Faculty of Natural Sciences Make-a-Difference 2016 - the winning team is announced!

On Wednesday 26 October 2016 Imperial Provost, Professor James Stirling, opened the Faculty of Natural Sciences Make-A-Difference final, an event which saw the three FoNS-MAD finalist teams present their projects to an invited audience and panel of VIP judges.

Congratulations to Team LipidSense, who were announced as the overall winners! The team, formed of Kevin Halim and Joel Wong Wen Han from Chemistry, Johnathan Mei from Mathematics, and Kamal Nahas from Life Sciences, presented their idea for a simple and rapid test of peroxide concentration in frying oil to determine if it is suitable and safe for consumption and re-use. They were presented with a trophy and a cheque for £1000.

The judging panel included Dr Ruth Allan of Deloitte; Professor Sir John Pendry, Chair in Theoretical Solid State Physics, Department of Physics, Imperial College London; and Professor Lord Robert Winston, Professor of Science and Society and Emeritus Professor of Fertility Studies, Imperial College London.

This year’s cross-disciplinary teams were formed of undergraduate students from across the FoNS departments, plus students from the Faculties of Engineering and Medicine:

LipidSense

• Kevin Halim (Chemistry)
• Joel Wong Wen Han (Chemistry)
• Johnathan Mei (Maths)
• Kamal Nahas (Life Sciences)

Summary of idea: Simple and rapid test of peroxide concentration in frying oil to determine if it is suitable and safe for consumption and re-use

MosquiDerm

• Uddhav Vaghela (Medicine)
• Stephan Koenigstorfer (Physics)
• Ana Losada De La Lastra (Chemistry)
• Dimitrios Karponis (Medicine)
• Claudia Liang Peng (Life Sciences)

Summary of idea: Prevention of mosquito penetration by minimising the frictional adhesion forces between mosquito and a host surface

Penteract

• Kaiji Wang (Medicine)
• Ashim Sen Gupta (Physics)
• Wern Ng (Chemistry)
• Xinran Liu (Civil and Environmental Engineering)
• Alice Cao (Physics)

Summary of idea: Electrochemical MIP-capacitor sensor powered by smartphone NFC

In other FoNS-MAD news; this year’s runner-up teams, MosquiDerm and Penteract, received confirmation on Monday 24 October that they have been accepted onto the Althea-Imperial Programme 2016/17 where they will benefit from the series of workshops,  business coaching and mentoring opportunities offered and will also have the chance to compete for the top prize of £10,000.

Congratulations to all of our successful teams!

Following the competition’s continuing success, next year’s launch event will be held on 25 January 2017. Find out more about the competition.