Looking back at Sister’s Innovation Exhibitors – Startups shaping the future

Breakthroughs don't happen in a bubble. They are born when world-changing ideas meet partnership, opportunity, and real-world application. 

That’s why we launched the Innovation Showcase space at Sister for a year: to connect emerging pioneers from The University of Manchester directly with our broader ecosystem. To mark the wrap of our showcase, we wanted to spotlight three exhibitors and explore the problems they’re solving, how Sister has supported their growth and what the future holds:

• RoundView: An education start-up developing a hands-on sustainability thinking and learning toolkit designed to inspire creative dialogue and environmental problem-solving.

• NeuTouch by Neurotact Ltd: A tactile communication and monitoring technology that captures how people express pain through touch, using AI and machine learning to explore individual patterns and changes over time.

• DeKiln: A manufacturing start-up that has invented low-carbon, sustainable tiles using a bio-based alternative to the ceramic tile, incorporating 95% recycled content.

Raising an idea — The missions driving Sister’s innovators

Behind every startup is a problem that needs a solution. Here’s what sparked these four start-ups, and the mission behind their story.

Dr. Joanne Tippett, co-founder of RoundView, explained they set out to tackle eco-anxiety and inaction with a positive view of sustainability, and make it accessible for everyone:

Joanne: "We want to scale up sustainability learning across the planet. The RoundView is so simple; it can be understood from primary school to product designers to planners to policymakers, inspiring new thinking about how we can do things differently."

Dr Hongpeng Zhou, Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw Fellow at The University of Manchester, who provides AI consultancy to NeuTouch, explained how the idea grew from the challenge of communicating a complex and constantly evolving experience such as pain:

Hongpeng: “Chronic pain can be very difficult to put into words or reduce to a single number, particularly when symptoms fluctuate over time. NeuTouch started from a simple question: could we give people another way to communicate what they are experiencing? The technology captures how people express pain through touch, including pressure, duration, and contact area, and transforms these interactions into structured behavioural data. From an AI research perspective, we’re exploring whether patterns across these different features can provide useful additional information alongside existing pain assessments and help us understand how an individual’s experience changes over time.”

Dr. Aled Roberts, founder and CEO of DeKiln, traced their origin back to a kitchen experiment during lockdown:

Aled: “The idea originated from experiments I did during the pandemic in my home kitchen laboratory. I was mixing random kitchen cupboard ingredients – e.g., chickpea juice and old brick dust powder or waste plaster – when I stumbled across a way to make a material that looked and felt just like a ceramic."

Where ideas flourish — How the Sister ecosystem supported their growth

Reflecting on their exhibition, here is what the four start-ups found most helpful, and how being part of Sister supported their progress:

For DeKiln, having a physical showcase inside Sister provided a platform for commercial connections:

Aled: "Having space to exhibit the idea has been really valuable, as we wanted to get the product in front of as many potential customers as possible and gather feedback. Sister’s events have also been a great way to network, show the tiles, and have conversations that have led to orders in the pipeline."

For Neurotact Ltd, being part of the Sister Innovation Showcase created valuable opportunities to connect with researchers working in related areas of pain and healthcare research:

Hongpeng: “Sister helped more people discover our work. Through the exhibition, we connected with researchers working in related areas of pain research, which opened up conversations around potential research collaboration and future funding opportunities. Those are connections we simply wouldn’t have made without being part of the showcase.”

For RoundView, the exhibit offered a balance of industry visibility and room to experiment:

Joanne: “It's been incredibly useful to have this space – partly because of the visibility, partly having space to experiment and learn from the community. The key thing has been the networking events where I've said: 'come down and have a look, have a play, see what this might be able to do for you.’”

Transforming the way we live — Looking ahead to the impact they hope to have

As these teams look to what’s next, here is how they expect their journeys to evolve – and what impact they hope to have on people today and in the future.

Looking ahead, Neurotact Ltd is focused on building the evidence needed to take NeuTouch into its next stage of development:

Hongpeng: “Our vision is to help people track and communicate changes in their pain from home, while using AI to understand individual patterns over time. Ultimately, this could give clinicians a clearer picture of what happens between appointments and help identify when additional support may be needed. Building the clinical evidence for that vision is our next step.”

RoundView is looking ahead to their scale-up journey driven by partnership opportunities:

Joanne: "We want to turn the RoundView into the fourth 'R' – reading, writing, arithmetic, and the RoundView – so that everybody on the planet understands the three root causes of all environmental problems and their positive opposites, embedding that in their decision-making and thinking about the future. The next step for us is going to scale. We're really looking for new partners, new people who'd like to try this out in their learning with their staff and partners."

DeKiln’s focus is on transitioning from successful showcase trials to commercial production at scale:

Aled: "We've recently hit a major milestone with our first commercial installation. It was at Sustainable Ventures, right here in Sister’s Renold Building. From that, and from this showcase, we've had inquiries and further orders in the pipeline. In terms of our next steps, it's really just to scale up our minimum viable product: our Eralith tiles. We want to start producing them at a larger scale and fulfilling those pipeline orders."

Supporting the next generation of pioneers

The showcase might be over, but the journeys of these brilliant startups are only just getting started. 

Thank you to the innovation exhibitors who shared their stories with us. We look forward to following your exciting next chapter!