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Warm welcome to the 2019-20 Alumni Innovation Award winners!
It’s that time of year again where we announce the new cohort of winners of the University of Bath Alumni Innovation Award. The University of Bath provides a nurturing environment for enterprising minds. We pride ourselves on the comprehensive range of activities on offer to students to develop their own ideas and gain valuable experience during their degree programme.
With the introduction of the Alumni Innovation Award last year, we seek to build on this foundation by offering promising graduates the chance to win an award to help take an innovative idea to market. Award winners are supported to develop their ideas into viable businesses, encouraging the next generation of entrepreneurs. Through these awards we aim to encourage a culture of change across the University, with students seeing an aspiration to become an entrepreneur as a clear and viable career choice. With the help of the SETsquared network and award winning business incubation programme, the scheme aims to help launch businesses which have the potential for true global impact. The Alumni Innovation Award monies is donated by His Excellency Khalil Foulathi who graduated in Economics from the University of Bath in 1975.
Meet the 2019 winners
Award winners are supported by the University of Bath Alumni department to develop their ideas into viable businesses, encouraging the next generation of entrepreneurs. Winners are awarded with £15k each, membership at SETsquared Bath and a 1:1 business mentor for a year. In 2019 there were three winners of the bursary award, with Parimala Shivaprasad, one of the 2018 winners, starting her journey this year instead.
George Griffiths founder of Expo Education
George Griffiths
Degree: BSc (hons) degree in Biology from the University of Bath, 2019.
Business: Expo Education
Description: George’s startup ‘Expo Education’, is creating a bridge between the higher education industry where knowledge is generated, and the meeting event industry where knowledge is distributed. By pairing up students with some of the best industry-specific conferences in the country, Expo Education allows conferences to run their events with motivated and engaged volunteers, whilst allowing these students to gain an invaluable insight into their chosen industry for free.
Matt Barlow founder of Liveprize
Matt Barlow
Degree: BSc (hons) degree in Business Administration from the University of Bath, 2019
Business: Liveprize
Description: Matt describes Liveprize as “…the home of the most entertaining and rewarding giveaways in the world. Our free app runs scheduled live giveaways in seasonal blocks. These giveaways feature exciting game-show style formats where all users compete in unison for a grand prize”.
Paul Hetherington founder of Neuro Ai
Paul Hetherington
Degree: MEng (hons) degree in Integrated Mechanical and Electrical Engineering from the University of Bath, 2019
Business: Neuro Ai
Description: Neuro Ai is a hardware startup making devices for the high speed processing of AI. The use of AI throughout all industries has exploded but the speed of the computers that AI runs on have not progressed at the same rate.
Neuro Ai is solving this by creating high speed, affordable and versatile hardware giving the power of a supercomputer to everyone.
If you would like to find out more about this year’s winners and follow their entrepreneurial journey over the next year, you can read their guest blog posts here.
If you would like to apply for next year’s (2020-21) Alumni Innovation Award or find out more about the student enterprise activities available to you as a University of Bath student or recent graduate, take a look at our Enterprise Activities page.