Department PhD students win SETSquared Best Graduate Start-Up Award
Thursday 9 June 2011
The Department is very pleased with the announcement that two of our PhD students, Aaron Mason and Georgios Michalakidis have just won the SETSquared Best Graduate Start-Up Award.
Aaron, Georgios, and their start-up company, Thoughtified Ltd, beat strong competition from the Universities of Bristol, Bath and Exeter at the special event held on 7 June at the Holburne Museum in Bath.
Further details can be found on the SETSquared site.
This is excellent news for the Department and credit must also go to Professor Paul Krause, who serves as the mentor for the two budding entrepreneurs, providing them with guidance and support, as well as contributing to their winning business plan.
In July, Aaron and Georgios will compete for the Santander Graduate Awards - the Department would like to wish them all the very best at the event!
Pleased with their success, Aaron and Georgios commented: The department has been extremely supportive thus far – we are delighted to see Surrey as well as other universities and external bodies appreciate the amount of hard work and sleepless nights in our social enterprise. Much of this would not have been possible without the support from our Department, Prof. Paul Krause for his help and guidance, as well as Dr. Bogdan Vrusias' supervision. Putting research (and other) ideas into industrial use is an exciting aspect of one's studies – Computing has a formidable track record of this with the Voting et al research groups putting, as Thoughtified would say, "thought into action".
I do very much hope history will repeat itself a month from now in the Santander awards.