DiscoTech!
Both Joshua and Matt were delighted to receive the £1000 cash prize from CDI and told us they intend to use the money to partly fund the first development stage of their business. Watch them after receiving the prize below!
Rupert Pearce-Gould, our judge, and chairman of the competition, said “Congratulations to Veronica Hera running the first post-COVID Hughes Hall Enterprise competition (number 8). The quality was very high and all explained how they could impact on society. Judging such a diverse range of projects is always difficult and we were impressed by the standard of presentations and the talented teams that had been assembled.”
A big thank you to everyone who contributed to the 2023 Hughes Hall Enterprise Awards! Stay tuned for next year’s edition which will, once again, aim to reward innovative, sustainable and out-of-the-box thinking.
See our fantastic winners talking about their enterprise and their award!
12.6.23
