Innovative hollow core optical fibre technology enabling near-instant data transfer, a life-saving device that enables many more organs to be transplanted, and a human-centric AI platform that generates audio and video from text are the three finalists vying for the MacRobert Award 2025 for UK engineering innovation. The winner will be announced on 8 July.
The MacRobert Award is the longest running and most prestigious prize for UK engineering innovation. Run by the Royal Academy of Engineering, it recognises transformative UK engineering that can also demonstrate commerciality and societal benefit. For over 55 years the MacRobert Award has been building a hall of innovation fame that illustrates the strength, creativity and global impact of British engineering.
Microsoft Azure Fibre: Revolutionising Global Internet Connectivity with Hollow Core Optical Fibre
This year’s finalists, chosen through a rigorous and highly competitive selection process, are:
Microsoft Azure Fibre: Enabling the next generation of global internet connectivity.
Optical fibres transmit 500 billion gigabytes of data every day, supporting global communication, navigation and manufacturing. But the performance of traditional optical fibres, optimised over more than 50 years, has reached the fundamental physical limits of the solid glass making up their core. Microsoft Azure Fibre (formerly Lumenisity) revolutionises the way data is transmitted by replacing the glass core with air. Their hollow core optical fibre technology comprises a central light-guiding cavity surrounded by microscopic, nested glass tubes running the length of the fibre, enabling virtually instantaneous data transfer.
This stable, low-latency innovation dramatically improves the speed of transmission and enhances energy efficiency, needing fewer power-hungry electronic components over longer distances. It will drive a major leap forward in how the internet evolves, enabling more flexible datacentre placement and meeting the growing demand for high-volume data transfer driven by growth in the use of AI. The improved characteristics will enable the development of 6G and edge-computing and other ‘tactile’ applications where response time is key, such as remote medicine where timing is critical for life-saving measures.
The technology represents the most significant advancement in fibre technology since standard solid core fibre, completely transforming perceptions of hollow core optical fibre from a mere curiosity to a game-changer for global communications.
OrganOx Transportable Normothermic Organ Perfusion Device: Extending Transplant Opportunities
OrganOx has developed two devices that maintain livers and kidneys in a functioning state outside the body for at least twice as long as conventional cold preservation techniques, dramatically increasing the number of transplants for patients, eradicating night-time operations for clinicians, and reducing overall healthcare costs for providers. A third, patient-connected device can also be used to provide ‘liver dialysis’ using either a human or porcine organ outside the body, to help patients in liver failure to recover without the need for a transplant.
Operating at body temperature (37C), the devices replicate the physiological conditions of an organ within the body by perfusing it with a red-cell suspension reconstituted from donor blood of the same blood type. This allows fully automated, operator-independent preservation of an organ in a functioning state outside the body for periods of up to 24 hours clinically and several days pre-clinically.
The technology, which was initially designed to preserve livers, has enabled over 6,000 transplants across four continents and twelve countries. Medical facilities adopting the technology have reported up to a 30% net increase in transplants, with waiting times and waiting list mortality cut by more than half.
Synthesia: Human-Centric AI Platform Creating the Future of Video from Text
Shortlisted for developing the world’s first and largest human-centric AI video platform, Synthesia allows users to create and distribute professional-quality videos directly from a web browser without cameras, lighting, studios or specialist editing software.
At the heart of the platform are a collection of hyper-realistic digital avatars that look, sound and behave like real people, avoiding the ‘uncanny valley’ effect that impacted traditional computer graphics. The team at Synthesia started by improving lip motion for better lip sync, face motion and dynamics to provide facial expressions, then added dynamics for the head, upper torso, arms and hands to deliver non-verbal cues in speech. The result is a large, generative AI audio and video model capable of interpreting text input, producing natural speech in over 140 languages, interpreting vocal intonations and delivering complex body language for non-verbal cues to express emotion.
Synthesia took an early decision to develop and deploy its technology responsibly. It was the first generative AI company to create a responsible framework for synthetic media, preventing the formation of non-consensual deepfakes and introducing content moderation at the point of creation. It is now a trusted brand for AI video creation and distribution in the enterprise space with more than one million users across 65,000 businesses. These include over 70% of Fortune 100 companies who are using Synthesia’s technology to generate videos for employee training and internal communication, customer support, sales enablement or product marketing.
UK Engineering Excellence Recognised at the Royal Academy of Engineering
Dr Alison Vincent CBE FREng, Chair of the MacRobert Award judging panel, said: “The UK is a global leader in engineering innovation and this year’s finalists demonstrate the importance of maintaining excellent university research alongside a vibrant UK tech scene. Each of our three finalists are disrupting their sector, developing new technologies and products that are solving major problems.
“All three have been on a scaling journey with highs and lows. They have started from university research, developed their value propositions honed by customer and market feedback until attracting the private investment needed to scale up and achieve real, positive impact – and, unlike many similar businesses, each of them identified and have benefitted from the value of being based in the UK during their journey.”
This year’s three finalists are all successful engineering innovations connected with UK universities, two of which are spinout companies. The hollow core optical fibre technology was developed by Lumenisity, a University of Southampton spinout later acquired by Microsoft. OrganOx’s transportable normothermic organ perfusion device is a world first originating from research at the University of Oxford, and one of the founders of Synthesia’s text-to-video generation business is a professor at University College London.
They are competing for a gold medal and a £50,000 prize, as well as a luxury weekend at Douneside House in the heart of the MacRobert estate in Aberdeenshire. This year’s winner will be announced at the Royal Academy of Engineering’s annual Awards Dinner on Tuesday 8 July at The Londoner Hotel in Central London.
This year’s winner will join an esteemed group of past recipients of the Award who have delivered outstanding innovation, commercial success, and tangible social benefit. The first award in 1969 jointly honoured Rolls-Royce for the Pegasus engine that powered the Harrier jump jet and Freeman, Fox and Partners for the Severn Bridge. The MacRobert Award has recognised transformative contributions ever since, from the world’s first bionic hand, developed by Touch Bionics, to innovations from Jaguar Land Rover and Google DeepMind that continue to have a global impact.
