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Date:
15/03/04
Cambs firms scoop awards for innovative ideasFourteen innovative ideas from Cambridgeshire based companies have won backing from the Department of Trade and Industry's Small Business Service (SBS).
At a ceremony last week, 17 SBS Smart awards and 13 Grants for Research and Development were presented. As well as the
14 from Cambridgeshire there were six from Suffolk, one from Norfolk, four from Essex, four from Hertfordshire and one from Bedfordshire. All will receive a substantial financial boost from the government for their innovative approach to solving practical problems. The SMART award winners based in Cambridgeshire were: Winners of Grants for Research and Development were: These are the final Smart awards to be presented. From 1 June 2003 the scheme was phased out to be replaced in England by the Grant for Research and Development Programme. This will provide money to help individuals, and small and medium-sized businesses research and develop technologically innovative products and processes. Phil Mercer, Regional Director, SBS East said: 'The East of England is at the forefront of developing innovative and imaginative business ideas, and we want to continue to help the right companies to implement these ideas and successfully grow their businesses. This year we have already awarded 9.5 million to 150 projects in order to help foster this entrepreneurial spirit throughout the region. 'I would like to congratulate all of the award winners on their success and to encourage others to come forward to apply for the newly available Research and Development Grants'. Hazel Hole, MBE, Deputy Regional Director, SBS East presented the awards. Advisors from Business Links, which offer guidance on how to apply for DTI grants, are present at each awards ceremony. After the formal presentations, new winners are invited to attend the Smart Club for the East of England (SCEE) a group of former Smart recipients, advisors and financiers which meets regularly to swap ideas. Under the new Grant for Research and Development money is given for four types of project: * SMART AWARDS March 2004 Cambridgeshire Winners Department of Genetics University of Cambridge Downing Street Cambridge CB2 3EH Contact: Dr Zoltaqn Asztalos Tel: 01223 741578 Email: za205@cam.ac.uk High-Throughput Fruit Fly Behaviour Screening Test Aktogen Ltd is a new venture emerging from the University of Cambridge. The company aims to apply scientific knowledge about fruit flies to the validation of targets for drug discovery in disorders, which are detected by behavioural measurements: neuropsychiatric disorders (e.g. schizophrenia), neurodegenerative diseases (e.g. Alzheimer's) and other chronic neurological conditions (e.g. pain, sleep disorders). Its technology will also be used for early screening of drug candidates in these areas. Neuropsychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia, are found all over the world and they affect more than 2 in 100 people. The aim of this project is to establish proof of principle for a novel high-throughput method for measuring the reaction of fruit flies to external stimuli. This system could then be used to detect the effect of gene products and drugs, which have relevance to neuropsychiatric disorders. This work will support a patent application for the method. The development of this system is essential for industrial application to reduce time and cost in normally very slow and labour intensive behaviour screens. A novel fruit fly neuropsychiatric disorder model would be hundred times faster and its use would cause less ethical concerns than the existing rodent model. St John's Innovation Centre Cambridge CB4 0WS Contact: Mr Marc D'abbadie Tel: 07876192179 Email: md_abbadie@hotmail.com The humble fruit fly, has been used to tackle numerous biological problems from neurobiology to cancer. One attraction of working with the fruit fly is that it is possible to carefully control the genetics, due to the short lifetime of the flies. However, in order to follow the genetics of each fly, it is necessary to know their parentage. Since fruit flies become sexually mature very fast, and will mate with their siblings shortly after hatching, this requires frequent sorting of fruit flies to collect virgin females and keep them apart from males until they are to be crossed. Currently, the collection and sorting of these is done by hand, a time consuming and expensive process. This is limiting their availability and acting as a bottleneck to medical research. There is thus a recognised need for a better, high capacity, ideally automatic process, particularly as this field of research is now accelerating. Cambridge Laboratory Innovations' novel Virgin Collector product will allow for automation of the virgin collection process, providing large savings in time and efficiency for researchers in this field. 26 Priestgate Peterborough Cambridgeshire PE1 1WG Contact: Matthew B Hagger Tel: 01733 865058 E-mail: matthew.hagger@e-man.co.uk Website: www.e-man.co.uk E-Man Technologies have conceived a technology for overcoming the problems associated with the execution, management and control of existing methods of new media marketing communications. What has evolved in principle is an independent super-highway for the communication of filtered marketing information, customised to the clients' requirements, backed by a dynamic and real-time database. This is defined at Net Sorcerer technology. The project will examine the technical and commercial feasibility of implementing Net Sorcerer within the UK marketplace, focusing upon special case studies within the sectors of Crime Prevention and Education, where Net Sorcerer will derive the greatest social impact from its evolution. The results of this project will overcome the technical and commercial challenges that are currently facing E-Man Technologies with regards to the impending implementation of Net Sorcerer within a number of sectors. Following this Net Sorcerer will move into a nine-month development period, culminating in the technology being licensed to our clients. 