2024 Competition & winners

Finalists at the 2024 Final

The inaugural Emma Enterprise challenge took place in 2023-24, giving students and post-docs an opportunity to learn skills and gain hands-on experience in developing and pitching a business or social enterprise idea.

Members of the college with experience in forming ideas, building teams, marketing and securing finance for start-ups and small businesses gave online tutorials. Twenty-one teams entered; the final six were each assigned an Emma mentor to help them develop and refine their pitch. GreenHarvest, a team of three postgraduate students, including Dylan Cuskelly, took the prize (cash and the Golden Duck!)

Dylan says:

As global temperatures continue to climb, we are confronted with a paradox: global food demand is projected to soar, driven by a growing world population. At the same time, the capacity of land to produce resources is diminishing. Agricultural companies are expanding and buying more land, often causing further land degradation. Because of these circumstances, the planet loses 100 million hectares of productive land every year. This has put immense pressure on companies, not only to enhance their agricultural output, but also to restore and rehabilitate the land.

At GreenHarvest, our mission is to equip governments with an innovative platform that enables them to address proactively challenges of climate change and food security.

GreenHarvest originated as a project by me, Timothy Lambden (Girton, 2021) and Tara Murphy (Lucy Cavendish, 2022), all NanoDTC PhD students, during a data intensive science (DiSE) programme at the university. We conceived the idea of using satellite imagery to address global challenges like food security and land degradation. When we learned of the Emma Enterprise challenge, we embraced the opportunity, recognising the value of the mentorship opportunities it offered and the tutorials given throughout the year.

Our solution combines satellite imagery with advanced artificial intelligence and, in doing so, we can analyse historical data to understand past land use and its impacts.

Our climate modelling tools allow us to forecast the future climate of specific areas, and when paired with satellite imagery, gives us the ability to guide our clients on how to rehabilitate and utilise their current land more effectively. We provide tailored recommendations on which crops are best suited for both the land's recovery and also for building capacity to sustain local and national food security needs.

We aim to support strategic planning to ensure that we can sustainably meet the needs of future generations without compromising the health of our planet. Emma Enterprise has provided a brilliant platform for us to refine our business model and acted as a springboard for our idea.

*Originally published in the 2024 Emmanuel Review.