Month: March 2019

The South West’s innovative spin-outs and start-ups spanning all fields of science will be celebrated at a new awards scheme supported by University of Bristol.

 Launch: Great West promises to showcase excellence in scientific commercialisation activity at an awards ceremony in June.

 Organisers are calling for nominations across eight categories. Deadline for applications is Monday 15 April: https://launchgw.com/nominations

 Launch: Great West is being organised by Spin-Up Science and University of Bristol’s BioDesign Institute is a headline sponsor, while RED is an award sponsor. It recognises the Great West as a centre of innovation excellence across Life Sciences, Advanced Engineering and Quantum Technology.

Applications will be accepted from any science-driven start-up or spin-out based in the Great West. Judges are looking for significant potential or achievement in one or more key areas, for example: ingenuity of their scientific innovation, capabilities of their team or company, potential for impact or growth, evidence of significant milestones achieved to date.

For more information about the award categories, click here Award categories

 The Launch: Great West awards ceremony takes place on Thursday, June 6 at Mercure Bristol Grand Hotel.

The Research Commercialisation Team #RCTBristol @BristolUni are always looking for ways to celebrate the great science companies in our ecosystem – so we have decided to support the Launch: Great West awards (https://launchgw.com/) in celebrating scientific innovation from the Universities of the Great West. We’re sponsoring two awards which celebrate the really early stages of a science company: The Ones to Watch Award, and The Rising Star Award (co-sponsored with @SETsquaredBristol).

The Great West (South West England and South Wales) has world leading academic expertise and innovation excellence, but has traditionally played second fiddle to the London-Oxford-Cambridge cluster in starting (and retaining) science companies, and attracting investment.  This is starting to change with recent articles highlighting that the South West is starting to become a focus for investors with some high profile fundraises and exits. The area supports thriving activity across Life Sciences, Advanced Engineering, and Quantum Technology.

The inaugural Launch: Great West awards provides the opportunity to showcase the scientific commercialisation activity in Universities in the region and will champion spin-outs and start-ups spanning all fields of science.

We’re going to be nominating some of our spin out companies but think there will be a huge amount of competition from some of the fantastic companies out there. We hope to see our innovation community turn out in force at the awards ceremony on Thursday 6th June 2019 at the Grand Mercure Hotel, Bristol.