AvennaX, a student team from Bath, Imperial and Southampton, received the cash prize for their AlphaSuite business idea, making structural data relating to proteins more widely available to researchers of various disciplines.
The poster competition was won by Gene-erate, a team from the University of Edinburgh.
24 March 2026 – The Society of Chemical Industry (SCI) has announced the winners of its annual Bright SCIdea competition. Team AvennaX, who pitched an automated computational platform that performs every step of protein structural analysis for every bioscience student and researcher, accelerating the discovery of life-saving medicines, were decided by the judges to be deserving of the £5,000 cash prize.
Runners up for the pitch competition were Team CheGo, an add-on sensor system that transforms standard closed suction catheters into precision-guided medical devices, providing real-time beeping feedback to prevent over-insertion during mucus removal, and Team Mediketo, a digital app for sustainable ketogenic diet therapy in refractory epilepsy.
The poster competition which runs alongside the pitching was won by Gene-erate, a team of members from the University of Edinburgh, addressing a critical bottleneck in genetic data interpretation by building a solution that improves research productivity and patient outcomes.
Bright SCIdea provides training and mentoring for aspiring entrepreneurs with science-based business ideas that could benefit society, with those business ideas then presented to a panel of expert judges.
Judging the competition in 2026 were Victor Christou, Managing Partner at Hotdog Capital; Sarah Iveson, Commercial Unit Head North-West Europe at Sygenta; and David Ring, Vice President – Group Innovation at Synthomer.
Previous Bright SCIdea winners have gone on to grow their businesses and raise further capital. The 2022 winners CardiaTec are developing technology to address cardiovascular disease and recently won £1.4 million of seed funding. 2019 winners LCM (Low Carbon Materials) have gone from strength to strength and were finalists for the Earthshot Prize in 2022.
Find out more about the Bright SCIdea Challenge
About the Society of Chemical Industry
SCI is an independent, charitable learned society that helps bring science from the lab into industry quicker for the benefit of society.
SCI is a global network of innovators using science to tackle some of the big societal challenges of the day, across climate & planet and health & wellness. SCI brings together companies with $500bn in global sales and $30bn in scientific R&D; publishes nine peer reviewed journals, including the recently launched Sustainability journal; and convenes a broad range of technical and regional interest groups.
Through its mentoring and training programmes, SCI empowers future leaders in science and business.
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