As if underlining the judges’ decision, Karolinska Development, founded by Hans Wigzell, has shone light in the financial gloom, closing a big funding round.

Scotland’s flagship life sciences project, Edinburgh BioQuarter, has been awarded £12 million by the development agency Scottish Enterprise and Edinburgh University to set up a technology commercialisation fund.

ACES winner Kee Square was spun out of the Politecnico di Milano with commercial ambitions for software that can help security services find their suspect.