New Enterprise Competition – 2022
Back to Competitions | The University of Bristol’s New Enterprise Competition (NEC) is a business start-up competition that allows students, staff and alumni to pitch for a share of £35,000, legal support and business acceleration services, to develop a commercial or social enterprise. |
Winner: Milbotix
Zeke Steer, Robotics and Autonomous Systems (PhD) Student – £1,000 Engineers in Business Prize
Founded by a team of technologists, researchers, and clinical specialists, Milbotix is creating innovative digital technologies to enable better care for people experiencing communication difficulties, including people living with dementia. Socks are familiar, comfortable, and non-stigmatising. The smart socks alert carers to signs of (unverbalised) distress caused by pain, anxiety, or frustration. The smart socks aim to deliver a range of benefits for the 1.5 million people living in the UK with dementia, an autism spectrum disorder, or a learning disability. They have the potential to improve quality of life, reduce agitation, decrease the burden on families and carers, and save costs for health and social care.
Zeke Steer is pictured in the centre with two former New Enterprise Competition winners Hazel McShane (left) and Amber Probyn (right).
Winner: Route Zero
Albie Baker-Smith, Computer Science (MSC) Student – £1,000 Engineers in Business Prize
Travel is the largest source of emissions in the UK and is rising again post-covid, not falling. Route Zero’s mission is to stop catastrophic climate change, through a platform which helps individuals and organisations switch out high-emission travel for greener journeys.
Albie Baker-Smith (left) is pictured with co-founder Dan Brown.
Winner: Molydyn
Matt Bone, Advanced Composites (PhD) Student – £1,000 Engineers in Business Prize
Molydyn is a materials company that discovers sustainable materials at speed for a rapidly developing world. The company is driven to revolutionise the polymer industry by using the latest in computational chemistry and AI to create biobased materials for high-tech engineering applications. Molydyn is committed to driving the circular economy forward with a focus on creating new resins and coatings for the energy and aerospace sectors.
Positive feedback
The Engineers in Business prize fund allows us to flexibly support engineering students and engineering innovations through our established New Enterprise Competition which has been running for more than 20 years. We’ve had the pleasure of receiving this funding for several years now and the types of ideas it supports are always varied, exciting and inventive built off of customer need and curiosity.’
Faye Tromans
Senior Enterprise Adviser
University of Bristol