A winning night at the Oxford Trust Enterprise Awards 2016
July 1, 2016
Science entrepreneurs have been celebrating and celebrated at the eighth Oxford Trust Enterprise Awards, with prizes going to some of the county’s top innovation businesses and people.
The Oxford Trust Enterprise Awards 2106 took place on Tuesday 28th June at the Kings Centre on Osney Mead. Over ninety guests from all corners of Oxfordshire’s innovation ecosystem, including the Trust’s patrons Sir Martin and Audrey, Lady Wood, enjoyed a cocktail reception and gala dinner before the awards presentations began.
This year the Enterprise Awards were open exclusively to participants in Venturefest Oxford’s growing portfolio of ‘pitching’ activities that are held throughout the year; activities that include Pitchfest (held on the Harwell Oxford Campus) and ‘Pitching for Success’, which is run at the main Venturefest Oxford event every summer.
This new approach to the Enterprise Awards recognises the breadth of innovative companies operating across the county and highlights the individual entrepreneurs and start-ups that are already making an impact, even though they’re just starting out on their innovation journey.
The award categories were:
- TRITEQ Best Pitch Awards for life science, hard-tech and digital companies who give the best 3-minute presentation to explain their business idea.
- BARCLAYS Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2016 recognises and celebrates the young founders (under 40) of science and technology companies featured in the pitching programme who are really going places.
- THE OXFORD TRUST Innovation Award is given to a science, technology or engineering-based organisation that has already distinguished itself in the market place.
And the winners were:
TRITEQ Best Pitch Awards
Life Sciences – Edward Bruce-White, Combat Medical
Hard-tech – Mike Lawton, Oxford Space Systems
BARCLAYS Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2016
Dave Sherwood – Bibliotech
Dave founded Bibliotech whilst studying PPE as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. He describes Bibliotech as the ‘Spotify’ for Textbooks as it provides university students any academic book, on any device, at any time.
Entrepreneurship seems to run in Dave’s blood. As a student back in his home country of Australia – Dave set up Teach Learn Grow, a tuition and mentoring service for rural and indigenous Western Australian primary school pupils. The service reached 18 schools with 500 tutors engaging with over 1000 primary students. He launched Bibliotech in October 2013 with seed funding from Synergy Energy Ltd and a number of angel investors and the company is now partnered with Oxford University Press.
The Oxford Trust Innovation Award Adaptix
Adaptix is changing x-ray imaging technology by developing an x-ray machine the size of a laptop that is portable, thereby reducing the number of hospital visits and providing access in hard-to reach areas. The company has been supported by bodies such as Innovate UK and the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council in recognition of the potential for this new technology to transform healthcare and disrupt a global industry.
