INESC TEC welcomes young entrepreneurs for a week
Under the programme Ciência Viva in Laboratories - Science for Young People in the Holidays (OCJF), six secondary school children were at INESC TEC and tried to develop their entrepreneurial side during that week.
Between 9 and 13 July, the students of the tenth, eleventh and twelfth grade of the Sciences and Technologies course had the opportunity to be in contact with the work that is developed at INESC TEC, in order to be closer to the reality of the scientific and technological research.
In addition to its goal of supporting the experimental and practical teaching of science, this programme aims to arouse the curiosity of young people for the technological areas and to raise them awareness of the opportunities and the challenges of scientific entrepreneurship. That was also why that during the internship, they had to develop a mini business plan and present it to a jury panel of INESC TEC.
The internship
On the first day, after a brief presentation about INESC TEC, the activities started at the entrepreneurship, science and technology workshop. The afternoon comprised a visit to two INESC TEC’s spin-offs: LTP Labs (analytical-based methodologies to provide management consultancy services to companies) and MitMyNid (interoperable logistics business platforms for collaborative logistics services in the maritime area).
The second day of the internship was entirely spent with the researchers Susana Silva, Catarina Monteiro, Paulo Robalinho, Duarte Viveiros, Manuel Joaquim Marques and Orlando Frazão from INESC TEC’s Center for Applied Photonics (CAP), in which students got to be real scientists by directly getting in touch with optical fiber technologies.
On the third day of activities, the students learned about other research areas of INESC TEC that, in a way, are related to the work to be developed during the internship, namely the Centre for Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship (CITE) presented by Sara Neves, the Centre for Power and Energy Systems (CPES) presented by Clara Gouveia and the Centre for Enterprise Systems Engineering (CESE) presented by Alexandra Marques.
Then, always with the guidance of the instructor Raquel Pestana, the students began their work in order to prepare the business plan, which lasted until the end of the week.
It was on the last day of the internship that the students presented their mini business plan, before a panel of evaluators with experience in business management and evaluation of business ideas, namely: Cristina Barbosa from CITE, André Madureira from CPES and Nuno Campos from the Industry Partnership Service (SAPE). The group presented the Free2Go project in the ticketing field, an electronic device that allows the automatic validation of several means of transport, but also the access to swimming pools and gyms.
With 22 editions, this initiative of the Ciência Viva – Agência Nacional para a Cultura Científica e Tecnológica has already involved nearly 16,000 students who attended scientific internships in institutions’ laboratories all over the country.
The researchers mentioned in this news piece are associated with INESC TEC.
