On Wednesday, October 4th the NOBALIS Project continued with this fall’s round of its Entrepreneurship and Innovation Capacity Development Programme with the virtual Idea Hackathon, which was focused on food, biotechnology, and bioresources themes. Students from NOBALIS partner universities came together to present their preliminary ideas for various bioresource and food-related solutions. The event included motivating presentations from various guest speakers. Caroline Sandberg from team UNWASTED working on growing mushrooms on coffee grounds and the winner of the fall 2022 round of NOBALIS EICD program shared her experience in the program and encouraged the teams to make the most of the offerings of the program. Mari-Ann Meigo Fonseca, the Co-founder & COO of start-up GELATEX shared their start-up journey working on nanofibers. Filip Reineby from Drivhuset Norden and an experienced business developer provided practical advice and experience for start-ups on how to pitch their ideas, work on determining their customers and market.
Idea Hackathon focused on student teams’ presentations on a variety of innovative ideas, including creating sustainable business solutions and developing product innovations related to animal feed, biocosmetics, algae, coconuts, rice, lignin, fibers, and other bioresources. The teams now have the opportunity to refine their Idea Templates over the next week and submit them for assessment. Selected teams will proceed further through three development sessions in October, November, and December with mentorship support. The program will culminate on December 13th in the Demo Day competition.
NOBALIS project aims to boost innovation and entrepreneurial capacity in Nordic- Baltic HEIs and is implemented by a consortium of 5 HEIs and 2 business and tech transfer support organizations. NOBALIS is part of EIT HEI Initiative program and is supported by EIT Food and the European Union.