Graduate Innovation Competition winners

17 August 2015

The inaugural Hertford Graduate Initiative Fund Competition elicited a variety of entrepreneurial ideas from Hertford graduate students, ranging from biotechnology start-ups to a firm specialising in cultural consulting.

Principal Will Hutton presented Dominique Piche (pictured), a DPhil student in Nano-Engineering, with the first prize of £2,500. It will be used to support her UPROSA e-commerce site which uses scientific images to create customised accessories. Domnique commented:

Not only does the prize money enable us to invest into activities to drive the business forward, but the feedback and support received from the judges is amazing motivation to really push our business to the next level! It was also a great opportunity to meet other entrepreneurs in the college and hear so many creative and inspiring ideas.

The second prize went to Sara Martin, studying for the MSc in Comparative Social Policy, for an interactive app that would encourage people to give up smoking. The third went to Bas Bavelaar, a DPhil student in Oncology, for Reagentia – an Amazon for reagents.

The MCR looks forward to developing the competition next year so that it is open to teams of postgraduates from Hertford and their collaborators at other colleges.