While completing a master’s, Jenny Griffiths realised that visual search tools are rapidly changing the way we discover new things and interact with the world around us. As a result, Jenny established Snap Tech, a company offering novel visual search-based solutions for the fashion industry.

Snap Tech is changing the way people shop by fusing visual search with fashion. The technology can turn phones (or other devices) into smart cameras, allowing users to point at an item of clothing in a magazine or shop, and instantly learn more or discover alternatives.

The company aims to take image search further by personalising the shopping experience. Its tools use a blend of mathematical heuristics (problem-solving techniques) and deep learning algorithms to understand users’ preferences, such as those relating to colour, shape, budget and availability, making it easier for consumers to find what they want.

Retailers and publishers are using Snap Tech solutions to increase conversion rates, significantly improve engagement, and generate additional revenue.

The company aims to build strategic partnerships as it expands globally. As CEO, Jenny views her growth as a leader, supported by the SME Leaders Programme, as playing a key role in continuing to develop solutions for fashion, while exploring the potential impact of the technology in other industries.

The construction industry sends millions of tonnes of waste to landfill each year, at significant cost to the industry and the environment. And new legislation requires that by 2025  at least 70% of all waste must be recycled.

These two factors are driving the construction industry to find alternative building methods and materials that reduce waste.

With help from the Innovation Fund of Zero-Waste Scotland, Sam founded the clean tech spin-out company Kenoteq to address this need.

Kenoteq has developed a patent-pending process using traditional earth-construction methods to make unfired bricks that do not use cement which have 90% of their content recycled from building and construction waste. Its unique production process and materials are classified as recyclable by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency.

As the new brick does not use gas firing, large manufacturers can eliminate the cost of gas-fired production and avoid additional carbon taxes under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). The bricks offer a high thermal mass and are ‘breathable bricks’, reducing the need for air conditioning and air quality controls inside buildings by providing relative humidity buffering.

Imagine if you could replace all the interfaces that clutter your life with something that reads the gestures you already know. Now add the ability to detect the almost infinite subtlety of touch our hands can generate. By contrast, the many switches, joysticks, buttons and wheels that enable humans to interact with electronic products are unwieldy, difficult to use and expensive to make, requiring thousands of complex sensors within each one.

Ming Kong has invented a new sensing method using a soft, hyper-sensitive material that can sense a greater range of touch motions than traditional electronic devices. It can also be moulded out of one material into a 3D shape rather than assembled in parts. 

His company TG0's technology aims to make controls more intuitive. Touchscreens and buttons require you to move a virtual object in 3D space with 2D controls, TG0 enables users to physically perform the desired on-screen movement on a flexible, soft 3D object. 

The material can detect an incredibly diverse range of different hand movements, removing the need for multiple products to control different electronic functions, and improving control.

TG0 could ultimately replace conventional controls such as the trackpad, the car dashboard and even gaming handhelds with a sculptural, all-in-one 3D sensing material.

Wearable technologies are making a massive impact on society, beginning to blur the boundary between human and machine. It is also an exploding commercial market set to be worth $12.6 billion by 2018.

The next generation of lightweight, high performance machines will rely on technologies that are capable of bringing the user as close to a device as possible. 

Peiman has created the first reported nano-display device that uses both optical and electronic property modulation in Phase Change Materials. Peiman’s company, Bodle Technologies, spun out of Oxford University in November 2015, to further advance this technology.

An entirely new class of ultra-thin, ultra-high resolution displays with nanosecond access speed and no power consumption in static mode is now under development by his team. 

This revolutionary display will initially target the rapidly growing microdisplay market compact, projection based displays used in emerging near-eye applications like Google Glass. The first prototypes are currently under development, with a small working device set to be ready within the next 12 months.

Over one million children born prematurely die each year, of which an estimated 75% could be saved with incubation treatment. 

The high cost of traditional incubators and difficulty with maintaining and transporting them means that many of the world’s poorest, more isolated or rural communities do not have access to the technology.

James is a product design and technology graduate from Loughborough University who has invented a revolutionary inflatable incubator called MOM to provide a solution to this terrible situation.

MOM is a tiny incubator  that could cost as little as 1/30th of the price of traditional incubators, making it much more affordable for use in the developing world. It can be quickly flat-packed down for easy storage in air ambulances and mobile clinics, and powered for 24 hours from a car battery.  Small, mobile and affordable means that more incubators can be there when needed to save far more babies.

Current joint replacement systems use a standardised one-size-fits-all approach, despite the fact that bone shape and size can vary enormously.

