24 February 2008Turning milk bottles into petrol and a scanner that indicates which
women with breast cancer will benefit from expensive treatments such as
Herceptin are two of the ideas that the Royal Society believes will
become successful products in the coming years. The two projects are
among the winners of the Royal Society's Brian Mercer Awards for
Feasibility which will be presented on Thursday 28th February.
The projects along with five other winners will receive £25,000 each
to develop their ideas and assess their commercial possibilities. The
annual fromlabstoriches' event will also see the award of two £250,000
Brian Mercer Awards for Innovation, which will be announced on the
night. The awards are given to encourage innovation in science and
technology and promote its commercial application.
Sir Peter
Williams, Vice-President of the Royal Society said: "Science has always
been at the heart of economic innovation, yet in the UK we have not
always made the most of our world leading scientists. Entrepreneurship
is on the rise in university departments and that can only be a good
thing for our economy. We need to invest in science education at all
levels to ensure we have the people to maintain this growth and we must
also ensure that we have structures in place to nurture the best ideas."
Dr
Arthur Garforth and a team at the University of Manchester School of
Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science hope to be able to use a
process known as hydrocracking to breakdown polymer based waste, such
as plastic bottles, into a liquid suitable for use as a liquid fuel.
Hydrocracking is normally used in refineries to help convert crude oil
into fuels but Dr Garforth's work will use special catalysts to turn
the process to recycling.
The HistoMag is the brainchild of
Professor Quentin Pankhurst at the London Centre for Nanotechnology.
It is an extremely sensitive magnetic microscope which could lead to
much faster and more accurate analysis of biopsy tissue samples. One
predicted use would be to accurately identify the 15 30% of women with
breast cancer who would be most likely to benefit from taking the drug
Herceptin. This would reduce the number of women given false hope that
the drug might benefit them and would also reduce unnecessary NHS
spending on an expensive treatment that will offer no benefit.
Other recipients of Brian Mercer Feasibility Awards in 2008 include:
Dr Michael Belmont. School of Engineering and Computer Science, University of Exeter
This project is to develop a simple, low cost turbine to generate
energy from tidal power, a resource the UK is rich in. The prototype
will increase efficiency and have less environmental impact than
existing tidal power alternatives. It is planned to be used in arrays
of moored floating units which can be easily added to or moved, as
required.
Dr Richard Hogg. Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Sheffield
This research concentrates on quantum dot and laser structures for a
range of applications for 3D imaging for tissue engineering, early
stage cancer, and especially ophthalmology.
Professor Andrew Livingston. Department of Chemical Engineering, Imperial College, London
This research will investigate new ways to produce tough nanoporous
films as membranes that can be applied to molecular level separations,
for impurity removal from pharmaceutical ingredients, fractionation of
natural products, right through to refining of oil.
Dr Jianming Tang. School of Electronic Engineering, Bangor University
This project will look to demonstrate low cost, advanced optical modems
which support speeds far beyond the transmission performance achieved
by all existing techniques. This offers the prospect of faster, more
reliable internet, telephone and data services being delivered to
people's homes.
Professor Roy Taylor. Department of Physics, Imperial College London
This research looks to integrate high powered lasers with novel
structured photonic crystal fibres for uses such as biomedical imaging,
nano-diagnostics and micromachining.