Universiteit Leiden

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Support the Rapidemic team and help them develop a mobile testing kit

A team of students from Leiden won the iGEM international biology contest in 2020 with their Rapidemic mobile testing kit. The kit makes it easy to detect viruses. The team has now been nominated for the Most Innovative Student in the Netherlands prize. Cast your vote and help them develop their invention.

The Leiden team’s mobile testing kit is the perfect solution for remote areas with no hospitals nearby. It’s a portable box containing a full mini-lab that provides cheap and fast diagnosis of infectious diseases. The students in the team that came up with the idea are from the Faculties of Science and Medicine.  

Startup

The ambitious students are now competing in the Most Innovative Student in the Netherlands competition, run by the Innovate platform in collaboration with Quest and Quote. More than 100 students have entered, and the public has until 4 July to vote. Go to Innovate’s Rapidemic page and vote.

The three most popular initiatives will win a place in a final. The organisers will also choose seven initiatives based on their potential impact. The ten finalists will be announced around 12 July. The winner of this student innovation prize will win a trip to Silicon Valley, the chance to launch a startup and 5,000 euros for research and development. 

Crowdfunding

The Leiden students have sparked a lot of interest with their invention. Alongside iGEM, the team recently won the Phillips Innovation Award, a prize of 10,000 euros to spend on research and development. They need much more money, however, if they are to turn their idea into a product, so they hope to stand a serious chance of winning the Innovate innovation prize. The students have also started crowdfunding at steunleiden.nl because they don’t just want a working prototype but to produce the kit at a larger scale. Only then can it be used all around the world to detect viruses and save lives.

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