WE Innovate

WE Innovate, organised by Imperial Enterprise Lab, Imperial College London’s dedicated entrepreneurship training centre, is an annual six-month programme and competition championing women-led teams with an entrepreneurial idea to explore. This year’s programme supported the development of up to 25 teams through masterclasses, business coaching, one-to-one expert support, peer mentoring and much more. The programme is divided into three phases, during which the teams compete to become one of the five finalists and pitch the WE Innovate final for a share of the £30,000 prize fund.

Joint first place: Transpexa

Project:

Globalised supply chains operate seamlessly, but disruptions like the pandemic, affecting 72% of companies, underscore the need for visibility of N-tier suppliers. Only 6% of companies report full visibility leading to a 62% financial loss, hindered by a trust deficit in data sharing which could lead to a 85% value add.

The US Supply Due Diligence Act, part of the net-zero movement, blocked $1bn solar panel imports due to forced labour in China’s value chain. Supply chain managers require increased visibility for proactive risk management. The challenge is twofold: a lack of trust hindering visibility and growing environmental, social, and governance regulations exposing critical links in the value chain.

Transpexa combines cutting-edge machine learning to achieve visibility, enhance trust, and mitigate risk. Insights derived from proprietary data without compromising confidentiality ensure a secure and transparent approach to supply chain management.

Students:

Niki Kotecha – Chemical Engineer
Maya Lie – Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Also pictured, left: SMF Andrew de Rozairo

Awarded: £1,500

Joint first place: Qualboat

Project:

In the UK sewage dumping is a serious issue and is worsened by inadequate data collection and ineffectual fines. In the last full survey in 2019, 14% of rivers had good ecological status. It has been years since the last full survey, due to the associated cost.

Qualboat is an autonomous, customisable water quality surveying boat. Clients interact with the boat using an app, allowing them to survey rivers and lakes at the push of a button. Using a proprietary pathfinding algorithm and AI data processing model, the boat can survey an area, seek out pollution hotspots and feed data into either the app or a database.

Students:

Julia Gong – Bioengineering
Charlie Campbell – Computing
Sixian Zheng – Mechanical Engineering
Aidan Randall – Physics

Awarded: £1,500

Positive feedback

We are very grateful to the Engineers in Business Fellowship for their ongoing support, helping us with our mission of supporting women entrepreneurs in STEM. With this prize we have been able to expand the number of WE Innovate teams who receive funding as part of the programme. This increases the likelihood that they will carry on the development of their ventures and go on to make a positive impact in the world.

Camille Reltien
Innovation and Entrepreneurship Manager
Imperial College London