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Student teams competed with their business ideas at NOBALIS Demo Day

Student teams from NOBALIS partner universities competed with their business ideas related to food, biotechnologies and bioresources at the NOBALIS Demo Day on December 13th.

The Demo Day was the last event of the NOBALIS Entrepreneurship and Innovation Capacity Development Program held in the autumn semester of 2023. In the pre-incubation program, the student teams from 5 universities (Estonian University of Life Sciences, Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies, Linnaeus University, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences) developed their business ideas. The program consisted of an idea hackathon and three development sessions with mentoring during which students created business models for their ideas, created marketing plans and developed product concepts, and learned how to effectively present their ideas with elevator pitches.

Students from Estonian University of Life Sciences (EMU) were part of both teams winning the first and second price in the competition. The first price went to the team Vassa Hebin that included Alina Rätsep, Gabriela Bermudez and EMU student Kelly Alev and who were working on upcycling the biowaste into skin care products. The second place went to EMU students Annika Jaanimägi and Erika Lõhmuste and their team BioAsphalt, who was working on biorefining biomass into lignin and its application as bio-asphalt. Third price was earned by the team Algium from Swedish University of Agricultural Science working on developing microalgae-based consumer and industrial products.

The first round of the pre-incubation program of the NOBALIS project took place in the fall of 2022, and the next round will be in the spring semester of 2024. The goal of the NOBALIS project (nobalis.eu) is the development of entrepreneurship and innovation capacity in universities, and the project is carried out by a consortium of 7 members from Nordic and Baltic universities and innovation support organizations. Project NOBALIS is supported by EIT Food and funded by the European Union. Project is part of the program EIT HEI Initiative of European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT).