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Working with business:

Biotechnology young entrepreneurs scheme

A few more places have been made available for this year's competition

Application deadline: extended to 2 July 2010

Teams benefit from entrepreneurial awareness training, and present their plans for hypothetical businesses to real entrepreneurs, financiers and industrialists.

So far, over 2000 postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers have benefited from the mentoring, practical workshops and advice from this competition.

The competition is supported by a large number of companies and co-organised by BBSRC and UNIEI.

How to apply

Apply via the Biotechnology YES website.

The 2009 competition final was held in London on 14 December 2009.

Case studies

Winning team 2009 - Gluten Replacement Technologies Ltd

A team of early career scientists from University of Cambridge and Imperial College London impressed judges with their proposal for a hypothetical company called Gluten Replacement Technologies Ltd, which produces an imaginary product called GlutaSafe - a cheap, non-allergenic gluten replacement.

Winning team 2008 – Ovega

A team of bioscientists from the University of Reading impressed the panel of judges with their proposal for a hypothetical company called Ovega and its revolutionary new product which aims to produce vegetarian omega-3 oil from food industry waste.

Duration: 0:03:24. Video transcript. Video and audio help. You can also view the video on YouTube.

Winning team 2007 - Cambridge Quantum Technologies

A team of bioscientists from the University of Cambridge scooped top prize with their proposal for a hypothetical company called Cambridge Quantum Technologies and its revolutionary approach to analysing blood chemistry with a hand-held device that harnesses fluorescing quantum dots.

Winning team 2006 - Phytofend

Scientists from Rothamsted Research and their hypothetical business plan for a company called Phytofend. Phytofend's revolutionary product, SlugFast, is a genetically modified Hosta plant. SlugFast expresses a novel appetite suppressing protein, which upon ingestion, causes slugs to stop feeding.

Winning team 2005 - Biochiral Ltd

Scientists from University of Glasgow and their hypothetical business plan for a company called Biochiral Ltd. Their cutting edge plan was to develop chiral amino acids as the basis for drugs with greater safety and efficacy in a cost-effective and environmentally-friendly process.

Winning team 2004 - Hi-Tef

Five scientists from the Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich, affiliated to the University of East Anglia. They presented an imaginary new technology that would revolutionise the production of ethanol. The team, named Hi-Tef, had developed a system that increased efficiency and yield by combining the distillation and fermentation parts of the production process in one stage.

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