Susannah had the idea to create fully-customised parts for surgery. She is a co-founder of Imperial College London spin-out Embody Orthopaedic that now make unique instruments designed specifically for a one person’s surgical intervention. 

Embody are pioneering low-cost instrumentation for orthopaedic surgery with a new type of 3D printed technology to revolutionise joint replacements. This approach decreases risk by creating instrumentation such as knee replacements that are unique to each patient. The minimally invasive devices are printed in nylon, a low-cost, robust material that can be readily sterilised.

Susannah’s instruments are now used in both everyday surgery and more specialised cases, such as soldiers with lower limb gunshot wounds. Using 3D printing technology enables a very complex operation to be planned and undertaken in a much reduced timeframe, allowing an entirely personalised surgical approach at an affordable cost.

Embody is expanding on 3D printing customisable implants. Furthering plans to deliver a fully tailored joint replacement process, from surgical planning to recovery, the company is also launching a web-based surgical planning system. This allows surgeons to upload patient scans and trial different surgical scenarios pre-operatively. Within the next ten years, Susannah plans to apply the technology in other fields such as maxillofacial, cardiovascular and dental surgery.

Advances in passive (battery-free) radio-frequency identification (RFID) are creating opportunities for highly accurate tracking in a range of industries. Patented technologies developed by University of Cambridge spin-out PervasID harness the potential of passive RFID to allow real-time monitoring over wide areas, using a fixed infrastructure.

CEO and Co-Founder Sithamparanathan Sabesan has led PervasID in developing a complete RFID Inventory, Portal and Checkout, end-to-end solution that uses networks of antennas to detect and track items with passive RFID tags across wide areas. This can be achieved to a high level of precision (99%+), enabling cost-effective, continuous monitoring for companies in sectors such as retail, healthcare and security. 

For example, in retail, PervasID’s systems support inventory management and improve customer experiences through real-time tracking of goods from the warehouse to store checkout and exit. Similarly, PervasID systems support efficient management of resources in healthcare. In security they help to keep high-value assets safe, deterring theft with systems for accurate, long-range tracking.

Sabesan has been a Hub Member since 2011, when he joined as an Enterprise Fellow. He aims to use support from the SME Leaders Programme to build skills in leading and growing a team dedicated to developing and marketing PervasID’s solutions. Training and mentoring will also provide guidance on establishing the right partnerships to broaden the technology’s use in industry.

Oxford Space Systems' innovative structures, such as its novel large deployable antennas (LDAs), use both conventional and new materials. The LDAs offer significant savings in the build and launch costs of satellites and are lighter, less complex and can be stowed more efficiently than those currently in commercial demand. The development of a flight-worthy LDA is currently viewed as "strategically important" by the European Space Agency.

Although still in its early design stages, Oxford Space Systems is generating significant interest from satellite builders and operators globally and has gained investment from venture capital firms and various private investors.

Oxford Space Systems has the ambitious vision of establishing its position as the centre of excellence, making the UK the go-to supplier for large deployable antenna technology.

• Space Girl YouTube channel
  
• Shefali on Twitter
  
• Interview in Womanthology
  

Shefali is one of the ten winners of our 2016 SME Leaders Programme.

For Alexander, what started off as a way to make a fun robot for his nieces quickly turned into something with far greater potential impact.

There is a huge market for programmable robots as educational toys, but affordability has been a major barrier to success in the consumer market.

Founder of Robotical Ltd Alexander aims to change this  by producing a working robot that can be bought for less than £100 - but is far more than just a toy. 

Robotical's 3D printed robot Marty can walk, dance, or even be programmed to play football. The unique design halves the number of motors required for each of the robot’s legs, reducing production and retail costs dramatically.

Billed as an open-source educational toy for 'geeks of all ages', it can be wirelessly reprogrammed and modified with new 3D-printed parts, such as extra limbs. Users can control it from their smartphones, dive into programming through graphical language Scratch, or more traditional languages such as Python. It has already been used to teach children Python, who designed movements to make the robots walk.

There are plans for a novel 'robot app store' where consumers can download code for their robots to change how they move, alongside files for 3D printable parts to customise their appearance – effectively hardware apps for your robot!

Dr John C Taylor OBE FREng was born in Buxton, Derbyshire in 1936.  Having spent five years living in Canada during his childhood, he returned home towards the end of the Second World War.  He attended King William’s College on the Isle of Man before studying Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge.

Dr John C Taylor is one of the UK’s most successful and prolific living inventors and, over a sixty-year career, has invented, produced and sold components for numerous electrical appliances around the world. 

