51³Ô¹ÏÍø

D-View, who created an autonomous drone system that uses low-cost geophone sensors to locate trapped earthquake survivors, took home the £7,000 prize.

The Faculty of Natural Sciences Make-A-Difference (FoNS-MAD) competition is 51³Ô¹ÏÍø’s annual competition providing undergraduate students with a funded lab placement to develop startup ideas into proof-of-concepts.

The event challenges students to create impactful, low-cost technologies that address real-world issues. Over an eight-week summer placement, each team gains access to lab resources, funding, and mentorship. The final took place last night.

This year’s panel of judges included Dr Ruth Allan, Professor Sir John Pendry, Dr Allan Samuel, Dominque Kleyn and previous competition winner Dr Martin Holicky who assessed each team based on originality, societal impact, and technical feasibility.

'We knew we had to do something'

D-View is made up of team-mates Arda Kancal (Dyson School of Design Engineering) and Idil Igde (Department of Physics) and was born not only out of a sense of academic curiosity but also necessity, after witnessing the devastation of the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquake.

“We watched as people in our hometowns waited for rescue that never came,” Arda said. “We knew we had to do something. Something cheap enough for governments to actually use, something deployable, not just theoretical.”

On the win, the team said: “It is just such a great feeling, we put all that effort into our summer and this project and we finally got the prize. It’s just an amazing feeling.”

Professor Peter Haynes, Provost and Deputy President, opened the final event. He said: “By the end of the competition, today, the teams are expected to demonstrate the proof of concept of their technology and showcase it to a broader audience. So I'm sure all of you can appreciate the pressure that our teams will feel under to perform this evening.”

Rebecca Middleton, Director of Education and Student Experience, Faculty of Natural Sciences, who has managed the competition since 2014, said: “This year we had an unprecedented 6 teams in the final- all of whom did amazingly well and as an organising committee, we are so proud of their achievements. D-View were worthy winners and we look forward to continuing to support them on their innovation journey, of which FoNS-MAD is just the start!"

Team ANA, who developed a wearable EEG patch for brain health, were awarded runners up.

Other innovative designs from finalists

This year’s finalists showcased a wide range of ideas with potential to address significant global challenges.

• ANA: A wearable EEG patch for brain health
  ANA is developing a discreet, wearable EEG patch that allows users to monitor their brain activity in real-time, offering insights into focus, stress and mental well-being.
• FlyeWheel: Haptic feedback for prosthetic hands
  The FlyeWheel team is enhancing the experience of prosthetics users by restoring a sense of touch. Their device integrates sensors on prosthetic fingers with a soft robotics armband that inflates on the user’s arm to simulate pressure.
• LaminaBio: Turning algae waste into sustainable glucose
  LaminaBio wants to make synthetic biology more sustainable, starting with the sugar that fuels engineered microbes. Rather than relying on land-intensive glucose crops like corn, the team aims to engineer E. coli to digest laminarin, a polysaccharide from brown algae.
• SacchroSense: At-home diagnostics to cut antibiotic misuse
  The overprescription of antibiotics is currently fuelling the growth of pathogens that have become resistant to traditional treatments. SacchroSense aims to tackle this using a whole-cell biosensor that detects respiratory viruses like flu or RSV, designed to be used at home.
• Sense++: Making screens more accessible to blind users
  Sense++ is building a Braille tablet that connects to digital devices, translating on-screen images and text into tactile output using a matrix of pins.

Martin Holicky, winner of the 2017 FoNS-MAD with his team Matoha, returned to judge this year’s competition.

He said: “Thanks to FoNS-MAD we are able to launch our business Matoha and now we have material identification devices helping customers around the world in more than 50 countries. This was all thanks to FoNS-MAD,

“This year I had the special honour of being a judge on the FoNS-MAD panel and I was really happy to announce that the winners are D-View who, in my opinion, and also the opinion of the jury, really deserved it through excellent experimental work, really nice business models and excellent interactions with the stakeholders, NGOs and very nice social applications. We really thought their work was worth further support.”

Since its inception, FoNS-MAD has helped 51³Ô¹ÏÍø students bring innovative ideas to life, with past winners like Multus Biotechnology, a cultivated meat startup that went on to raise £7.9m in funding, and Matoha, a device that identifies plastics and textiles.

The 2026 competition is scheduled to launch on 12 November, and participants can register for the launch event