Enterprise Fellowship

During the year, Girton established a new category of fellow commoners, to be known as Enterprise Fellows. We are thrilled that the first Enterprise Fellow to join us in 2022-23 will be Dr Sabesan Sithamparanathan, formerly Tucker-Price Research Fellow at Girton, and founder and CEO of PervasID, a Cambridge University spin-out company built on his groundbreaking PhD research. Sabesan is a multi-award-winning academic/entrepreneur who has invented and developed the world’s most accurate battery-free radio frequency identification (RFID) tracking technology. These tracking solutions are transforming entire industries across the world, automatically identifying and wirelessly tracking assets and inventory in the healthcare, industrial, security, retail and supply chain logistics sectors. For instance, in healthcare, PervasID solutions are being deployed in NHS trusts and EU hospitals for tracking surgical instruments to enhance decontamination and sterilisation processes, and to track other hospital assets to ensure that mission-critical medical devices are available at the right place and time, for robust and efficient care. The need for this level of traceability of medical devices has been particularly evident during the pandemic. These solutions are predicted to save £billions for NHS hospitals and will save lives. Similarly, in the aerospace industry, it is estimated that ‘Foreign Object Debris’ costs the aviation industry $13billion a year in direct and indirect costs, including flight delays, plane changes and fuel inefficiencies. Sabesan’s products can scan the tool storage cabinets used when building planes with 100% accuracy to ensure no tools have been left behind inside the plane, thus preventing delayed flights and accidents. In 2021, Sabesan won the Royal Academy of Engineering’s prestigious Silver Medal, and PervasID won a Queen’s Award for Enterprise: Innovation.

Sabesan Sithamparanathan