Entrepreneurial talent recognised via Scottish Edge award

Congratulations to Dr Tiffany Wood and Dr Vincent Martinez who received the IBioIC EDGE award at the Scottish EDGE competition for their work as part of biotech business Dyneval Ltd.

Scottish EDGE is the UK’s largest funding competition aimed at identifying and supporting Scotland’s innovative entrepreneurial talent. From a total of 305 participants, 45 shortlisted entrepreneurs were narrowed down to 19 finalists, who pitched their businesses to a panel of 16 judges. The winners will receive a share of the £1 million prize funds to support their business.

Tiffany and Vincent established Dyneval in April 2020, to offer innovative technology for the precise measurement of semen quality in order to improve the profitability and sustainability of farming. The average UK dairy farmer loses £37K each year due to poor conception rates, and at present, there is no quality control standard accessible for vets, farmers and AI technicians to check semen quality before reproduction. Dyneval’s technology provides an easy-to-use, automated and portable instrument for semen analysis. 

The original version of the core-technology was validated for bull semen by veterinary experts at RAFT solutions in 2019 and is an adaptation of the techniques developed by Dr Vincent Martinez, Dr Jochen Arlt and Professor Wilson Poon to study the biophysics of motile bacteria.   The relationship between RAFT solutions followed a chance meeting at a food-related knowledge-exchange event held in Edinburgh in 2014 and attended by RAFT Solutions and Tiffany Wood during her time as the first Industrial Research Liaison at the Edinburgh Complex Fluids Partnership.  Later this summer, RAFT Solutions will be deploying Dyneval technology to vets in Canada as part of their SemenRate service through the UK Research and Innovation funding for Transforming Food Production programme.

Speaking about the EDGE17 funding award Dr Tiffany Wood, Founder and CEO, said:

The team at Dyneval is absolutely delighted to have won the Scottish EDGE award.  This will accelerate our market readiness and growth and ability to have a significant and positive impact on the profitability and sustainability of dairy and beef farming.

Co-Founder and CTO, Vincent Martinez, added:

I am very happy and honoured to win an award from such a prestigious competition.