The FBG once again brings together UB researchers and investors in the fifth edition of Science + Partners
On 26 and 28 November, the FBG hosted the fifth edition of Science + Partners, an event that brings together researchers from the University of Barcelona, business specialists, and investors. Its agile and dynamic format enables participants to polish and improve the leap to market of their projects, and is also a good business opportunity for partners, as Hernán Bastiani, head of Business Development at Telefónica’s open innovation hub, comments: “At Wayra we have found some possible synergies between Telefónica’s business and two of the five projects presented here. We will keep them in our sights and evaluate them at more advanced stages to determine their potential.”
This edition focused on Deep Tech, that is to say, very sophisticated and high-impact technologies that require long maturation processes before reaching the market and that are generally aimed at the great social and environmental challenges of humanity. The five projects presented during the fifth Science + Partners event, all of them from the Faculty of Physics of the UB, were the following: “Urban Health Autonomous Monitoring”, presented by Dr. Jordi Colomer; “Qilimanjaro: Quantum Computing for Everybody”, presented by Dr. Victor Canivell, CEO of the UB spin-off Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech; “Cybersecurity Exploiting Chaos”, presented by Dr. Daniel Navarro; “ColorSensing: The New Quality and Freshness Standard for Packaged Food”, presented by María Eugenia Martín, CEO of the UB spin-off ColorSensing, and “Programmable Array Microscope with Virtual Pinholing”, presented by Dr. Mario Montes. “Our project is at an early stage, and these sessions will allow us to face the next decisions that we have to make while taking into account many aspects that were unknown to us until now. We received feedback on our project from both a business and a commercial perspective, they gave us advice on how to make our product more attractive and we even met potential collaborators to develop and test our product”, says the researcher Jordi Colomer.
On this fifth edition, the guest partners formed a very diverse committee of sector experts, composed of Àngel Bou and Joan Rojas, from Inveready; José Luis Gómez, from Bullnet Capital; Javier González, from Caixa Capital Risc; Cruz Mendigutía, from BeAble Capital; Elena Rico i Vilar, from People & Planet Partners; Ángel Sánchez, from Everis; Hernán Bastiani, from Wayra Barcelona; Jose Manuel Carol, from BStartup; Fernando Cuenca, from Minsait; Pedro Ribeiro, from Armilar Venture Partners; Edouard Rozan, from Onboard Ventures, and Alfonso Rubio, from Entanglement Partners. “Science + Partners is a unique opportunity to learn about first-rate technological initiatives that emerge from the academic world. These projects have all the elements to become successful companies with the support of the right partners,” concludes José Luis Gómez, investment manager at Bullnet Capital.