Newcastle University

NEWS: ACTION 2012 Launched to Develop Solutions for Social Renewal

21st February 2012 marked the launch of ACTION 2012: Social Renewal, a programme that will see student and staff researchers at Newcastle University coming together to demonstrate ground-breaking ideas in engineering and physical sciences in support of social renewal.

This follows the huge success of last year’s ‘ACTION over Sustainability Issues’ programme in which 6 teams of postgraduate researchers and research staff demonstrated their ideas at a Public Showcase Event in November at the Great North Museum: Hancock.

Over 150 members of the public and invited guests interacted with the teams who presented their ideas to combat a sustainability challenge, developed over 9 months, for a chance to win £10,000 towards the development of their idea, or themselves as entrepreneurial researchers.

Each team made a presentation to a panel of 10 academic and business judges who selected a winner based on clarity, viability, the solution provided, potential impact and the strength of the team.

Prof John Goddard (Emeritus Professor of Regional Development Studies, Newcastle University), who attended the event said,

‘Not only has this been a fantastic initiative in terms of generating new ideas to combat some of the sustainability challenges that we face today, but it also clearly demonstrates the University’s innovative approach towards engaging the people of Newcastle.’

The winning team, awarded the prize by Prof. Paul Younger (Director of Newcastle Institute for Research on Sustainability) was ZapZyme (Matthew Abbott, Chelsea Brain, Nithyalakshmy Rajarajan, Rekha Subramanian and Dr Gabriel Uguru). ZapZyme demonstrated an enzyme-based cleaning solution to replace the current, non-sustainable method used in the brewery and other industries. They had engaged the international brewer HEINEKEN, who also attended the showcase in support of the winning team.

Commenting on why they were the winning team, the judges said,

“ZapZyme had a clear plan of action; had assembled the right expertise and industrial partners, were well networked and their idea fit well with the sustainability theme of this programme; all of this achieved within 9-months”.

The Runner Up Prize was awarded to TeraTura (David Alderson, Jared Bowers, Jennifer Harrison and Ryan Pereira) for their use of tourism as a vehicle to improve the accessibility of sustainability research to the general public.

We would like to congratulate all 6 of the teams for their achievement and efforts during 2011; EasyTalk (Biao Zeng and Marin Marinov), PortaPower (Charlotte Bell, Wendy Carr, Thea Coward and Hilary Redden), RM3 (Zishun Ma, Fengyuan Shi, Wenfeng Duan and Hanxiong Zhang), SYNC (Paulus Aditjandra, Jonathan Heslop, Carmen Hubbard and Helen Kendall), TeraTura and ZapZyme.

The programme team includes Bryn Jones, Gail de Blaquière, Elizabeth Scanlon and Katie Wray with support from the EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council). Jo Clark (Assistant Director of HR, Newcastle University) describes the programme as “an innovative and high impact approach to staff and student development”.

News of ACTION 2012 and details of upcoming Events can be found here.