Nanoligent and BrainMapp win Santander X Award at UAB
Yesterday, Emprèn UAB held the Santander X Award gala ceremony at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the UAB. The initiative recognises and promotes entrepreneurial talent in the university environment. This year, the winners were BrainMapp in the Best Entrepreneurial Project category and Nanoligent in the Best Start-up category.
The Santander X Awards are prizes organised by Banco Santander to encourage entrepreneurial culture within the university community and to support initiatives that have a social and economic impact. The awards are held at various universities, which select the best projects from within their own communities. A total of 26 projects were submitted in response to the UAB call: nine in the start-up category and 17 in the entrepreneurial projects category.
The final took place yesterday, where the three finalist projects in each category were presented to a panel of expert judges comprising Marta Alsinella, director of EconomistesBAN; Elisabeth Martínez, partner at the accelerator company, Nuclio; Enric Claverol, founding partner at Afferent Technologies; Juli Pau Solà, executive director at Allen Business Solutions; and Bart Huisken, co-founder and strategic advisor at several biotechnology, medical technology, and SaaS companies.
Nanotechnology to fight cancer
In the university start-up category, the jury awarded Nanoligent, a UAB spin-off company that specialises in developing highly specific cancer treatments using nanotechnology. According to its executive director, Montserrat Cano, this approach has the potential to transform cancer therapies by providing more effective solutions with fewer side effects. The company received a prize of €4,000.
In addition to Nanoligent, AEInnova — a leading European company in the field of autonomous sensor systems that develops devices which convert heat into energy to power sensor networks — and Distinkt — a company which develops high-security fluorescent inks based on nanotechnology to combat counterfeiting — were also presented.
Technology to remove brain tumours with greater precision
In the entrepreneurial projects category, the BrainMapp project was recognised for its disruptive proposal of applying computer vision to neurosurgery. Victor Cepero, one of the project's founders and a PhD student at the Computer Vision Centre, explained that the aim is to facilitate and improve the process of removing brain tumours by providing medical teams with an artificial intelligence-based surgical assistance tool. This technology could represent a significant advance in terms of precision, safety, and efficiency in highly complex operations.
The project has received a grant of €2,000 to continue developing its solution, and will represent the UAB at the ‘Santander X Spain Award | University 2025’.
The other finalists in this category were BIOMA, a project that transforms coffee and avocado waste into vegan, sustainable and circular biomaterials that replace leather and synthetic textiles, and CycleZen, which focuses on developing a light bollard equipped with artificial intelligence (AI). This bollard can detect when certain users are crossing dangerous areas and activate a light signal to immediately alert other road users.
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