Three students have won £5,000 investment and flights to Canada to represent the University of Liverpool at the global finals for the World’s Challenge Challenge (WCC) after a close competition on campus.
Musculoskeletal Biology PhD student Kiran Riasat teamed up with Mechanical Engineering student Thomas Blackburn, and Eye and Vision Science PhD Sherrin Gotru (image above) to pitch an idea around recycling within laboratories.
The focus of their project was to drastically reduce single use polymer in laboratories by creating a machine that processes plastics by cleaning the plastic and removing harsh chemicals, before crushing the plastic into chips, which can then be exchanged with suppliers in the scientific industry. They beat stiff competition to scoop the top prize and will fly out to Canada in June to compete in the global finals.
WCC was developed by Western University in Canada to bring teams of students from universities all over the world together to present their ideas for solutions to global problems. The finals of the competition are hosted at Western University and the first prize is $30,000 for the winning team to invest in implementing their proposed solution.
To decide who will represent the University at the global competition, seven Liverpool teams battled it out in front of a judging panel including Lynne Roberts, Breakthrough Incubator Manager from Santander Business; Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Impact Professor Anthony Hollander; and Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research Environment Professor Simeon Yeats.
The teams had just 15 minutes to present their ideas to the judges and answer questions before they were given an overall score.
Three prizes were awarded in total. In second place winning £3,500 of Santander investment were Business Economics students Filip De Luca, Lawrence Ward-Lilley and Edward Brook (image above) who pitched an idea to encourage sorting recyclable waste at home rather than paying waste management companies a higher price to separate the waste in bulk.
In third place winning £1,500 of Santander investment were Computer Science and Electronic Engineering student Edward Davies, Engineering PhD Ashkan Eliasy and Law student Mclean Wickham (image below) who pitched an idea to develop a platform that will act as ‘social media’ for politicians where control is maintained by trusted individuals. Campaign promises would be compared to their actions and activities in order to score them based on their reliability and consistency.
More information about World’s Challenge Challenge can be found on the Study Abroad website.