6 Super Scottish Innovations to Watch Out For | Glaze & Save
British Science Week celebrates science, technology, engineering and maths, and all of the discoveries and innovations that arise from them. In Scotland, we have a vibrant science and innovation community, including Glaze & Save’s own CEO Tanya Ewing, who was formerly a British Female Inventor of the Year and holds an honorary PhD in Technology from Edinburgh Napier University for her innovative contributions to energy monitoring technology.
With that in mind, we thought what better way to celebrate British Science Week 2018 than to take a look at some of the most exciting innovations developing in Scotland now. From plastic-free packaging to solar-powered salt manufacturers to online developments, Scotland is teeming with innovative thinkers that are at the forefront of science and technology.
MindMate
MindMate is an online platform borne from co-founder Roger Arellano caring for his grandfather for seven years and experiencing the difficulties his grandfather faced while living with dementia. Teaming up with Patrick Renner and Susanne Mitschke, the graduates set up shop at the Enterprise Campus, and in 2016 won a place on the Techstars accelerator programme in New York .
MindMate already has over 500,000 users and has won twelve international awards for its innovation in supporting the older population with cognitive decline.
Isle of Skye Sea Salt Company
The Isle of Sky Sea Salt Company doesn’t let a thing like location get in the way of business. Isle of Sky Sea Salt is a multi-award winning product made entirely from the waters of Loch Snizort on the Isle of Skye. The salt is the first to be made on the Isle of Skye for 300 years, is the only sea salt made in the UK using just the sun and wind.
Using a combinations of poly-tunnels and humidity control, the Isle of Sky Sea Salt Company managed to dry out the waters of Loch Snizort on a site that is entirely devoid of power. The entirety of the drying process is accomplished using solar power.
pure LiFi
pure LiFi wants us to imagine a world where every light connects us with unprecedented data and bandwidth. A LiFi enabled device converts the beam of light into an electrical signal with the signal then being converted back into data. Incredibly, the device sends back data using invisible light. pureLiFi seeks to resolve the issue of diminishing wireless capacity occurring across the globe.
Professor Harald Haas demonstrated LiFi– or “light fidelity” – during a TED talk in 2011 , showing how LiFi can turn any LED into an access point for seonding and receiving data. He then went on to co-found pureLiFi as a spin-out from the University of Edinburgh. In 2016, the company launched their first LliFi-integrated light fitting.
sensewhere
sensewhere’s adwhere service develops indoor positioning software to overcome GPS blackspots , allowing venue owners and marketers to deliver relevant marketing and promotions to customers using precise location data combined with stored customer information. It is set to revolutionise digital marketing, particularly venue specific marketing.
ZoneFox
Starting off as a doctorate project at Edinburgh Napier University, ZoneFox has developed into a full cybersecurity company using augmented intelligence to help businesses protect their data. The augmented intelligence monitors who is accessing data in real time and indentifying patterns , removing the need for cybersecurity staff to manually go through log files and speeding up the time it takes to detect and deal with threats. ZoneFox looks to help businesses look at data protection and information security in a different way , that would make life easier for everyone, and be available to all businesses who need it.
CuanTec
CuanTec are a Scottish based blue biotech company making compostable, antimicrobial bioplastic from waste of the fisheries industry, providing an environmentally responsible alternative to polluting packaging.
The company started in January 2017 and based on its outstanding scientific knowledge and expertise it made the fantastic achievement of producing a food packaging film which is compostable and biodegradable – meaning that it will convert naturally into compost and will break down into natural by-products. This provides a real solution to the issue of the environmental impact of traditional petroleum-based plastics. It is antimicrobial, which means that it kills or inhibits the growth of microorganisms – and the company has shown that this increases the shelf life of salmon steaks, thereby reducing waste. The company have currently embarked on a crowdfunding campaign to raise the money required to scale the product up commercially . And who knows, with several leading food manufacturers currently waiting to trial CuanTec’s packaging, we could see it hitting our supermarket shelves soon.
