A student from Drumnadrochit has won an award for a personal safety alarm she designed after hearing about a woman being attacked and no one going to her aid.
Rebecca Pick, of University of Strathclyde’s Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, won the undergraduate prize at the 2015 Santander Universities Entrepreneurship Awards for her company, Pick Protection, which will be producing the alarm.
Miss Pick’s alarm is worn on the clothing and is linked to a round-the-clock monitoring service. The device, known as the Personal Guardian, is due to become commercially available in October.
The student at the Glasgow university received her prize of £5,000, a certificate and a trophy at a ceremony at Santander UK’s headquarters in London.
She then received her BA honours degree in marketing and enterprise during a ceremony at Strathclyde’s Barony Hall.
The 21-year-old said: “I’m mainly marketing the safety device as an alarm for lone workers and the student market. It’s designed to be discreetly attached to clothing and it gives off an alarm silently.
“I had the idea for the alarm after hearing of an incident near where I live, when a woman was attacked and no one came to help. There’s a risk for people who go out alone for their work and their employers have duty of care to them; there’ll be someone at the other end to answer the call if they set off their alarm.
“Quite a bit of work had to go into the initial business plan but the hardest part was 20-minute presentation, followed by 10 minutes of questions.”
Pick Protection recently secured £60,000 funding from Gabriel Investments, a syndicate which assists early stage business ventures. Miss Pick has also been supported in establishing her business by the Strathclyde Entrepreneurial Network (SEN), a collaborative network which brings together the university’s academic and professional services to support enterprise and commercialisation activity.