Cyprus Seeds 1st Innovation Showcase: Celebrating the successful completion of its pilot year

• The six 2019/20 Grantees of the First Funding Cycle of Cyprus Seeds inspired the audience with their innovative projects at the 1^st Innovation Showcase.

On the 16^th of October, Cyprus Seeds, a non-profit organization that supports the commercialization of academic research, celebrated the successful completion of its pilot year! During the Event, the 6 Grantees of the first cycle presented their technological innovations to a small group of stakeholders from the Cypriot start-up ecosystem including policy makers, universities’ representatives, businesspeople and investors.

The Innovation Showcase gave to the Teams the opportunity to present their work for the first time to the public and potential investors from Greece and the USA. The event took place at the Cyprus Institute premises which supported Cyprus Seeds several times this year by hosting some of its workshops and training.

At the Event, the Deputy Minister of Research, Innovation, and Digital Policy Mr. Kyriacos Kokkinos praised Cyprus Seeds for its unique work and noted the government’s support for the initiative, through matching funds. Dr Costas Markides, Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at London Business School shared his thoughts on using entrepreneurship to drive the competitiveness of Cyprus. The team of the AID4All project who won the National and European competition of Junior Achievement was also invited to the event to present their innovation, and through that they had succeeded on showing to the targeted audience the true potential of the Cypriot talent. The Event closed with an inspiring message for a much more optimistic and promising future for the Cypriot talented researchers and the start-up community overall. The Minister of Foreign Affairs congratulated the promoters of Cyprus Seeds and announced an award of €10,000 for the 2019/20 Grantees as well as he welcomed the new Grantees selected to participate to the Second Funding Cycle.

Cyprus Seeds was launched in March 2019 with the mission to help commercialize innovative academic research taking place in the universities and research institutions in Cyprus, by providing all the required activities that cover the pre-seed stage including grants, top-quality mentoring, targeted business skills training and numerous networking opportunities.

In March 2020, Cyprus Seeds announced a new call for a second cycle and received 54 applications from all the universities and research centers in Cyprus. After a very competitive evaluation process, 5 new Teams were announced for the 2^nd Cycle of 2020/21. More specifically, two (2) teams are from the Health/Biomedical Engineering sector, one (1) team from the Computer Science sector, one (1) team from Arts and Heritage Science sector and one (1) team from Agriculture sector. Two (2) of these projects come from the Cyprus Institute, one (1) is from the Cyprus University of Technology, one (1) from the University of Cyprus and one (1) from RISE Center (Research Center on Interactive Media Smart Systems and Emerging Technologies). The new 12M Cycle will begin in November 2020.