White Rose Research Students pitch at FERA

This week, graduate students, who form part of the White Rose Doctoral Training Programme in Mechanistic Biology, sponsored by the BBSRC, took part in a Molecules to Market session at the FERA Research Institute just outside York. The format was essentially the same as usual, but the level of expectation of "the science" was higher than usual. Student teams comprised second year PhD students from York, Leeds and Sheffield, in teams of 5, who had been given a month to formulate a business idea in the area of Biotechnology. There were seven teams ranging from Helios: a synthetic biology solution to photo-voltaic cells, to Rescicler, whose mission is to recycle laboratory equipment in an environmentally friendly way with a bonus, that they will be helping relatively impoverished schools access low cost instruments to help the STEM agenda. 

As a member of the three person judging panel, accompanied by the Chair of the session, Dr Kevin Parker, we listened to the pitches, asked questions, and then had to pick a winner! Essentially we were looking for an innovative piece of Science combined with a competitive and feasible commercial proposal. I think I can speak for all of the judges, when I say that the presentations and the way in which the ideas were communicated were of a uniformly high standard. If there was one general comment, the presentation slides could in some cases, have been improved by clarity and conciseness in expressing the financial opportunity and the novelty of each proposal, but this can be easily overcome with a little practice. On the whole, there was very little to distinguish each proposal from a scientific perspective: the differences came through in the way each team articulated the commercial potential and the route to market. Of course this is the main objective, and the whole basis of the concept is to raise awareness of the challenges of commercialisation of Science.

The winners were Poweccentric, with a device aimed at reducing the long term problems associated with a lack of (the right form of) exercise in the over '60s. It wasn't so much the ingenuity of their idea, which was fine, but it was more a consequence of their well-researched and passionate presentation. The combination of rigorous science, market research and a timeliness of the invention, made the Poweccentric pitch and Q & A, the most impressive. The close second in the competition where the Fatberg, green elimination company, who had devised an engineered lipase to drive out the evil blockages that seem to be clogging up our sewers: a really excellent idea, which has got to be a a better long term plan, compared with building more sewers!

Thank you once again to the teams and the organisers for a very enjoyable and rewarding day in York: it really is encouraging to see students getting to grips with the applied aspects of their research, which in my view really enhances their perspective on Science and gives them all more food for thought, for the next stage in their careers.