Imperial entrepreneurs scoop major European innovation awards

Dr Molly Stevens and Dr Nikolaos Vlasopoulos talk about their innovations and the impact these may have in the future <em>– News and videos</em>

Monday 21 December 2009
By Colin Smith

Imperial entrepreneurs who are developing carbon negative cement and ways of re-growing bone and cartilage were the recipients of a major European award this month.

Professor Molly Stevens (pictured above left) and Dr Nikolaos Vlasopoulos were recognised in the second annual Academic Enterprise Awards, held in Paris on 10 December 2009. The awards were given by the Science Business Innovation Board.

Both researchers have established start-up enterprises financed by Imperial Innovations, which is the College’s technology commercialisation and investment company.

Professor Stevens, from the Department of Materials and the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, won the Amgen Life Sciences award for her role in the founding and running of Bioceramics Therapeutics. The company is developing ‘scaffolds’ that can be implanted into the body to enable bone and cartilage tissue to re-grow in patients after major surgery.

The judges praised Dr Stevens for transforming “outstanding science” into an innovative company that has “enormous potential for human health”.

Dr Vlasopoulos , from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, received the Energy Environment award. His company is developing a new process for making cement without emitting carbon dioxide, and a cement product that can absorb CO2 from the atmosphere.

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The cement industry accounts for 5 percent of the world’s industrial output of CO2, making it a bigger producer of CO2 than the aviation industry. The judges noted that Novacem has enormous potential to help the cement industry reduce its carbon footprint.

The Academic Enterprise Awards are a pan-European competition among companies spun out from universities, with entries this year from France, Italy, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

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In the videos (right), Professor Stevens talks about her discoveries in bone and tissue regeneration and discusses a new technique that she is developing that can sense enzymes at low levels, which could aid in the early detection of conditions such as HIV. Dr Vlasopoulos chats about his environmentally friendly cement and what the future holds for Novacem.