10 Bishops Road Trumpington Cambridge Cambridgeshire CB2 2NH Contact: Mr Paul Brown Tel: 01223 840236 Email: paul.brown@magneticdesign.co.uk Website: www.magneticdesign.co.uk Particle Sensing Toaster This project aims to develop a new type of sensor used in a toaster would guarantee perfect toast, every time. The toaster would be able to do this by actively sensing the complex chemical changes occurring during the toasting process, crucially looking for a narrow window whereby caramelised sugar particles are emitted that create the well known sweet smell and taste of toast. Prototypes will be developed with the intention to prove consistency and reliability of the sensing technology and to help commercialise the product. The ionizing sensor would identify invisible airborne sugar particles and automatically adjust the timing, in real time, waiting for the bread to become perfectly mid-brown, and never allow it to continue to burn or smoke. A major part of the project will be to find a program that can consistently modify the sensor signal to equate to mid-brown toast every time, for all bread types and in all scenarios. 5/7 Portugal Place Cambridge CB5 0DF Contact: Mr Martin Poad Tel: 07733 260678 Email: martyn@redblocks.com This project will demonstrate that it is feasible to gather business information from the whole range of mobile phones. It will address the inherent issues of such devices; small formats, low bandwidths; unreliable connections and differing communications protocols to hopefully produce a working prototype. The desire is to produce a platform technology from which future projects can be produced. RedBlocks sees wide application for such a technology, but will initially focus on market research where the immediacy of the information and the fact that 'everyone' carries a mobile phone are key desirable features. The technology will allow market research, in the form of surveys, to be conducted 'out in the field', e.g. while out shopping, or while attending an exhibition or even while watching television. 20 Hawthorn Way Cambridge CB4 31AX Contact: Iain Chapman Tel: 07710 720019 Email: iainchapman@vobo.co.uk Website: www.vobo.co.uk Virtual Reality Headset 3D virtual reality systems have flourished in the areas of design, simulation, and data visualisation in recent years. At the moment customers tend to reject the poor image quality of head-mounted displays in favour of cinematic projection systems with multiple projectors and large reflective screens. Such systems are very bulky (room-sized) and expensive. As a result the use of virtual reality has been restricted largely to sectors such as oil exploration, military simulation, and car design. The technology proposed by this company allows image quality even higher than projection systems in the form of a head-mounted display. The headsets will be significantly cheaper to buy, house and maintain than projection systems and it is hoped therefore that they will drive virtual reality into new sectors without vast R&D budgets. This project aims to prove the principles of this technology, with a view to having systems commercially available as early as 2005 34 Mervan Road London SW2 1DU (work being carried out in Cambridge) Contact: Mark Emerson Tel: 0771 476 6893 Fax: 020 8274 8750 Email:mcemerson@xynchron.com Xynchron is developing software solutions for managing engineering data during the design and construction of chemical and other process plants. This feasibility study will produce a 'proof of concept' prototype for our basic data management software - the XynchroNet. This system will have many practical benefits for engineering companies - eliminating time consuming and error-prone re-entry of data, enabling closer cooperation between organisations and preserving design information throughout the project lifecycle. The resulting system will also be highly scalable and allow users to share design data across different organisations, computer systems and locations. Information will be accessed through equipment datasheets, passed into and out of modelling applications and viewed through browser interfaces. Simple prototypes of each of these are also under development. Engineering Department University of Cambridge Trumpington Street Cambridge CB2 1PZ Contact: Professor Ian White Tel: 0791 905 8286 Fax: 01223 767032 Email: ihw3@cam.ac.uk ZinWave Ltd is an early stage company which aims to provide systems for distributing wireless signals, including those for applications such as cellular radio and wireless local area networks (WLAN), in a flexible, future-proof and low cost manner. These systems would operate within commercial buildings, public areas such as shopping centres, airports and subway systems and public access systems, such as wireless hot-spots. The project aims to establish the technical and commercial feasibility of ZinWave technology for cellular radio distribution over multimode fibre. In particular, the project will include further research into the technology for cellular radio signal distribution over multimode fibre and the building of a cellular transmission prototype. Organisations can find out more about DTI grants by contacting their local Business Link. Tel: 08457 218218 www.businesslink.org ******* Issued on behalf of the Small Business Service by Government News Network East For more information, please contact Kelly Logan on TEL: 01223 372791; EMAIL: kelly.logan@gnn.gsi.gov.uk COIREF: 91212 Issued by : GNN CAMBRIDGE Press Office Contact : cambridge@gnn.gsi.gov.uk See also: Copyright Cambridge Network 2009
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