While at his company Strix Ltd, Dr Taylor established the business as the world-leading manufacturer of kettle controls.  His research was instrumental in designing the ubiquitous safety switch that turns a kettle off when it boils and prevents it from overheating, and he also designed the 360˚ cordless connectors in modern kettles.

Dr Taylor’s innovations led to the production and sale of almost two billion kettle controls - 75% of the global market.  His inventions in the development of bi-metallic safety critical cut-outs for electric motors are also used in domestic appliances such as hairdryers and fan heaters.  His work has also seen over four hundred patents filed, including automatic windshield wipers, electric motor protectors and cordless kettle connectors and controls, and it is a testament to these components’ visionary design that they continue to be in prolific use today.

Awards

Dr Taylor has been the recipient of many honours including, but not limited to, the following:

• Appointment as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2011 for his outstanding contribution to the advancement of British engineering, innovation and commerce
  
• Appointment as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2011 New Year honours list for his services to business and horology
  
• Four Queen’s Awards given to the company he started, Strix Ltd. Three are for Export and one is for Innovation, granted for his 360˚ cordless kettle connector, used by millions around the world each day
  
• The Harrison Medal, awarded by the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers for excellence in horology
  
• Awarded the Chancellor’s 800^th Anniversary Medal for outstanding philanthropy from the University of Cambridge, presented by HRH Duke of Edinburgh.
  

He is also an elected Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge, and has been conferred Honorary Doctorates from University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) and Durham University.  When he’s not inventing and innovating, Dr Taylor is a keen aviator, mountaineer, yachtmaster and philanthropist.

Philanthropy

Dr John C Taylor is a committed philanthropist and has made a number of donations in order to ensure that young engineers in the UK have the tools they need to be competitive in a global market.  In 2017, he became the main sponsor of the new Dr John C Taylor Enterprise Hub, affectionately known as the Taylor Centre, in the Royal Academy of Engineering.  He also established in perpetuity a Chair Professorship of Innovation in the Engineering Department of the University of Cambridge. 

Following his career in creating electrical control switches, Dr Taylor became well-known for his interest in clocks and is one of the world’s leading experts in the work of John Harrison, an early pioneer of timekeeping and sea clocks. This led him to design and help build the Corpus Chronophage, a large, time-eating clock which that stands proud on the exterior of the Taylor Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.  Dr Taylor donated the clock, alongside a bestowment to make the Taylor Library possible, to his alma mater in order to support bright students of future generations.

http://www.johnctaylor.com/

Sir Robin is a technology entrepreneur most known for his work as ARM Holdings’ founding CEO and Chairman. Under his leadership, ARM  become the world’s leading semiconductor Intellectual Property (IP) company with ARM chips becoming the most prolific on our planet. He guided ARM from start-up through flotation on NASDAQ and the LSE in 1998 before retiring in 2007.

Robin first became interested in technology aged 8 and at 13, was running his own radio and TV repair business which lead him to study Electronic Engineering at the University of Liverpool.

Sir Robin’s early career was in electronic design with Rank Bush Murphy and Pye TMC followed by 13 years with Motorola Semiconductors. Prior to his time at ARM, Robin served as the Managing Director of ES2 Ltd. and was the CEO of Henderson Security Systems. In addition to his day-to-day work, Robin served as Chairman of the Open Microprocessor Initiative (an ESPRIT panel advising on the collaborative R&D across Europe). He is a past President of the IET.

Robin was knighted in 2002 for services to the information technology industry, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2002 and Fellow of the Royal Society in 2015. He is a visiting professor at the University of Liverpool, and regularly mentors new entrepreneurs and serves as an angel investor and advisor to several UK-headquartered high-tech companies. His hobbies include skiing, tennis, painting and music.

Steve is a leading expert with over 35 years of experience.in the fields of semiconductor device research, nanotechnology and millimetre-wave integrated circuit design.

After founding and leading the Nanoelectronics Research Centre at the University of Glasgow, he co-founded and became Technical Director of Intellemetrics Ltd. His enterprising spirit continued with the foundation of Kelvin Nanotechnology Ltd in 2001.

Steve became Vice-Principal for Research and Enterprise at the University of Glasgow in 2005 where e is responsible for the University’s research strategy and policies. These includes key relations with research sponsors and strategic partners. He also heads up the University’s enterprise activities which has a strong focus on research links with industry and the promotion of spinout companies.

Steve was awarded an OBE for services to the field of nanotechnology in the 2002 Jubilee Honours List and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2007.

