Young Entrepreneurs Scheme (YES) Award

The prestigious Young Entrepreneurs Scheme (YES) Award, organized by the BBSRC, MRC, NERC and the HGI and Nottingham University, now in its 22nd year, is an innovative competition developed to raise awareness of the commercialisation of ideas among early career researchers. The competition is funded by sponsorship and aims to encourage an entrepreneurial culture in the UK postgraduate and postdoctoral base for the benefit of the UK economy.

Participants enter as teams and develop a business plan for a company based on a hypothetical but plausible idea based on real markets over the course of a three-day residential workshop. The workshop encompasses presentations and mentoring sessions from leading figures in industry and culminates in the presentation of the business plans to a panel of 'equity investors' drawn from industry and academia. The workshops were delivered by industry experts, venture capitalists and fellow entrepreneurs to aid participants to gain the skills and contacts to launch a health tech business.

Up to three teams from each workshop are selected to progress to the final at the Royal Society in London. A member of our research team, Aman Soni was sponsored by the GRaCE-AGE project to gain both contacts and skills that would be useful with commercialisation of GRaCE-AGE. Our Aston researchers have won the first round of the Biotechnology Stream. They are one of only three winning university teams from 18 entrants around the country. They will join the other winning teams from Cambridge and East Anglia Universities at the Royal Society in London in December for the final.