A five-student team of this Spanish university received the first prize of this entrepreneurship international competition for their SENSE Project, a health monitoring system for elderlies and dependents. The prize consists of a special international internship programme.
Five students and one graduate from University of Cantabria (Spain) won the final of EUNICE Imagine Innovation Cup, a business competition hosted by University of Catania, in Italy. The Spanish team, composed of Mikel Gutierrez Navarro, Manuel Perla Garcia, Roberto Fernandez Crespo and Teresa Mangue, received the first prize of the competition for their SENSE Project, a health monitoring system for the elderly and dependent persons in a predictive, cost-effective and centralised manner through artificial intelligence and big data tools, with an optimised electronics design. The device has two versions, one of which is aimed at families and where care is monitored at home, while the other version is aimed at public services interested in the quality-of-life services for this group of citizens, such as hospitals and nursing homes. The prize consists of an international mobility programme that includes a seven-week internship at business incubators located in the EUNICE countries.
Seven teams competed with innovative projects from Poland, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Italy, France and Finland. At the opening, the Rector of the University of Catania, Francesco Priolo, expressed his satisfaction with the high quality of presented projects: “For me, they all won,” he said. “The final in Catania is a sign of the great internationalisation ties of our University.”
“The extraordinary desire of Generation Z to connect with different worlds and generations won. We had the privilege of evaluating the best of what comes out of the world of academic entrepreneurship, a source of innovation and creation for new businesses,” said Rosario Faraci, delegate at University of Catania for the University Incubator, Start Up and Spin off.
Lucia Zappalà, Unict delegate for Internationalisation, and Cristina Satriano, EUNICE project leader at Unict, also took part in the award ceremony.
The jury consisted of seven professors from EUNICE partner universities, and a technical jury composed of entrepreneurs in various fields (Rocco Danilo Giurlando, Simone Massaro, Sebastiano Garilli) on the basis of a number of requirements: feasibility and novelty of the business idea, value creation, scalability and environmental and social sustainability, and appeal to stakeholders.
Heading picture: (from left to right) Manuel Peral, Mikel Gutiérrez, Roberto Fernández and Teresa Mangue, members of the SENSE team.
First picture of the gallery: (from left to right) Mikel Gutiérrez, Teresa Mangue, Roberto Fernández and Manuel Peral, members of the SENSE team, and Andrea Pérez, EUNICE staff member at the University of Cantabria.
Finalists
Competing teams presented their business ideas in various fields. The other competing projects were: Maja Maćkowiak Team, with the app Seems Green (Poznan University of technology, Poland), an app that focuses on energy saving, safety and saving education; Team Modeck, with an innovative pot lid (Brandenburg University of Technology, Germany) which has various add-ons that, for example, take care of stirring or keep track of cooking time; Rejoice Team, presenting a science-based dating app (University of Mons, Belgium), focused on scientific compatibility between users; Alpha Food Team (University of Catania, Italy) with a cricket breeding project for the production of flour and other by-products such as soil improvers or cosmetics; Team Gomet, with a medical-technical equipment tracking system (Université Polytechnique Hauts-de-France); and Sunbit Team, with a solution to reduce home heating costs (University of Vaasa, Finland).
