ISCC Students Win 3rd Prize at Bright SCIdea Poster Competition with Innovative Vaccine Delivery Concept
A team of interdisciplinary PhD students – two from the ISCC and two from the Department of Chemical Engineering – recently impressed at the Bright SCIdea Challenge, hosted by the Society of Chemical Industry (SCI), by earning third prize in the Entrepreneurship Poster Competition.
The Bright SCIdea Challenge supports student teams across the UK and internationally in transforming scientific ideas into viable business ventures. Alongside its flagship pitch competition, the event also features a poster competition that showcases early-stage science-driven business concepts with strong commercial potential.
Representing Bath as Team Xemvo, ISCC students Kyriacos Rouvas and Nadia Vermeulen-Rostane, along with Lucy Wilkinson and Niklas Beere, took home the third prize for their poster presenting a business model based on a novel dry vaccine delivery cartridge.
Their innovation addresses a key barrier in the emerging field of dry powder vaccines: delivery. While dry vaccines offer major advantages—especially their long shelf life without refrigeration—they also require an alternative to traditional needles, which aren’t well-suited for powder-based formulations.
Our business proposition was on a dry vaccine delivery cartridge system which aims to administer dry powder vaccines efficiently and sustainably to patients.
Kyriacos
Their innovation addresses a key barrier in the emerging field of dry powder vaccines: delivery. While dry vaccines offer major advantages—especially their long shelf life without refrigeration—they also require an alternative to traditional needles, which aren’t well-suited for powder-based formulations.
The concept focuses on a single-use, secure cartridge capable of administering dry powder vaccines in low-resource settings, eliminating the need for trained medical staff or cold-chain logistics. This could significantly reduce costs and expand global vaccination coverage—particularly in underserved communities.
Kyriacos added, “This is an emerging market as dry powder vaccines are still in their development phase and no one else per se is focusing on the delivery cartridge development which gives us a first movers advantage.”
The team pitched their poster to a panel of SCI members and industrial leaders at the London event, gaining valuable feedback, presentation experience, and networking opportunities.
The team’s participation in the competition was more than just a technical challenge—it was a crash course in science entrepreneurship. “Overall, it was an amazing experience to participate in this competition as we had the chance to take a step back from the research we do, see how we could create value from it and deliver it to the masses using a business as the medium,” Kyriacos noted.
Our whole team had the opportunity to hone our presentation and public engagement skills during the day long competition in London where we pitched our business to visiting industrial executives and members of the Society of Chemical Industry (SCI).
Kyriacos
Congratulations to Team Xemvo on their success and for demonstrating how innovative thinking can bridge the gap between cutting-edge science and real-world solutions.
Photo credits to Andrew Lunn Photography
