St Hilda's College
St Hilda's undergraduates Elizaveta Verzhbitskaya (Engineering, 2023) and Vivian Lui (Engineering, 2023) are part of the five-student team behind Ictus, which won the £10,000 top prize at StEP's 2026 Demo Day last month.
The start-up is developing a wearable device for low-cost epileptic seizure detection and is formed of an interdisciplinary team, with Elizaveta and Vivian joined by History undergraduate Catherine McMullan (Trinity), Biology Masters student Nancy Locke (Queens) and Nanotechnology for Medicine and Health Care Masters student Arya Navab (Trinity).
StEP is an eight-week educational accelerator run jointly by Oxford Edge and Oxford University Innovation, designed to introduce Oxford students to entrepreneurship and build the skills they need to start a venture of their own. Students learn the fundamentals of building a business, from market sizing to fundraising, receive expert mentoring, and hear from Oxford alumni who have gone on to found companies.
At Demo Day, held on Thursday 20 August at the Life and Mind Building, nine teams pitched in front of a judging panel of academic and industry leaders, including St Hilda's Principal, Dame Sarah Springman. Ictus took the top prize of £10,000, ahead of runners-up Cloq, developing miniaturised, low-cost quantum clocks, and Vivoxa, a portable diagnostics platform.
St Hilda's was also represented on two of the other eight teams. Alara Urunga (Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry, 2023) was one of two co-founders of Vivoxa, which won the audience vote for best presenter, while Yiran Ma, a DPhil candidate, was part of Carbora, a digital passport and loyalty scheme for supporting independent businesses in Oxford.
St Hilda's supported Elizaveta, Vivian, Alara and Yiran, through the generosity of alumna Jayne Almond (PPE, 1975), with a bursary to take part in the programme over the summer.
Reflecting on the win, Vivian said, ‘I couldn’t have asked for a better team to share this journey with, and I’m incredibly excited to see what the future holds as we continue building on everything we’ve accomplished together!’
Elizaveta said, ‘This was an amazing and invaluable experience, and I am so proud of what we all achieved.’
Ictus went on to take part in Reuben College's Entrepreneurship Forum a few weeks later, following their StEP win.