I am delighted to inform you that SCI’s Bright SCIdea Challenge 2023 is now open for university team registrations.
The Bright SCIdea Challenge is an annual entrepreneurial competition which allows teams of STEM university students (both undergraduate and postgraduate) the opportunity to develop and showcase their business skills. Student teams are asked to develop a plausible scientific concept that could be commercialised for the benefit of society.
Teams who apply will:
- Receive free exclusive, accredited training to develop their business plan detailing how their idea can be taken to market.
- Gain access to SCI’s global network of innovators and boost their CV.
- Be in with the chance to win the £5,000 cash prize
Shortlisted teams are invited to pitch their idea to our panel of industry experts at the final and compete for significant cash prizes.
A summary of the 2022 event final can be found here and further information about the competition can be found on our website.
Last year winners, team ‘CardiaTec’ from University of Cambridge won the competition with their idea of using Artificial Intelligence as a tool to for Cardiovascular drug discovery and have recently secured a £1.4m pre-seed investment to further develop its AI-driven cardiovascular disease treatment. Read more about it here.
Additionally, 2019 winners ‘Plastech Innovation’ (now called ‘Sphera’), have since had their business incorporated and are continuing to build on their success with their sustainable innovative idea to reprocess waste plastic into useful aggregates for construction.
This year’s final is due to take place on 21 March 2023 hence we are now recruiting teams from UK, ROI and International universities to sign up to the challenge. The deadline to register is 1 November 2022.
Next steps:
- Invite students to visit our Bright SCIdea webpage to sign up for a free information session about Bright SCIdea on 12 October 2:00 – 3:00pm
- Teams can register their business idea as an initial application via SCI’s website
- Teams who register for the competition will be invited to join an in person training event and given access to free online training materials.
- Anyone interested in attending the training should contact BrightSCIdea@soci.org.
Good luck to all who apply.