The 2006 business plan competition took place on 14 March 2006. Peter Sinden, Senior Technology Transfer Manager at UCL Ventures and one of the judges of the presentations, commented on what he had seen.
"I was extremely impressed with how polished the contestants were in the E-Challenge. Having seen the initial presentations before Christmas as well as the finals this time, it was evident how much work they had all put in and how much they had gained from the experience. The social aspect was clearly important and there was apparently a lot of camaraderie as well as healthy competition. Overall, the presentations and the plans were excellent. It was clear that many of the contestants had a real desire to continue with their projects after the competition was over. Well done to all!"
Five prizes were awarded:
The E-Challenge Champion - Tactile Response (formerly Data Point) - £5,000
The PG, Staff and Alumni Winner - Swarm Technologies - £3,000
The UG Winner - EKCP Project - £3,000
The Dean's Prize - Swarm Technologies - £2,000
The Provost's Prize - PicsPlus - £2,000
There were also honourable mentions from the judges for UpGrade Tutoring and Your Safe Planet.
DataPoint is the E-Challenge Champion 2005/6
The team was led by Ethan Smith (MSc, Psychology) who is studying Human-Computer Interaction at UCL. Ethan (right), a graduate of the University of California at Santa Barbara, has led the development of the idea from the start. DataPoint aims to produce computer displays for the blind and visually impaired by usind MEMS technology to great simple displays that replace coloured pixels with dots that can be raised or lowerd allowing braille text and images to be 'viewed' by touch.
Swarm Technologies is this year's Postgraduate, Staff and Alumni category winner. Swarm intends to offer oil and gas producers a monitoring system for pipelines that uses the flow inside pipes to power monitoring nodes placed along it. Michael Larsson (right), team leader, is a graduate of UCL now reading for a Phd at Imperial College. The team included Arnab Seal of London Business School and Swarm were also successful in winning the Dean's Prize for the best interaction between current and former students of UCL or LBS. Micheal remarked that the E-Challenge, "is a fantastic opportunity for students, staff and alumni of UCL and LBS to exercise their entrepreneurial creativity and flair."
The Undergraduate category was won by Ed Pettman (UG, Human Genetics) and Sally Broom (UG, Human Sciences) of EKCP Projects. Ed (left) had the original idea for the business, which wants to specialise in devloping properties suitable for disabled people that will also appeal to non-disabled buyers. Ed explained, "The prize money will allow me the time and freedom to further explore my idea, with a view to potentially starting in the next 12 months. My idea came from a series of thoughts that started by thinking about accommadation for disabled students and grew from there to form my idea on disabled housing."
The Provost's Prize 2006, which is awarded to the team that demonstrates the best combination of UCL and London Business School skills, was won by PicsPlus (right). Ade Bamidele (PG, Electronic and Electrical Engineering) collected his prize from Tim Barnes on behalf of fellow team members Hermen Van Ree (PG, Bartlett) and Delphine Maugars (MBA, LBS). PicsPlus is a proposal for an online image processing service that allows users to alter light sources and other conditions for their digital images. The supporting research forms part of Ade's Phd in Communications at UCL and is sponsored by BT.
