Six teams and over twenty students to join the second season of educational program CIG R&D LAB in Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute.
33 teams submitted their applications for a preliminary selection – twice more than last year. Of those, 17 presented their tech projects in the second selection round. These pitches determined the best Kharkiv students who will join the teams from Lviv and Odesa to develop new Ukrainian startups.
This year, CIG R&D LAB “portfolio” includes thermal spraying project, mental health improvement program MentalBot, forest fire research project based on neural networks, ICardy arrhythmia detector, an interior design app that uses augmented reality and even natural sweet chili sauce production technology.
During the academic year, six teams will receive scholarships and CIG mentoring for the development of their projects. In June 2020, the experts will select the team that made the most progress in formulating its business plan and preparing the product for the market. These participants will receive a grant for further business.
“Compared to last season at Kharkiv Polytechnic, the teams took selection pitches more seriously. We saw several products that were practically ready. They still need to be improved but you can offer them to customers very soon,” Yevhen Netreba, CIG associate, commented on the results.
“Moreover, the range of technologies and potential markets open to our teams is impressive. This year, we have seen presentations in energy efficiency, food, medicine and, of course, IT with a focus on AI and augmented reality, which is a global technological trend,” Yevhen added.
Ruslan Kryvobok, CIG R&D LAB coordinator in Kharkiv, “is very pleased with the cooperation between the university and the CIG program: for the second year in a row, it is a platform for students seeking to improve and commercialize their research and development”.
As we reported previously, in the last season of CIG R&D LAB in Kharkiv, two teams divided the final grant: the developers of the luminescent paving and the team working on the modernization of Kharkiv energy sector.