PhD students Aliki Christodoulou (Energy, Environment & Atmospheric Sciences program), PhD student George Polykratis (Computational Sciences program) and Master’s student Christoforos Skourides (Environmental Sciences program) were awarded the CyI 2022 Innovation Awards and will each receive 5,000 euros to use for their proposed projects’ development.
The CyI 2022 Innovation Awards are offered by the Institute’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Office aiming to further instil an innovation culture within CyI with the purpose to reward the most promising ideas that emerge from the scientific and research work at the institute. The monetary award is for supporting “proof of concept” activities, as outlined in a suitable business model, for translating the idea to a business proposition that will attract potential investors and/or other types of funding.
The awarded students will be included in the seeding scheme promoted by CyI in cooperation with CREF Business Ventures. This scheme will provide capacities to support the awarded students to move from the ‘proof of concept’ stage to the minimum viable product (MVP) stage; and perform “hypothesis” testing, validation of market potential and traction based on the underlying business assumptions of the awarded ideas. Towards the latter, each awarded student will be exposed to additional coaching/mentoring and participation in qualified pitching events. Feedback received from the aforementioned activities will assist the awarded teams to develop their business plan in which they should clearly demonstrate how the proposed service/product will be commercially exploited (i.e. licensing, spin-off/start-up creation, access to impact funding).
The successful projects are:
- For Aliki Christodoulou: “Real-Time Identification of Pollution Sources”
- For George Polykratis: “Turtle-friendly Lightning”
- For Christoforos Skourides: “Ozone-assisted Combustion for Internal Combustion Engines”
Warm congratulations to all three students for their success and for their contributions in establishing an innovation culture at the institute!
Source: The Cyprus Institute I News (https://bit.ly/3YO2dAM)