The finalists for Best KTP Award at the Innovate UK KTP Awards, which celebrate the UK’s most innovative R&D projects of the last 12 months, have been revealed.
The shortlist includes:
- Cirdan Imaging, Queen's University Belfast, Jonathan Armstrong
- Partnership Medical, Aston University, Thien Duong
- Techbuyer, University of East London, Nour Rteil
The awards, organised by Innovate UK KTN, celebrate the best three-way innovation partnerships between businesses, academic research teams and individual graduates looking to address climate change and social issues, or improve the UK economy.
The three strong contenders competing for the Best KTP award include Cirdan Imaging, Queen's University Belfast, with Jonathan Armstrong who together have successfully applied deep machine learning to medical imaging to make up for the shortfall of pathologists globally. The partnership team developed two AI models for tumour detection for use in Breast and Bowel Cancer Screening Programmes.
The second finalists have achieved industry leading levels of cleaning to satisfy the most stringent international medical standards. Partnership Medical, with Aston University led by Thien Duong, have developed an automated cleaning system for flexible endoscopes, reducing the risk of cross infection in these multi-use medical devices which cannot be sterilised.
Also in the running are Techbuyer, with University of East London and Nour Rteil. This partnership team created sophisticated data centre modelling capabilities within Techbuyer, focussed on driving the circular economy and green environment agenda. As a result, they have fundamentally changed the understanding of how servers work in a real environment, informing other research projects, government policy and creating a first to market tool that businesses can use in their carbon and energy reporting.
The awards ceremony, compered by Professor Suzannah Lipscomb, will showcase the most innovative, impactful, and inspiring projects over the past 12 months. It will feature a keynote speech from Innovate UK CEO, Indro Mukerjee.
Dr. Kirsty Hewitson, Interim CEO at Innovate UK KTN, commented: “For 45 years, Innovate UK and IUK-KTN have worked to bring together people from disparate sectors and walks of life to form Knowledge Transfer Partnerships. Every year, around 800 incredible KTP projects make progress in addressing some of the biggest issues facing the world. They are all worth celebrating, but some are really blazing a trail and are bound to positively impact society, the environment, and the economy. That’s what the KTP Awards are all about, and just to be shortlisted is an incredible achievement.”
The Award categories are:
- Best Knowledge Transfer Partnership
- Technical Excellence Award
- Business Impact & Transformation Award
- The Changing the World Award
- Academic of the Year Award
- Best Knowledge Base KTP Support Team Award
- Future Leader Award
For more details, and to register your place, visit https://www.ktp-uk.org/awards/
