MCh (Orth) Alumnus wins Venture 2021 Award

Scotland’s next wave of entrepreneurs have been revealed as the University of Dundee crowned the winners of its annual Venture competition for business concepts. The Centre for Entrepreneurship runs this new business competition for University of Dundee students, staff and recent Alumni (graduated during the last two years) with eight prize fund categories.

The University of Dundee distributed a £38,000 prize fund to the best business pitches by staff and students. Fourteen finalists pitched their business plans to a panel of leading business innovators, watched remotely by a live audience that included potential investors. As well as funding to help support their business proposals, all winners received a place on Elevator’s 12-week summer business accelerator programme.

Dr Firas Bakri, a UDOTS MCh (Orth) graduate from 2019-2020 won the School of Medicine Award at the Venture 2021 Competition which took place on Friday 26th February.

Dr Bakri, originally from Jordan but now living and working in Dundee, won the award and £2,500 for his new business Xavier Bionix which is based in the Greenmarket, Dundee. The company is a Medical Technology (MedTech) company that develops world-class MedTech products for the medical industry using disruptive and emerging technologies.

After being endorsed by the University of Dundee as start-up entrepreneur, the company is developing a mixed reality pre-operative software planning application, which is the company’s founding product. Mixed reality spans the spectrum of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR). The business was founded by Dr Firas Bakri, Gareth James, Paul Sutherland and Rony Portelli. Between them, they have extensive, medical, business and software development experience. The company’s goal is to apply disruptive and emerging technologies to improve lives.

Dr Bakri conducted his MCh (Orth) research on developing, designing and evaluating a prototype custom-made external fixator frame/joint spanning (hinged) external fixator frame, using computer-aided design and 3D printing methods, without the need to have a pin inserted in a fashion corresponding to the centre of rotation of the joint. The research was supervised by Dr Tim Drew (Senior Lecturer, UDOTS).

Dr Drew stated:

“It was a great pleasure to work with Firas and help him to take this novel concept from his initial idea to a physical prototype. I am not in the least surprised he has received this award and I am sure it will be the first of many, everyone in UDOTs wishes him continued success with Xavier Bionix.”