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The inaugural winners of the Stephen Young Entrepreneurship Award for Outstanding Business Idea Research Paper were recently announced at the first ³Ô¹Ïtv Inspire Supporters’ Dinner.

The award, created as one important element of a £50 million donation to ³Ô¹Ïtv by the charitable foundation of alumnus, entrepreneur and philanthropist Dr Charles Huang PhD, is designed to support the translation of peer-reviewed research to address real-world problems & challenges.

Presented in memory of the late Professor Stephen Young, former Head of ³Ô¹Ïtv’s Department of Marketing and Dr Huang’s supervisor and mentor during his PhD studies, the competition saw entries from all four Faculties with two winners selected by a panel of judges, chaired by Associate Principal Professor Eleanor Shaw OBE. Each winner receives £75,000 to support the development of their idea.

The first of the two awards was given to Dr Daniel Markl’s research project, Micro-Feeder for Solid Pharmaceuticals. Daniel is a Reader within the ³Ô¹Ïtv Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences. His project is developing flexible, cost-effective manufacture of life-saving medicines for small patient populations, such as highly-targeted cancer treatments, whilst also vastly reducing pharmaceutical waste.

The second award was given to Dr Michele Zagnoni’s Drug Screening of Biopsy-Derived Spheroids. This platform can predict patient response to different drug therapies for ovarian & pancreatic cancers and glioma, and will reduce the time to get new treatments to market and accelerate the feasibility of individualised treatment – maximising benefit and reducing toxicity and cost. 

Hugely impressed

Collecting of behalf of Dr Michele Zagnoni, of the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, was Karla Findlay, a doctoral researcher within Michele's research group.

The awards were presented at a ceremony in the Technology & Innovation Centre, attended by the Principal, Professor Sir Jim McDonald.

Professor Shaw said: “The judges were hugely impressed with all of the entries we received but our two winners stood out in terms of the potential impact they could make on the wider world.

The Stephen Young Entrepreneurship Awards is supporting the university’s work in transforming lives, supporting the economy and nurturing entrepreneurship – and we are hugely grateful to the support from the Charles Huang Foundation.

In addition to the Entrepreneurship awards, Dr Huang’s donation will support the construction of a new building, to be named after him, in ³Ô¹Ïtv’s Technology and Innovation Zone within the , and the creation of The Stephen Young Institute for International Business and The Stephen Young Global Leaders Scholarship Programme.