Revolutionary prosthetics know-how firm wins inaugural Stephen Younger Entrepreneurship Award

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Aerial view of University of Strathclyde campus

The College of Strathclyde has introduced the inaugural winner of an entrepreneurship award established by means of the biggest reward within the College’s historical past.

PCAD was named because the winner of the primary Stephen Younger Entrepreneurship Award, for its work on fittings for lower-limb prosthetics.

The £10,000 prize was introduced as the primary in a variety of awards designed to help Strathclyde’s rising entrepreneurs.

The Stephen Younger Entrepreneurship Awards programme has been created as one essential component of a £50 million donation to Strathclyde by the charitable basis of alumnus, entrepreneur and philanthropist Dr Charles Huang PhD, which is supporting the college’s work in remodeling lives, supporting the financial system and nurturing entrepreneurship.

The award is introduced in reminiscence of the late Professor Stephen Younger, former Head of Strathclyde’s Division of Advertising and Dr Huang’s supervisor and mentor throughout his PhD research.

The award was introduced on the biannual Encourage 100 ceremony held by Strathclyde Encourage, the College’s flagship entrepreneurship programme, which gives entrepreneurial coaching and alternatives to each pupil, workers member and alumnus.

Entrepreneurs introduced on the on-line occasion to an viewers of skilled entrepreneurs, supporters and traders, with the goal of securing money prizes in addition to recommendation and help.

Vital enchancment 

The PCAD™ (Pressurised Pc Aided Design) know-how has been designed to make a big enchancment to the way in which during which decrease limb prosthetics are fitted, by combining the know-how of stress casting with state-of-the-art, computer-aided design scanning know-how for the primary time.

The corporate was established by Dr Anthony McGarry, a Senior Educating Fellow in Strathclyde’s Division of Biomedical Engineering.

Professor Sir Jim McDonald, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Strathclyde, stated: “The donation from the Charles Huang Basis is already having a profound impression on the already sturdy tradition of entrepreneurship at Strathclyde. The help and steerage we provide to new and present entrepreneurs has benefited enormously from this reward.

“A significant focus of the Charles Huang Basis is to foster entrepreneurial expertise and daring concepts with a worldwide imaginative and prescient. PCAD produces know-how with the capability to make a optimistic distinction to many individuals’s lives and is a perfect instance of this.

“PCAD is a worthy inaugural winner of the Stephen Younger Entrepreneurship Award and we congratulate them on their success.”

Dr Huang stated: “We’re delighted that the primary Stephen Younger Entrepreneurship Award has been introduced. It reveals that this reward is having a big impression on Strathclyde, not just for the nice of the College however for the worldwide group.

“We additionally congratulate Dr McGarry on receiving the award; his modern work will improve using prosthetics and can meet an pressing want for individuals world wide. We look ahead to many others successful the award for equally useful entrepreneurship.”

Dr McGarry stated: “We’re completely delighted to have obtained the Stephen Younger Entrepreneurship award for PCAD.

“There are a rising variety of individuals with amputation significantly in low to medium earnings international locations. The World Well being Group estimates that between 35 million and 40 million individuals at present require prosthetic or orthotic companies, with just one in 10 individuals gaining access to such companies as a result of a scarcity of clinicians and companies, significantly in Asia and Africa.

“Present strategies of prosthetic match are extremely depending on clinician ability and should lead to inconsistent socket match, inflicting ache or pores and skin breakdown. PCAD goals to deskill prosthetic form seize, with potential to provide beforehand untapped markets, enhancing match and the standard of lifetime of prosthetic customers.

“Initially the challenge will redesign a prototype match for testing in a medical surroundings and funding might be used to undertake an unbiased hole evaluation prior to revamp.”

Gillian Fleming, co-founder and Managing Director of angel funding group Mint Ventures, and Scottish consultant of enterprise capital firm Kero Developments, was a member of the judging panel. She stated: “It was heartening to see that all the founders had thought-about what impression their enterprise must doubtlessly make the world a greater place.

“PCAD actually stood out for me because it was clear that international social impression ran by means of the veins of the corporate they usually comprehensively articulated how they intend to democratise the manufacturing of prosthetics to allow smaller and inexpensive setups in poorer nations world wide.”

PCAD has been supported by enterprise mentor David Bowie.

4 different Strathclyde start-up firms are additionally set to obtain funding by means of the brand new Awards programme :

  • &I Applied sciences, a digital well being firm with an AI pushed app which understands and prioritises a person’s response to emphasize,
  • Metacarpal, a prosthetics firm producing upper-limbed prostheses designed for higher operate, value and cosmetics,
  • Querca, which supplies a variety {of professional} companies together with enterprise improvement and is the primary on-line platform for quantum coaching and resourcing,
  • Paperflute, which produces recyclable kids’s playhouses product of paper.

Every of the businesses participates in Strathclyde Encourage’s investor-ready accelerator, which helps fast-track alternatives by means of the supply of recommendation, funding and bespoke coaching alternatives.

Along with the Entrepreneurship awards, Dr Huang’s donation will help the development of a brand new constructing, to be named after him, in Strathclyde’s Know-how and Innovation Zone with Glasgow Metropolis Innovation District, and the creation of The Stephen Younger Institute for Worldwide Enterprise and The Stephen Younger World Leaders Scholarship Programme.

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