NEWS | SAINSBURY MANAGEMENT FELLOWS BOOSTS THE PRIZE FUND FOR 2022 ENGINEERS IN BUSINESS CHAMPION OF CHAMPIONS FINAL

The ten university teams competing in the Engineers in Business Champion of Champions business innovation competition on 28 October are now vying for an even larger prize pot. The alumni of Engineers in Business Fellowship – The Sainsbury Management Fellows – are sponsoring a £5,000 Enterprise Award, taking the total prize pot to £15,000.

The Enterprise Award will be presented to one team that, in the judges’ expert opinion, has the greatest potential for commercialisation. The Enterprise Award is open to both categories of finalists – Start-ups and Big Ideas – and the selection of the winner will be based on their three-minute business idea pitches during which they must convey the ingenuity of their ideas, relevance to customers and viability.

As well as providing vital finance to help the winner of the Enterprise Award continue to develop their product, it demonstrates a high level of confidence in the team to succeed with its innovation.

In 2019 the Enterprise Award was sponsored by Lord Sainsbury of Turville and it was won by a team of postgraduate students from the University of Greenwich who set up Rapid Bio-Labs, an AI-driven digital cell-counting service that dramatically reduces the amount of time researchers have to spend counting cells, giving them more time to focus on other vital research. Rapid Bio-Labs is up and running!

Last year’s Enterprise Award was sponsored by two individual Sainsbury Management Fellows, and the award was presented to a team of biomedical engineering students at Imperial College London. The team invented Paige, a unique low-cost, multiline braille display featuring 18 lines of braille (others have just a few lines visible). The Paige prototype is currently being trialled in schools.

The 2022 contestants have brilliant past Enterprise Award holders as role models and will no doubt take inspiration from their success and do their best to wow the judges. We wish them good luck!