Synaptive, a startup founded by UCL Electronic and Electrical Engineering (UCL EEE) PhD student Rishan Patel, has won the Social Impact Startup of the Year award at UCL’s Hatchery incubator programme, taking home £6,000 in prize funding.
The award recognises the problem Synaptive was built to solve. EEG is one of the few ways to measure brain activity without invasive procedures, but standard electrodes cannot make reliable contact with the scalp through afro textured hair. Whole populations end up with poorer quality data, or none at all, a gap that has persisted for close to a century and has disproportionately excluded Black participants from EEG research.
Synaptive has filed a patent for an EEG electrode designed to maintain reliable scalp contact across straight, wavy, curly, coily and afro textured hair. The company was founded by Rishan Patel (CEO), Merlin Kelly (CSO) and Peter Bryna (CTO).
UCL’s Hatchery is an equity free, two year incubator programme for UCL students and recent graduates based at BaseKX, the university’s entrepreneurship hub in King’s Cross, offering mentorship, workspace and competitions to help startups prepare for investment.
