UiB represented at the inaugural European Innovation Council Summit

The European Innovation Council (EIC) celebrated its first Summit with the launch of the EIC Forum on 24 and 25 November after the official launch of the programme in March 2021. In relation to this event, senior advisor for innovation Yves Aubert from UiB’s Division of Research and Innovation (FIA) visited Brussels and the UiB Brussels Office. We had a chat with him about the EIC Summit, his background as a researcher, and UiB’s work on innovation.

First European Innovation Council (EIC) Summit

The European Innovation Council (EIC) is the EU’s new NOK 100-billion strategic tool to turn Europe into a global innovation leader. The EIC mirrors the European Research Council (ERC) in that it supports the most ambitious and high-risk innovation projects that have the potential to result in breakthrough technologies and create new or disrupt existing markets.

Among the speakers at the EIC Summit were Executive Vice-President of the European Commission for a Europe fit for the Digital Age, Margrethe Vestager, Commissioner for Research, Innovation, Culture, Education and Youth, Mariya Gabriel, and Director for EISMEA, Jean-David Malo.

At the grand opening of the summit, Commissioner Vestager highlighted the importance of encouraging private investment through public-private funding and scale up partnership in order for Europe to lead the way in deep tech globally. The European Commission will fund academic and entrepreneurial innovation projects through grants and direct investments from the €10.1 billion Horizon Europe budget allocated to the EIC under Pillar 3, covering the entire range from basic research to scale-up activities. The importance of creating synergies between research, innovation and education to achieve the strategic goals of the Commission was underlined by Commissioner Gabriel.

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EIC

Making UiB’s voice heard at EU level

For UiB, the active contribution to the discussion of innovation programmes at EU level is important. Thus, UiB gladly accepted an invitation to participate in a workshop for designing the new EIC Market Place, a platform which will employ AI-based functionalities to organize the quarterly reporting of EIC Pathfinder projects to detect breakthrough outcomes. The EIC Market Place will allow innovation actors (researchers, research institutions, investors, innovators, entrepreneurs, IP lawyers and more) to interact with each other in order to create synergies that allow for the innovations to be developed and brought to market.

Among many workshop participants from the industry and investor communities, UiB highlighted the value that the universities can provide to, and gain from, such a common marketplace. UiB pointed out the need for alignment of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and Open Science principles, and the need for independent counselling on IPR and commercialisation issues so that researchers and start-ups can receive qualified advise on the commercial potential and commercialization routes of their discoveries.

During the EIC Summit, Yves Aubert also had direct conversations with administrators of EISMEA, including director of EISMEA Jean-David Malo, cabinet expert Isidro Laso, head of unit EIC Board, Strategy and EA Feedback to Policy Keith Sequeira, and head of unit Future Emerging Technologies Viorel Peca. Aubert took the opportunity to promote UiB’s willingness to be an active contributor to shaping the EIC also in the future.

Building a culture for innovation at the University of Bergen

Yves Aubert entered UiB’s Division of research and innovation with a background from research in neuroscience and a start-up company developing medical devices to help with heart failure.

“Working in a start-up opened my eyes to the immense, untapped potential of academic research to positively impact people’s lives, if we were more systematic about turning research to readily available solutions that address the society’s needs. This experience made my current position a natural next step”, he says.

Together with the other three innovation advisors at the Division of Research and Innovation, Aubert works to build awareness and tools for innovation at UiB.

“The work on creating structures and mechanisms to help the knowledge of thousands of researchers translate to society is closely aligned with UiB’s strategy plan, fittingly titled “Knowledge that shapes society.” Breakthrough innovations are often the result of breakthrough research. UiB’s innovation activities are thus built on the premise that innovation is based on and includes research. Creating an understanding and a culture for innovation and entrepreneurship at the university, helping researchers recognize and optimize their own innovation potential, as well as devising innovation strategies with the university leadership are among our main responsibilities and tasks”, Aubert concludes.

Several innovation programmes have been put in place in recent years. For UiB researchers and students with innovative ideas, UiB idé is a new support programme providing both guidance and funding. For students, Aubert also points to the Bergen Entrepreneurship Academy (BEA) and to the Innovation Hub as new instruments to connect students interested in innovation, and to provide meeting places and innovation competences.