The winners of the UK’s first Bio-Hackathon are teammates  Evgeny Hana, Pablo, Claus, Kelvin and Shannon part of, self named, team-alpha. During 72 sleepless, caffeinated hours of biology prototyping, in the University of Cambridge state-of-the-art biology labs, they devised an idea, built a prototype and then pitched their idea, in front of a crowd of 300 people. 5 industry judges selected Team-Alpha based on their product an "alpha brick". It is a means of completely automating the design and fabrication of complex DNA parts called "bio-bricks". The potential application of their invention is the increased efficiency/speed of development of antibiotics, disease resistant crops and even new strains of yeast for more delicious beer!

You can find their presentation slides and video here >>>. ​

The juding panel was made up of industry experts and investors. The judges were: Richard Hammond (Head of biology at Cambridge Consultants - engineering consultancy), Kasia Ladds (Cambridge Enterprise, University technology transfer), Mark Hammond (Imperial Innovations a publicly listed investment firm), Steven O'Connell (Head of startup factory - Indiebio) and Paul Hughes (Head of Future Business Centre - Startup company factory). They are experts in the commercialisation of ideas that come from amazing minds.

The team won £1500 and a place at the Judge Business School accelerator. The team is now going to enter the Judge Business schools autumn accelerator program to build a business and take their technology to market. They are beginning discussions with investors on attracting funding.