The Latest News on Projects

The projects team were pleased to announce an increased budget for our popular Feasibility Funding this quarter. With up to £30k available per project for industry to collaborate with Scotland’s talented academics, we are expecting some exciting projects to be announced soon.

We welcomed three new early stage companies with project funding this quarter. Casdu, a spin out from the University of Glasgow, have been awarded £8k to work on solutions to potato disease caused by bacteria. Also spinning out of Glasgow University, Scent No M are looking to harness microbial scents and were awarded £20k through IBioIC’s inaugural Converge Challenge prize. Finally, we were thrilled to see EcoCascade win the IBioIC prize at the Scottish EDGE awards in November. EcoCascade are a community interest group planning to support seaweed processing along the West Coast of Scotland.

IBioIC are seeing a lot of interest in the seaweed sector, so were pleased to be invited to present at AlgaeUK’s annual conference in November. We shared the stage with NotPla, recent winners of the Earthshot Prize for their work on displacing petrochemical derived plastic with seaweed polymers, and Varicon Aqua who are supporting microalgae biotech through their bespoke photobioreactors.

As IBioIC funded projects end we love to see the teams win further success through funding, investment or products on the market. Microplate Dx is a company we have supported over the years through a sponsored RSE enterprise fellowship and project funding, so we were thrilled to see Stuart and the team win seed funding of more than £500k and win a Scottish EDGE award of £70k. Well done to everyone involved!

Valerie Evans