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University of Greenwich Engineering Graduates Win Engineers in Business Enterprise Award

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A team of engineering postgraduates from the University of Greenwich won the Engineers in Business Competition Grand Final to scoop the Engineers in Business Enterprise Award for the creation of a new medical research service.


The Rapid Bio-Labs team, led by Amira Eltokhy, who has a PhD in Engineering, won £5,000 for the development of an AI-driven digital cell-counting service that will dramatically reduce the amount of time researchers spend counting cells, giving them more time for other vital research functions.


Cell counting is a fundamental process performed by medical researchers but currently the manual counting takes an average of 6 hours per day. With Rapid Bio-Labs’ artificial intelligence software solution researchers simply upload a photo of their microscope plate to Rapid Bio-Labs’ website and they will receive the cell count back in a few minutes. This frees up many hours to focus on the next stage of research and to find cures for diseases faster.


Presenting the Enterprise Award to Rapid Bio-Labs at the Grand Final at the Royal Academy of Engineering, Lord Sainsbury said: “I am delighted to see that the Engineers in Business competition has produced so many excellent entries, many of which, in my judgement, have real commercial potential . I am awarding the Enterprise Award to the University of Greenwich’s Rapid Bio-Labs team because they are the competitor that I judge to have the best commercial potential, in order to encourage them to proceed with the commercialisation of their product.”


The Rapid Bio-Labs team had earlier won its university heat of the enterprise competition and received £3,000 from Engineers in Business, bringing their total prize win to £8,000. Commenting on the Enterprise Award, Amira Eltokhy said: “We’re so excited about this award. It is very prestigious and validation for our idea which is needed. We’ve had a dream to create this service for one and a half years. We didn’t imagine that we’d get this far in the competition, but we believed in ourselves and we’ve done it!”