PhD student Georgina Leadley wins 2024 Female Founder's Prize

As part of the Futures Hub Series, Lucy Cavendish College at University of Cambridge, interviewed Georgina Leadley, winner of this years’ Female Founder's Prize. Her start-up company SLICE aims to develop a tool to optimise the delivery of transplant organs.

The Lucy Cavendish College Enterprise Challenge 2024 fosters entrepreneurial spirit among students, inspired by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Participants in the annual challenge form multi-disciplinary teams, pooling their diverse skills to tackle real-world problems. Guided by expert mentors, students generate cutting-edge concepts, receive mentorship and pitch to win investment towards implementing their vision.

The Female Founder's Prize was a new initiative in 2024, to empower women entrepreneurs. It is sponsored by Ankh Impact Ventures (AIV), an impact-driven venture capital investment platform that funds the future of rising stars, with emphasis on gender and racial equity. Teams pitched their ideas in competition for a prize of £15,000 in equity investment from AIV.

First prize was awarded to SLICE, a start-up venture led by CEPS CDT student, Georgina Leadley. SLICE aims to optimise the delivery of transplant organs. Their goal is to automate the process of crushing ice used in organ transplants, to create a portable device capable of creating sterile crushed ice, thereby enhancing the organ transplant process.

Drawing from her background in medical technology, Georgina proposed using ultrasound technology to crush the ice - a method that has been used in areas of industry and academia but not yet employed for this specific purpose.

Hear from Georgina Leadley, SLICE team leader, in an interview on the Futures Hub Series: https://www.lucy.cam.ac.uk/blog/futures-hub-series-georgina-leadley

The SLICE team were offered equity investment.

Their win is a well-deserved recognition of their innovative ideas and potential impact.

About Georgina Leadley:

Georgina is a PhD student at the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Connected Electronic and Photonic Systems (CEPS CDT), a joint Centre with UCL and University of Cambridge. The CEPS CDT is funded by EPSRC programme grant EP/S022139/1.

Read more about the Lucy Cavendish College Enterprise Challenge: link