How CERN promotes innovation and entrepreneurship
The promotion of innovation and entrepreneurship is a crucial factor in CERN’s overall mission of maximising technological and knowledge returns to society. CERN’s Knowledge Transfer (KT) group assiduously works to this aim, through a variety of activities.
The Entrepreneurship Meet-Up organised by the KT group for the Geneva GEW.
“Entrepreneurship and knowledge transfer cannot be done in isolation,” says Vetle Nilsen, fellow in charge of the entrepreneurial related activities in the KT group. “Exposing CERN basic research to a wider audience and bringing together people from different fields is a key way to create new entrepreneurial opportunities for CERN-related science.”
To this end, the KT group showcased CERN at the Geneva Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) event from 16 to 20 November, now in its fifth year. The GEW is an international event occurring simultaneously in over 160 different countries. It shares KT’s aim of inspiring people to explore their innovative and entrepreneurial ideas, through boot-camp activities, networking and meetings with experts.
The KT group, participating in the GEW in Geneva for the second year running, was involved in the organisation of two sessions. During the first one, held at the University of Geneva, Vetle Nilsen gave a talk on the overall mission and the activities of the KT group, showcasing some examples of successful CERN-related start-ups, such as Terabee and TIND.
The second session organised by the KT group consisted of an Entrepreneurship Meet-Up held at CERN’s IdeaSquare. This meet-up was open to people inside and outside CERN, and featured a panel discussion on the creation of interdisciplinary start-ups. This meeting was a special version of the regular entrepreneurship meet-ups organised by the KT group, held twice a month since March 2015. These bi-monthly encounters are informal meetings with an overarching topic, where CERN people interested in entrepreneurship can meet and discuss their innovative ideas. Often, there are also external speakers invited to talk about various aspects of entrepreneurship.
Again in this perspective of facilitating the development of innovative business ideas, a first-of-its-kind, one-day event on innovation and entrepreneurship was held at CERN on 26 November. It was organised by CERN openlab, together with the KT group and IdeaSquare, in the framework of their collaboration with Intel in The Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E) project. It saw the participation of about 80 CERN people and external experts, invited to talk about a broad variety of topics related to the commercialisation of basic-research technological solutions.
About 20 participants also had the chance to present their business ideas and discuss them with the experts on a one-to-one basis. One of the innovative ideas exploiting CERN technology was presented by Juan Mario Michan, a postdoctoral fellow from the ALPHA collaboration. He developed a technology that could reduce air pollutants from the exhaust of large combustion engines or power stations, using nano-structured surfaces that initiate the chemical reactions reducing the pollutants. Its commercialisation, however, has been impeded by the lack of a dependable and scalable manufacturing process for this nano-technology. Fortunately, one of CERN’s technologies provided a viable solution: the titanium polishing technology developed at CERN and used to polish the accelerator cavities to a nanometer level of smoothness can be employed to develop a suitable nano-manufacturing technology. Indeed, a titanium substrate polished at the sub-nanometer roughness could be used to grow the required nano-structured surfaces.
A very good example of how innovative ideas can be boosted by CERN technology to become entrepreneurial realities!
For more information and to take part in the KT Entrepreneurship Meet-ups, see here.