Hermann is widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of the Silicon Fen cluster. He  is a co-founder of Amadeus Capital Partners, alongside Fellow Anne Glover. He has been involved in a number of successful start-ups in his time at Amadeus such as CSR plc, Entropic Research Laboratory (which was later acquired by Microsoft) and Icera (acquired by Nvidia in 2011).

His career began famously as the co-founder of Acorn Computers, responsible for the iconic BBC Micro computer, which led to the development of ARM Holdings, now a global microprocesser giant. He was also founding director at organisations including IQ (Bio), IXI Limited, SynGenix and Advanced Displays Limited.

Hermann was awarded an Honorary CBE for ‘innovative service to the UK enterprise sector’ in 2001, and was made a member of the Government’s Council for Science and Technology in 2004. He was also commissioned to write a report on technology and innovation in the UK by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

In 2012, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society in recognition of his contribution to the translation of science into business. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering from 2002 and holds honorary Doctorates from the Universities of Bath, Loughborough, and from Anglia Polytechnic.

In some of the most male-dominated parts of the engineering world, Jane has shown by example that women are at least as capable as men. Her work in education has been dedicated to keeping the door open behind her for future generations of engineers.

Jane Atkinson is currently Director, Cape Specialist Services part of Cape Ltd, an international leader in the provision of critical industrial services.

Brought up in Middlesbough, her career began as a sponsored engineering student with British Steel in 1990. She worked as a technical advisor at the Teesside Blast Furnace before moving into operations, managing the Cast House at Redcar. During her time in the steel industry she managed many major production units and spent five years with the company in Alabama in the USA. Jane then moved into power generation managing coal and gas fired assets for Sembcorp Utilities Ltd. During that role she was responsible for the operations of the UK’s first Biomass Power Plant.

Jane has won several awards most notably the CBI First Woman Award in Manufacturing and the prestigious Stephenson’s Award for inspiring young people in science and engineering. She is an active member of the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Chair of the UK IChemE Board. Jane is also a Governor of Teesside University and an Advisory Board Member of the National Science Museum in London.

Robert is an experienced angel investor and mentor to technology-based start-up businesses in the UK and USA.

He is the founder of the Cambridge Angels, a group of expert technology and biotechnology entrepreneurs who invest in and mentor technology start-ups across the UK.

He is Chairman of two technology startups, Netronome and CCS, and serves on the board of Focalpoint Positioning, Myrtle Software, Featurespace, CRFS and Ubisense. His entrepreneurial experience also involves co-founding FORE Systems, a leader in high-speed data communications, where he was Chief Technical Officer (the company was sold to Marconi in 1999).

Robert was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2010.

Jeremy is Chief Technology Officer at Cambridge Display Technology. He is one of the three original inventors of P-OLED, the technology used to create digital displays in devices such as TV screens, computer monitors and smart phones.

He played a major role in transforming early permutations of the invention into a fully manufacturable and marketable technology using new device architectures, materials and manufacturing processes - including the direct printing of full colour LED displays. 

Jeremy's career has also involved working with Toshiba in the UK and Japan to develop quantum electronic and opto-electronic devices. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) in 2009.

Andy’s career in industry has involved co-founding over a dozen spin-outs and start-ups, three of which floated on stock markets. Virata floated on NASDAQ and at its peak had a market capitalisation of $5 billion.

His most prominent successes have come through RealVNC, which won the prestigious MacRobert Award in 2013, and Ubisense plc. Collectively, these two organisations have received five Queen’s Awards for Enterprise.

In academia, Andy heads the University of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory and is an Honorary Fellow of Trinity Hall and Corpus Christi College. Elsewhere, he served as President of the IET between 2012 and 2013, and in 2007 received a CBE for services to the computer industry.

Andy is co-founder and Chairman of pioneering remote access software developers RealVNC and is also Professor of Computer Technology at the University of Cambridge. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 1996.

Sir Alan is one of the Academy’s longest-serving Fellows, with an illustrious career across the research and technology industry.

He has a PhD in Electrical engineering and has served on more than twenty company and institution boards as either an executive or non-executive director. These have ranged from start-ups to FTSE 100 companies and include Director of Research and Technology and Deputy Chief Executive of British Telecom, Chairman of WS Atkins and deputy Chairman of Experian Plc. He is currently President of the ERA Foundation.

Sir Alan has served on the British Government’s Committee for Science and Technology and the Strategic Defence Review panel, and as Chairman of both the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Engineering Council.

He is a past President of the IEE (now IET) and a Life Fellow of the IEEE (USA). He has been awarded nine honorary doctorates as well as an OBE (1987) and CBE (1995) before he was knighted in 2000.

Sir Alan was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 1984.