Wild Bioscience wins The Oxford Trust-sponsored Emerging Tech Business Award at the 2024 Oxfordshire Business Awards

Announced at the glamourous Oxfordshire Business Awards ceremony on 7th June, this year’s winner of the Emerging Tech Business Award is University of Oxford spinout Wild Bioscience, a company using sophisticated computational biology and biotech to build climate resilience into food production through specifically designed crops.

The Oxford Trust is pleased to have sponsored the first Emerging Tech Business Award 2024, along with Oxfordshire Business First. With entries from 17 impressive new technology businesses across Oxfordshire, the judging panel – The Oxford Trust’s Nicki Campling; Oxfordshire Business First’s Sue Cheetham and Oxford Innovation Space’s Wendy Tindsley – had a difficult but enjoyable task selecting their winner.

Through site visits and interviews, judges assessed the companies for uniqueness in their field, implementation of their technology, market potential, financial health, a good team and scalability.

“This is one to watch”

On the winning company Wild Bioscience, judges said, “We were blown away by their mission, innovation and potential impact. Their capacity to implement and commercialise convinced us that this is one to watch.”

Wild Bioscience, founded in 2021, draws on inspiration from plants in the wild and aims to genetically alter crops to produce more food, using less water and fewer nutrients, and leave behind more carbon in the soil.

On receipt of the award, Wild Bioscience co-founder and CEO Ross Hendron said, “I’m immensely proud of our entire team for bringing the dedication and ingenuity that makes Wild Bioscience a great, and now award-winning, business!”

The Oxford Trust is pleased to see a deserving winner of this year’s award but also extends congratulations to two impressive runners up, Sun Bear Biofuture and PicturaBio.

Sun Bear Biofuture is innovating a fermentation method using waste products to replace palm oil, which is contained in over 50% of supermarket products and has major environmental detrimental effects. “Its impact could potentially be global. Once the technology is proven, the scaleup route is well established,” the judges said.

PicturaBio is developing a universal testing platform to use in the field to rapidly identify a variety of infectious diseases, using single-molecule fluorescent microscopy and machine learning. The judges were impressed by their rapidly developing and adaptable technology. “The market potential is vast and exciting,” they said.

Finalists Sun Bear Biofuture and PicturaBio

Recognition for companies in the Trust’s innovation Centres

The Awards evening celebrated a number of companies based in The Oxford Trust’s two innovation centre. In addition to Wood Centre for Innovation-based PicturaBio being a finalist in the Emerging Tech Business category, Oxford Centre for Innovation based Quantum Dice was a finalist in The Oxford Science Park Innovation Award and Wood Centre for Innovation based Lumai was a finalist in The Oxfordshire LEP New Business Award.

Celebrating excellence in Oxfordshire based businesses

Oxfordshire Business Awards has been recognising, rewarding and celebrating the excellence of Oxfordshire-based companies in a broad range of categories for 28 years, including The Business Magazine Green Award; The Greatest Hits Radio Charity and Community Award; The Oxford Science Park Innovation Award; and The Oxfordshire LEP New Business Award.

We wish all the award winners and finalists success in their pursuits and we look forward to next year’s event to celebrate more companies in this thriving Oxfordshire business sector.

Read about all the awards winners at: https://www.oxfordshirebusinessawards.co.uk/2024-oxba-winners-revealed. 

Feature image: Wild Bioscience receives the Emerging tech Business Award from John Boyle, Chairman of The Oxford Trust’s Board of Trustees, and Frank Nigriello, Chair of Oxfordshire Business First