A host of staff and students from The University of Glasgow are taking part in this year’s Converge Challenge.

Converge Challenge is Scotland's premier company creation competition and entrepreneurial development programme with a prize fund of over £150,000.

Converge Challenge, has three core award categories. Converge Challenge: for those with an established idea; KickStart: for early stage ideas; and Social Enterprise: for ideas that will have a positive impact on social and environmental issues.

UofG has finalists in all three categories.

Converge Challenge

Making the shortlist for the Converge Challenge Award is:

  • University of Glasgow graduate Susanne Mitschke for her app MindMate which is designed to empower people living with Dementia, their families & caregivers. 
  • School of Computing Science student Omar Tufayl for his app Nom Yap which aims to help users broaden their social or professional circles.
  • Corien Staels who graduated from the University of Glasgow this year, is nominated for her company Staels Design. A product design company focused on products that enhance people's quality of life
  • Graduate Tomasz Sadowski for his product reviews platform Opinew
  • Sarah Jones, Senior Institutional Support Officer, has been shortlisted for DMPonline, a tool to help researchers write data management plans.

  • Shreesh Argawal, who is nominated for his medication adherence device 'PillTime' which he collaborated with academics in MVLS to create. 

Kickstart

UofG has two applicants shortlisted in the Kickstart category of the competition:

  • Dr Ravinder Dahiya of the School of Engineering is in the running with ‘SmArtLimb’; Smart Artificial Prosthetic Limbs he has developed at the University.

  • MSc Biotechnology student Christopher Mosedale has been shortlisted for his idea ‘Nutri-Fly’ which aims to reduce organic food waste through converting it to high protein animal feed.

Social Enterprise

The University of Glasgow is represented in the social enterprise category  by:

  • Recent PhD graduate Carla Brown who has been nominated for for her work in creating Game Dr, a social enterprise which focuses on the development of games and films to educate the public on important health topics.

  • Paulina Trevena, a research associate in the School of Social and Political Sciences, has been nominated in the same category for Flex-ESOL.

Range of applicants

Commenting on this year’s finalists, Dr Olga Kozlova, Director of Converge Challenge, said: “This year we have a diverse range of applicants with very strong representation from all the key industries in Scotland including: tourism, food and drink, renewables, life sciences and the creative industries.

“We are delighted to see previous participants back again in 2016 with a stronger position and we continue to see growth in the number of applicants using digital platforms for the delivery of products and services, recognising the importance of the tech sector in Scotland.”

First published: 17 May 2016

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