A new call for the Youth Entrepreneurship Program has been launched, to support up to 25 business ideas or business initiatives. In addition, it is intended to spread and activate the culture of entrepreneurship among the students who will receive scholarships, in order to contribute to the business initiatives that could be created in the area of ​​the university.

UPV/EHU graduates and students can participate in the program if they have obtained an official university qualification in the last three academic years (2019/2020, 2020/2021 or 2021/2022) or in the last year of their undergraduate studies in the 2022/2023 academic year, in an official master's degree or if they are enrolled in a doctoral program.

Alberto Díaz de Junguitu, the academic supervisor, emphasized: "This program is a serious commitment by our University to promote the entrepreneurial skills of students. In UPV/EHU's strategy in this area, the youth entrepreneurship program plays a very important role among other initiatives and activities".

On the other hand, business projects and initiatives in different stages of maturity can receive the support of this call: valorization of the idea, development of the feasibility plan, launch of start-ups and/or developing projects in the first funding rounds, or being developed with the support of UPV/EHU researchers or students. the company's innovation projects. Preference will be given to those with a scientific-technological profile or those with a significant level of innovation for the market.

Students or graduates who have completed the selected projects will receive a financial aid of 3,600 euros, and the UPV/EHU will also put a network of advisers at their disposal. This network will provide them with professional consulting services while they develop the project, and will organize a specific training on entrepreneurship - they will necessarily have to participate in it.

The ones that stood out in the last edition

The program ends every year in the first week of July, with the presentation and defense of the developed projects. In the last edition of 2022, four participants stood out.

The first one, presented by Martxel Aldai Salaberria of the Mechanical Engineering Degree, is "Development of sports sensor for rowing practice and analysis of biomechanical factors of performance in rowing", and it consists in creating a sports sensor for rowing in different modalities.

Rowing is a very technical sport, and IoT technology can be very beneficial for playing it and improving it. However, today there is no properly adapted solution, and rowers are limited to using additional sensors (GPS, heart rate, session time...), power, instead of specific sensors that can provide information about cadence, rowing technique, etc.

The second notable project is "LUP", which was created in 2020 with the aim of making everyday life easier for visually impaired people. Today, LUP is developing the first solution: the smart pocket magnifier. It is based on artificial intelligence and helps the user to read.