The 2025 What’s the Big Idea competition celebrates its finalists and winners!
We held our Awards Ceremony for our annual What’s The Big Idea? competition on Tuesday 2 December, which celebrated the creativity, ambition, and entrepreneurial spirit across Queen’s!
The competition, sponsored by Ormeau Business Park and Kainos, gives students the chance to compete for a share of a £7,000 prize fund and 10 award categories, including innovation, ai, social enterprise, climate impact, and more.
Whether students have thought of a novel business idea overnight or are already running their exciting own ventures, it provides the valuable opportunity to build their business skills, gain feedback, and connect with local entrepreneurs.
The winners of the 2025 competition are:
- Best Overall Business Idea: Yogiraj Jakkal
- Most Innovative Business Idea: Grace McShane
- Best Climate Impact Idea: Yogiraj Jakkal
- Best Idea for a Social Enterprise: Rory MacNeill
- Best Use of AI in a Business Idea: Oliver Woodward
- Best Business Idea from the Creative Industries: Abhay Shivamurthy
- Best Business Idea from a Postgraduate: Farraz Shah
- Best Business Idea from an International Student: Yogiraj Jakkal
- Best Business Idea from a Woman: Sanam Jain
- Best Business Idea from a First Year: Saira Nagi
The competition’s highest accolade, Best Overall Idea was awarded to Yogiraj Jakkal, Business Administration master’s student, who received £2,000 for ‘FluoroApt™’, a smart, aptamer-based liquid biopsy kit that detects breast cancer through a simple fluid test.
Yogiraj also scooped a further two awards for his idea: Best Climate Impact Idea, and Best Business Idea from an International Student.
Also taking one of the competition’s top awards, was Grace McShane, final year Mechanical Engineering student, who was awarded Most Innovative Business Idea, and received £1,000 for her idea: ‘The Self Cooling Insulin Storage Device’, a portable container designed to store insulin at the optimal temperature range of 2-6 °C, even when in remote or hot climate environments.
The Awards Ceremony recognised the achievements of all finalists and welcomed an audience of judges, University staff, and business leaders from across Belfast.
Special guests Aidan McGeary from Mude Clothing and Matthew Murnaghan from Vibrotect also joined the event, sharing their entrepreneurial journeys and offering inspiring insights into starting and scaling a business.
Robbie Mulvenna-Jamison, Enterprise Development Officer said: “SU Enterprise is delighted to have celebrated another highly successful year of the ‘What’s The Big Idea’ Awards. Receiving a record number of submissions gave our judges the unenviable task of selecting their winners, but also demonstrates the thriving entrepreneurial community at Queen’s. All entrants should be proud of their participation in what was a highly competitive iteration of ‘What’s The Big Idea?’. We look forward to seeing how these ideas come to life!”
Don’t forget: Applications are now open for the QUB Dragons’ Den competition! With a share of a massive £25,000 prize pot up for grabs, it’s the perfect opportunity to take your business idea to the next level. Click here for more info.
