Knowledge West Enterprise Awards

The Knowledge West Enterprise Awards recognise and reward the best business ideas and new enterprises by students, staff and alumni from the six HEIs in the West of England.

There are two award categories - the Best Student Business Plan and the Most Innovative Start-up Company.

Best Student Business Plan 2007

Interactive Places

Tom Bennett, Winner £5,000
Website: www.interactiveplaces.co.uk

Interactive Places bring heritage sites alive for all ages. Interactive tours and games are tailored to specific locations, to give visitors a personalised experience. Visitors can choose between different historically accurate characters, allowing them to experience the site from various perspectives, dependent on their character's age, status and gender. Tom Bennett studied the Interactive Media MA at the University of the West of England. View the video

TalkTone

Zeng Biao and Anyu Gao, Merit Award £1,000
Website: www.talktone.co.uk

A Window-based interactive Mandarin self-teaching software package, TalkTone™. The proposed software package includes two novel features tailored specifically to Mandarin: 1) An interactive tone-training feedback mechanism, which helps users to distinguish and pronounce the words with the different tones; and 2) a conversation-driven database for commonly-used Mandarin words and expressions. Zeng Biao is a psycholinguistic PhD student and Anyu Gao is an Electronic Engineering PhD student studying at the University of Bristol. View the video

Priya

Priya Virmani

Priya is a range of 33 organic and fair-trade beauty products for the face, hair & body. The products are pure in their formulation, ethical in their sourcing and competitive in their pricing. Full of nourishing goodness they are essentially food for your skin. Priya Virmani graduated with a PhD in Media Economics & Globalisation from the University of Bristol in July 2007. View the video

The GradRoom

Nicholas Elliott

The GradRoom is a student lead project aiming to meet the online needs of university students. It provides students with information on their academic, social, sport and professional lives and helps students learn from each other. Employment recruiters are invited to this network to communicate their opportunities to students. Nicholas Elliott studied Business Administration (BSc) at Bath University. View the video

Foliomatch

Gemma Boyce

A website providing an online forum/gallery for creative artists to showcase their work. The site is aimed at improving employment prospects for graduates from the creative sector. UK wide company for undergraduates as well as graduates. Gemma Boyce is a Final Year student of BA (Hons) Business Enterprise at the University of the West of England. View the video

Female Tradepersons Organisation

Ellen Sinclair and James Garrod

FTO (Female Tradespersons Organisation) is an online community for women in skilled manual trades, including plumbers, electricians, decorators and builders. Its primary functions are: Promoting the availability of female tradespersons (FTs) to householders; Providing a route to market for qualified FTs and Enabling networking opportunities and other support for member FTs. Ellen Sinclair and James Garrod studied Business Management at the University of Gloucestershire. View the video

Most Innovative Start-up Company 2007

Travellingbug

James Jardella, Joint Winner £5,000
Website: www.travellingvolunteer.com

Travellingbug Ltd’s Travelling Volunteer Projects help independent people to volunteer internationally within social working charities. Travellingbug is an affordable service for gap year students doing international voluntary work. Uniquely, it funds the communities that students visit. James Jardella is a third year Medical Engineering undergraduate at Bath University, and a global outreach project executive for SIFE Bath. View the video

The Key Revolution

Adrian Burholt, Joint Winner £5,000
Website: www.thekeyrevolution.com

The Key Revolution is an easy to use and secure online service provider delivering wired or wireless access to portable, personal and internet based content and applications using a unique identity device controlled by chip and PIN technology. Based on the SIM, the worlds most trusted identity and security hardware token used by billions of mobile phone and bank customers world wide. The Key Revolution is a new venture in the Innovation Centre, Bath University. View the video

CoolBoard

Nic Smith, Merit Award £1,000
Website: www.coolboard.co.uk

A balance board providing superior functionality over existing boards as it offers movement in all directions simultaneously.  I.P. is in place and sales are continuing to gather pace both through shops and the CoolBoard website. With so many opportunities things look very promising for this fledgling business. Nic Smith gained a first class honours degree in Aeronautical Engineering at the University of West of England. View the video

Odour-reader

Dr Chris Probert and Professor Norman Ratcliffe, Merit Award £1,000

Gastro-intestinal diseases afflict over four billion adults and children each year. Chris Probert and Norman Ratcliffe have developed Odour-reader, a device able to rapidly diagnose disease by 'reading' the odour of biological fluids including stool and urine. It enables the gasses emitted from faeces to be analysed within a few minutes. Dr. Chris Probert is Professor of Gastroenterology Clinical Science @ South Bristol, University of Bristol. Professor Norman Ratcliffe is Dep. Director of CRAMSS in the Faculty of Applied Sciences, at the University of the West of England. View the video