News

QMUL Recognised for Industry-Led Innovation at The Engineer Collaborate to Innovate Award

Centre for Bioengineering  Centre for Intelligent Transport 

4 March 2026

QMUL Prostate-AI project receiving the Highly Commended Award
QMUL Prostate-AI project receiving the Highly Commended Award
The Engineer Collaborate to Innovate Competition Banner
The Engineer Collaborate to Innovate Competition Banner

Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) has been recognised at The Engineer Collaborate to Innovate Awards, which celebrate projects where close collaboration between universities, industry and the NHS delivers real-world impact. Three QMUL-involved projects were in the finalist, with Prostate-AI receiving a Highly Commended award. This recognition highlights Queen Mary's strength in translating research into deployable solutions through strong partnerships beyond academia.

Prostate-AI: High-Throughput, AI-Enabled Prostate Cancer Screening for the NHS is led at QMUL by Rory Bennett, Dhruv Basude and Prof Zion Tse and brings together Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and JEB Technologies. The collaboration combines academic expertise in AI with industrial imaging systems and clinical insight to support faster and scalable prostate cancer screening aligned with NHS workflows. The Highly Commended award reflects the project's readiness for NHS adoption and its potential to improve diagnostic capacity.

QMUL was also shortlisted for Transforming Whole Blood into Accessible and Personalised Regenerative Implants, by Prof Thomas Iskratsch's team in collaboration with the University of Nottingham. The project brings together bioengineering research and translational expertise to explore new routes for creating personalised regenerative implants, with the aim of improving accessibility and clinical relevance.

A third finalist project extends QMUL's collaborative engineering work beyond healthcare. The farming future project, Integrated Human-Augmented Robotics and Intelligent Sensing for Precision Viticulture, is led by Dr Ketao Zhang and Prof Lei Su in collaboration with industry partners Extend Robotics and Saffron Grange Vineyard. By working closely with robotics integrator and end users, the team has developed robotic and sensing technologies for advanced manufacturing at the high-value products in the agriculture sector.

Across all three projects, a common theme is the importance of collaboration with industry and the NHS. By co-developing solutions with partners from the outset, Queen Mary researchers are ensuring that engineering innovation moves efficiently from research to real-world impact.

People: Thomas ISKRATSCH Ketao ZHANG Lei SU

Contact: Zion Tse
Email: z.tse@qmul.ac.uk

Updated by: Zion Tse