One of the winners of the 2005 CUEBiC competition, Gerhard Symons, who is Managing Director of CamStent, has been awarded the 2nd prize of €1,500 in the 2006 European Young Entrepreneur Awards. CamStent fought off 300 entries from all across Europe, to be one of 30 finalists to be invited to the Innovact Congress in Reims where they were presented their prize by the European Union Commissioner for Scientific Research, Mr Janez Potocnik.

Mr Symons graduated in July 2006 from the professional Master’s in Bioscience Enterprise (MBE) programme run by the Institute of Biotechnology, University of Coventry. CamStent was a winner (2nd place) in the 2005 CUEBiC competition, winning the £5,000 HLBBShaw Prize for Innovation. CamStent is commercialising a non-stick coating technology for coronary artery stents to prevent late-stage thrombosis in patients with coronary artery disease, the number one killer in the Western World.

“Involvement with CUE has been central to our success,” said Mr Symons. “The extra activities that CUE organised (boot camps at the weekends) that we attended helped us write a first-class business plan, and prepared us for success not only in CUE, but in the European setting. Every step we make in taking the business forward is a step to thank CUE for their ongoing support in the company. I hope that our success on the European scene acts as a spur to show folks that making it at CUE means that firms can be competitive at the European level.”