News

NOBALIS Food and Bioresource Hackathon was held virtually on 26th of September.

Hackathon was the first part of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Capacity Development Program offered this fall to students and staff. Hackathon started with inspirational presentations in which various stakeholders shared their experience with developing and supporting start-ups. Lauri Reuter from Nordic FoodTech VC reflected on his experience as both researcher and venture capitalist. Nemailla Bonturi from Äio Tech shared her journey from doctoral student to a start-up entrepreneur working on healthy fats and oils. Annsofie Wahlström introduced SLU Future Food platform that aims to facilitate cross-disciplinary research and collaboration in food systems. Niklas Hjelm introduced support offered by SLU Venture Lab.

Students’ ideas

50 students from the 5 universities with 30 original ideas had registered to the Hackathon. Students had an opportunity introduce their ideas in a 1-minute pitch and work with mentors and an idea template in separate breakout rooms or look for a team in Matchmaking room. 9 teams proceeded with an update on their original idea. After Hackathon, the teams have an opportunity to submit an updated idea template. The ideas and teams will be assessed and selected teams will proceed further through three development sessions in October, November and December with mentorship support. The program will end with a competition in a Demo Day on December 15th.

Project background

Project NOBALIS is part of HEI Initiative: Innovation Capacity Building for Higher Education and is supported by EIT Food and funded by the European Union. Project in implemented by a consortium of 7 Nordic and Baltic organizations: Estonian University of Life Sciences, Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies, Linnaeus University, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Ard Innovation, Baltic Innovation Agency. NOBALIS aims to improve institutional entrepreneurial and innovation capacity through integration of innovation and entrepreneurship as part of daily routines in all parts of the activities the organization, and to leverage the integration of higher education institutions and their contribution to the innovation ecosystem through improved collaboration with the knowledge triangle stakeholders. The project will combine the development of entrepreneurship and innovation curricula, start-up support for students and staff, mapping and updating universities’ entrepreneurship and innovation related procedures, policies and support systems.

Project webpage: nobalis.eu

Funding: