Kate Walker (Product Design Engineering 2019) won the Young Business Executive Award for her Loughborough-based business Exphand Prosthetics.
The company designs low-cost 3D printed prosthetics for children in the developing world. ExpHand is a 3D printed prosthetic arm that can be adjusted to fit any child, aged three to 10 years old. It costs less than £50 to produce.
Kate says:
Using 3D printing means that ExpHands can be manufactured relatively quickly and cost effectively, with little waste, close to where they are needed. The technique also opens up opportunities for customisation in style and colour, making the devices more appealing to young people.
The alumna started the business during her final year at Loughborough and later joined The Studio. She has gone on to win multiple awards including Experian Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2019, Mad-Tech Innovation 3D Printing Award, LeicestershireLive’s Innovation Award, and was recently awarded New Business of the Year at the LeicestershireLive Women in Business Awards.
Tom Jelliffe (Geography and Business Management 2018) took home the Tech Business Executive of the Year Award for his audio technology company Tzuka.
The company has designed and is currently engineering what it reports to be the world's most durable sports earbuds, to be launched later this year. The earbuds aim to be the first in the world with an impact resistance certification as well as being totally waterproof and shock proof, with built-in storage for directly uploading 4GB of music or podcasts.
Tzuka is based in the University’s incubator, LU Inc on LUSEP. Tom has also previously won the Innovation in Technology Award at the 2021 LeicestershireLive Innovation Awards in September. You can read more about Tzuka in our #LboroInnovation feature.
Congratulations to our alumni on their success at the awards.
Read more about the award ceremony.
Photo credits: BusinessLive