Avicena wins three Incite awards

Avicena Systems, Vix Technology and East Metropolitan Health Service were among the winners at the annual Incite Awards for WA tech.

Startup of the year was awarded to Avicena, which also won the transformative solutions and industry project of the year categories.

Avicena has developed mass COVID-19 testing equipment which is under validation work, able to process almost 100,000 samples per day.

The company was recently granted $3 million through the Modern Manufacturing Initiative.

It was cofounded last year by Paul Ostergaard, now a non-executive director, who leads Norwood Systems.

Former Telethon Kids Institute director and cofounder Paul Watt stepped in to lead Avicena as executive chair in June, after initially serving as chair. 

Tony Fitzgerald is the third cofounder and is managing director. 

Rio Tinto was given merit awards in the transformative solutions and industry project of the year categories for its work on the AutoHaul autonomous rail network.

That was a ten-year project which led to the first autonomous rail network in Australia.

The innovating government award went to East Metropolitan Health Service, for a COVID-19 assessment app.

Two student projects were highlighted.

Curtin University student Alexander von Perger developed Re-entry Sentry, a safety initiative for post-blast reentry at mine sites, collaborating with Barminco.

He won the undergraduate prize.

Edith Cowan University students Sanjay Sharma and Auden Sehovic were presented the postgraduate student award for work deploying traps in regional areas to collect data from hackers.

There are three honorary awards at Incite which are for long term contributors to the industry.

Atomic Sky managing partner Peter Rossdeutscher was named achiever of the year, while The Property Tribune editor Charlie Gunningham was entrepreneur of the year.

Mr Gunningham was formerly chief executive of Business News.

The Mal Bryce award for company of the year was won by Vix Technology.

Vix has been involved in transport networks for 30 years, developing ticketing systems for locations such as Hong Kong and Stockholm.

Read the July 25th edition of Business News for more detail about the winners. Business News was the media partner for the Incite awards.