An emerging ecosystem at Imperial College

A culture of entrepreneurship has been developing in Imperial College London’s (ICL) petri dish of engineers, natural scientists and business school students. ICL is increasingly fostering intimate co-operation between industry and student projects, academic spin-outs and, in the last few years, student ventures.

The annual “Venture Catalyst Challenge” program, run by ICL’s Create Lab, is intended to bring these elements together. Imperial Create Lab is hosted by Imperial Innovations, the tech transfer unit of ICL, and was founded by Mark Hammond, executive at Imperial Innovations. Initially run as a digital accelerator for student ventures 2 years ago, the decision was made this year to focus on much earlier stage activity, stimulating a broad variety of creative projects through hackathons, make-a-thons, meet-ups and passion groups around highly valuable skillsets such as web and hardware development.

This year saw over 200 teams create applications for the Venture Catalyst Challenge, narrowed to a 28 team cohort for a six week “pre-accelerator”. These teams benefited significantly from the use of Imperial Innovations’ incubator, fruitfully interacting with later stage technology companies. Each weekly session also reinvested the experience and expertise of Imperial’s broad and successful alumni network to mentor these embryonic teams and reached out into London’s wider system of accelerators, experts and investors for support. There was no classroom – we put them in front of entrepreneurs and experts who were doing what they aspired to in real life, and told them to go out each week and find their customers. Out of the lab and into the ecosystem.

The culmination of the program was the ‘Imperial Start-up Showcase’ at Imperial College on the 19^th March. We curated a mixture of advanced, academic ventures from Imperial Innovations’ portfolio, two teams run by MBAs, an alumni team and seven student ventures. Here’s a little taster of what the student have been working on:

Slam++

A PhD research project at Imperial turned enterprise, taking world-leading research into the marketplace, in conversation with the likes of Oculus Rift (recently acquired by Facebook) and other state of the art technologies. Their technology allows machines to understand their environment at the object level immediately. New Scientist has described their work as allowing computers, through depth sensor enabled cameras, to learn “like children”. 

Carica

Carica’s technology reduces the time it takes to charge external battery packs (for mobile phones) by 90%: down from 60 minutes to 8. They have successfully proven that the pack could indeed be charged in the time they claimed and that the interfacing circuitry to make it into a smartphone charger is possible.

Kutoa

The potential of Kutoa’s creation is to initiate a revolution in clean energy in the developing world. A flat-pack wind-turbine that can be assembled by anyone in under two hours, that can supply enough energy for a hundred light bulbs, that requires no heavy machinery or special tools to erect. In addition, there is a deep understanding of remote African communities embedded in the team. Kutoa took home the Social Enterprise award for their amazing contribution at the showcase.

Eddy

Eddy bring to bear a truly ingenious approach to home sensing: do it all with sound. A single microphone that can do more than an entire suite of sensors. Their device is able to capture and interpret everything from vibration to ultrasound, using a novel combination of contemporary techniques. Eddy can discern the weight of your footsteps, the rush of so many cubic centimetres of water, the heartbeat of your home. Their vision is one of security and efficiency, of a constantly updated marketplace of new applications for their hardware that would future-proof their product. Eddy was awarded the £10,000 prize for best pitch by our panel of judges on the night.

Next Stop

“Next up, ‘Next Stop’”; their idea is so remarkably simple that it is easy to accidentally overlook as trivial. They match what you want from your holiday (the sorts of activities you like, your budget, the dates you would like to go) with package deals provided by travel agents that exactly fit those criteria. Amidst six teams offering some kind of physical product, and without a central technological emphasis, their placement in our final seven teams expresses the depth of their market understanding and practical ability.

Lines

I have learned that there has to be an app in every enterprise competition. Thankfully, ours was Lines, which is actually more about converting the gear you carry whilst skiing, starting with your mobile phone, into a holistic ski performance tracking package. Lines is intended to rule out the embarrassment, expense and antisocial facets of employing a ski instructor. The team envisions a future where a heads-up display will reward and direct you for tricks and technique, and are running the world’s first smartphone enabled University ski competition this year.

Blocks

Blocks have designed and built a prototype for the world’s first modular smartwatch in an astoundingly short period of time. They have received global coverage during their time in the VCC, including from sites such as TechCrunch and Gizmag. This is a technology that is designed to outlast and out-manoeuvre the trend-vulnerable world of gadgets, as an open-source platform that anyone can design software or hardware for. Each module in the watch can be removed and replaced, housing almost any conceivable element of wearable technology, from cameras to additional batteries, to accelerometers and more.

At every stage of this process, we have had to apologise to incredibly bright, ambitious young teams building amazing solutions. The overall 28 team VCC cohort this year includes Face Intelligence whose pre-alpha product understands your face better than any previous software, Terrabotics whose satellite imagery interpretation is being pursued for multiple applications in resource exploration and measurement, WEES whose bracelet knows when you’re pinching or flicking, Biosense who have begun engineering what could be a watershed sensor in cancer drug testing and Snact who manufacture fruit snacks from waste and so many more. Do check out the full list here.