Award categories

Please click on an award below for more information on each category:

Health & Wellbeing Award

Award for the most innovative new healthcare product, service or process that has or will have a substantial impact on the effectiveness of the delivery of healthcare and/or wellbeing, improve the effectiveness, safety or experience of patients, healthcare professionals and/or staff in the workplace and benefit the regional economy.

Sustainability Award

Award for the most innovative new sustainable and/or low carbon product, service or process that has or will have a substantial impact on carbon emissions, materials circularity and/or the protection of biodiversity. The innovation should be economically and financially sustainable and benefit the regional economy.

Social Inclusion Award

Award for the most innovative new product, service or process that has or will have a substantial impact on social inclusion. For example, this could be an improvement in opportunity, education, services provision, life or work experience of disadvantaged minorities or communities. The innovation should be economically and financially sustainable and could tackle an issues of inequality on a local, national or global scale.

Cultivating Talent Award

Award for the new or established business, enterprise or social enterprise that has provided the best student placement experience. This should have helped to improve the skills and attributes gained from their degree, enabled them to apply subject knowledge and theory to real-world practice, explored career options and significantly improved their chances of getting a graduate job.

Keele University Science & Innovation Park Company of the Year Award

Keele University’s Science and Innovation Park is one of the largest and most established sites of its kind in the UK, and is home to more than 50 of Staffordshire’s most innovative companies. This award recognises those tenants that have demonstrated inspirational, motivation and meaningful growth over the past 12 months.

Please note that all Science and Innovation Park tenants will be automatically nominated for this award – no nomination applications are required.

Leading Innovation Award

An award for the individual demonstrating outstanding leadership of business innovation.  This could be by taking their company or organisation through a comprehensive transformation process to enable product and service development, or leading a particular aspect of innovation such as manufacturing processes, commercial development, or leadership on skills or technical aspects of innovation.

Enterprising Student of the Year Award

An award for a Keele student or recent graduate in any discipline demonstrating promising entrepreneurial skills.  This could be in a variety of contexts, including their own enterprise, curriculum-based activities or placement-based activities.  Nominations can be made by the individual or fellow students, Keele staff or placement providers.

Collaboration of the Year Award

Award for the most productive Keele University-Enterprise collaboration. This should have demonstrably brought together the different contributions of academia and enterprise, in an innovative and impactful project that has the potential to deliver benefits to the region, nation or globally. The winner will be poised to thrive in the coming years and be resilient to the challenges of climate change, social inclusion, growing healthcare needs and rapid technological change. An ambassador for the University, our region and the future.