2017 EIT Health UK-Ireland DPhil/PhD Transition Fellowships Announced

At the final round of pitches of the 2017 EIT Health DPhil/PhD Transition Fellowship, held at the UK-Ireland regional innovation hub main offices in London, eleven young and inspiring entrepreneurs were awarded with one of the covered fellowships.

At the final round of pitches of the 2017 EIT Health DPhil/PhD Transition Fellowship, held at the UK-Ireland regional innovation hub main offices in London, eleven young and inspiring entrepreneurs were awarded with one of the covered fellowships.
The day saw shortlisted PhD/DPhil candidates from the University of Oxford and Imperial College’ London present their groundbreaking projects in front of a panel comprising representatives from EIT Health, Imperial Innovations, University of Coimbra’s Technology Transfer Office and Oxford Sciences Innovation.

The eleven most innovative propositions (pitches) presented were selected to receive Gold, Silver and Bronze awards and the respective DPhil/PhD candidates’ host departments are now being provided with a pre-seed (spark) award to fund accelerated development of discovery research in the applicants first post-doctoral year. In addition, successful candidates are now being supported to obtain transferable skills as well as being supported by the technology and intellectual property offices of the universities involved (i.e. Oxford University Innovations (OUI) at Oxford University and Imperial Innovations at Imperial College) for the duration of their fellowship.

EIT Health partners Imperial College London and Oxford University piloted this scheme in 2016 with the aim of addressing the funding gap between completion of the doctoral thesis and obtaining further seed funding for innovative ideas, products and services based on the doctoral research. This year the programme was extended to the University of Coimbra, Portugal, whilst in 2018 the EIT Health DPhil/PhD Transition Fellowship will be rolled out to even more universities across Europe.

You will have the opportunity to meet the winners at the Science Soapbox at the 2017 EIT Health Summit on 4-5 December in London, and at selected UK-I regional innovation hub events in 2018. Otherwise, keep reading our monthly UK-Ireland Newsletters (you can subscribe by clicking here) and check back on this website frequently for individual showcases of the winners and their groundbreaking ideas.

The winners of the 2017 Dphil/PhD Transition Fellowship are:

GOLD

• Gregory Craven – Imperial College London;

• Kaelen Mendel – Imperial College London;

• Thomas Rifflemacher – University of Oxford;

• Martin Ducker – University of Oxford);

SILVER

• Abhilasha Joshi – University of Oxford;

• Tiong Kit Tan – University of Oxford;

• Oscar Agudo Calderon – Imperial College London

BRONZE

• Sarah Onida – Imperial College London;

• Aini Vuorinen – University of Oxford;

• Mattia Montanari – University of Oxford;

• Madi Davies – University of Oxford.