Nathan MacAbuag at the Student Challenges Competition
Mitt Prosthesis, founded by fourth year students Nathan MacAbuag and Joshua Chidwick, won prizes in three entrepreneurship competitions last week.
Mitt’s goal is to build and provide comfortable, functional and affordable prosthetic upper limbs. Currently, artificial limbs are expensive and require laborious and long procedures to be fitted, which leaves many people with limb loss without any access to prostheses.
In the Student Challenges Competition hosted by the Institute of Global Health Innovation, Mitt won both the top prize of £5,000 and an additional Audience Choice Award of £1,000. The competition is open to all UK-based students and can cover any aspect of global health innovation. The winner was chosen during a Dragon’s Den style event, in which the finalists pitched their ideas to expert judges.
In the Venture Catalyst Challenge, the team of Mechanical Engineering students won second prize, worth £10,000. The VCC supports supports early-stage tech companies founded by Imperial students.
The team also took home first prize in the Ideas to Impact Challenge run by the Imperial College Business School. The competition also offers its winners mentoring from Imperial academics and changemakers in India.
The finals of all three competitions took place during Imperial’s Enterprise Week 2018 (19-23 March). The prize money will help the Mitt team run their first product pilot: "It's the first big step to getting our product out there to those who need it", says Nathan.
Article text (excluding photos or graphics) © Imperial College London.
Photos and graphics subject to third party copyright used with permission or © Imperial College London.
Reporter
Nadia Barbu
Department of Mechanical Engineering
