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Bio-based Innovation Student Challenge Europe (BISC-E)
From Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Published on
Last updated on
From Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Published on
Last updated on
The BISC-E competition invites students from all disciplines to design solutions that contribute to a sustainable and circular economy. It challenges students to develop innovative, bio-based solutions to help overcome hurdles standing in the way of a climate-neutral Europe. These innovative products or services can tackle technological, environmental, or societal challenges, as long as they are wholly or partly derived from renewable biological sources.
The BISC-E competition is a novel and exciting means to support and challenge students’ learning and development in bioeconomy, as well as offering a unique networking opportunity for students to connect with peers and industry. Attractive prizes are also available at the national and European stages of the competition.
For more information about BISC-E, and to view the competition regulations, please see the IKC3 website .
A student team from the School of Biosystems and Food Engineering in University College Dublin (UCD) are the winners of the national Bio-based Innovation Student Challenge Europe (BISC-E) for 2024. The three-person team will go forward to compete at European level in September 2024 and, in the meantime, will be developing their protype, undertaking further research and developing their business plans.
The UCD team, under the supervision of Assistant Professor Ronald Halim, have developed an integrated anaerobic digestion and microalgae process for upcycling food waste. This is a potentially significant concept for Ireland as it works to develop an AD industry and meet ambitious 2030 biomethane targets.
''The BISC-E competition has been an amazing experience,” said UCD Team Captain, Fangting Bai. “It has helped us focus our ideas and have an end goal in sight. Thank you to all who have been involved - the steering group, the judging panel for their suggestions and David from IKC3 for the enterprise support sessions and advice. We are looking forward to the European finals in September.”
Placing a close second was a student team from the University of Limerick. Team Captain, Clotilde Techoueyres, said “BISC-E has been a great opportunity to take ideas from the lab, come together as a team to refine those ideas and consider how we might develop this into a business opportunity. We are grateful for the support from IKC3 in the lead up to the finals and for the advice from the judges which we will take forward in the next stage of our planning.”
The finals for this years were hosted by Maynooth University. The judging panel included representatives from academia, industry and policy within Ireland’s bioeconomy.
A student team from Munster Technological University was announced as winners of the Irish BISC-E competition in 2023. Team members Shon George Shiju, Eanna Dowling and Brian Mattimoe impressed judges with their ‘Circle-P’ project. The innovative concept proposed the use of biorefineries to recover and recycle phosphorous from industrial wastewaters.
Watch below, a short video about LignoFUN - the innovative project developed by the 2022 BISC-E winners. The team was composed of students from Trinity College Dublin, Dublin City University and University College Dublin.
Representing BiOrbic, Laura Healy, Charlene Vance, Jia-Lynn Tham and Alice Hand were the winners of the 2021 BISC-E competition in Ireland.
Impressively, the team finished in second place at the European finals.
Their innovative product, called the PhytoTowel, uses a process called phytoremediation to purify water. The ‘PhytoTowel’ uses duckweed, as a fast growing and absorbent plant, to absorb materials from impure water and filter out clean water instead. The used duckweed can then be used as a sustainable source of animal feed or fertiliser for farms.
This concept encapsulates what the bioeconomy is all about and has huge potential for making farming more sustainable. It is a completely circular and sustainable system, offering the potential to clean wastewater on dairy farms, and feed the water and duckweed back to these farms for feed and fertiliser.
The team’s video presentation can be watched below.