Newsletter June 2024
The UiO Growth House – UiO’s innovation unit for life sciences, health, and technology
Editorial: Happy summer holidays!
It has been an exciting innovation year at the University of Oslo (UiO). We are particularly pleased that UiO has a new action plan for innovation, which further clarifies UiO's ambition to develop its innovation system in order to put more knowledge from research to use. As an operational innovation unit, we in the UiO Growth House look forward to realising the goals in the action plan together with our owner faculties, the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences.
Read the director's full editorial
We see that the UiO Growth House model we have developed with low-threshold innovation services for leaders, researchers and students is a solid foundation for further work. Through a two-day strategy meeting in mid-June, we have started working on plans for how we can further develop our model in line with UiO's goals for innovation.
Over the past year, we have spent a lot of time together with our technology transfer office Inven2 to clarify roles and responsibilities for the support we both provide to researchers who are going to commercialise their innovation ideas. The goal is for our researchers to receive the best possible support in their commercialisation process with good interaction between the UiO Growth House and Inven2. Here it is important to point out that while Inven2 has a narrow area of responsibility and has to have income from commercialising ideas from UiO's researchers, the UiO Growth House has a much broader mandate and assists many more to put knowledge to use broadly for the benefit of society. We help both researchers and students where they are in taking the idea further so that knowledge from research is put to use. Here, interaction with the entire innovation ecosystem in the Oslo Science Park is very important to us.
One of the areas the UiO Growth House is already well underway with is strengthening UiO's innovation culture by engaging students. This summer, several students will have summer jobs through various initiatives that are supported by the UiO Growth House. 22 students have summer jobs through our internship programme which we run in collaboration with student innovation associations at our two owner faculties. In addition, thirteen students will have summer job in the incubator Startuplab in Oslo Science Park through Co-Create – our innovation and entrepreneurship programme for students. This programme has received support from Innovation Norway and is run in collaboration with other universities and colleges in the Oslo region.
The UiO Growth House has recently taken over the operation of UiO's student hub in Oslo Science Park. We look forward to inviting UiO's students to activities there throughout the autumn. We also hope to see as many of you as possible at our innovation conference Science Impact 25 September and other meeting places for academia and business that we organise together with the innovation ecosystem.
Call: The UiO innovation funds for researchers
Are you a researcher with an innovative idea based on your research that can contribute to solving an important need in society, but need funding to develop the idea further? Check the UiO call for innovation funding within all academic fields. Application deadline: 2 September 2024. UiO has dedicated NOK 5 million to this call, and there are two categories of funding:
- Funding of idea and concept phase of up to 50 000 NOK per project
- Funding of test and further development phase of up to 400 000 NOK per project
Application deadline: 2 September 2024
The UiO Growth House manages the application process on behalf of UiO. Please send an email to innovation@growthhouse.uio.no if you have any questions.
Sign up for the innovation conference Science Impact 25 September
We are hosting the innovation conference Science Impact for the second time in collaboration with several internal and external partners. The topic this year is artificial intelligence in life sciences and energy. The conference is a part of Oslo Innovation Week.
At this conference we focus on initiatives in academia and industry and the need for collaboration and framework conditions needed to put research to use for the benefit of patients and society.
Sessions
- Impact Breakfast: The world of AI across life sciences and energy with opening speech on AI between hype and hope
- Life sciences – AI for better solutions for mental health
- Life sciences – AI in diagnostics and treatment – from molecules to images
- Energy systems and digitalisation – value chain from research to commercialization
- Energy and resource requirements for digitalisation
- Impact Afternoon: Sustainability aspects of the use of AI across life sciences and energy
See the sessions and lineup of great speakers and sign up!
Main organiser: UiO Growth House?
Internal partners: UiO:Energy and Environment, dScience , Faculty of Medicine, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences and Faculty of Social Sciences?
External partners: Inven2, SINTEF, Oslo University Hospital, City of Oslo, LMI, Oslo Cancer Cluster, Oslo Cancer Cluster Incubator, The Life Science Cluster ?and Oslo Science Park?
Events
14 August: Health industry at Arendalsuka
We are organizing the meeting Health industry from A to Z – this is how we succeed in realizing the roadmap where we showcase how actors in the innovation ecosystem can contribute to realize the roadmap.
Co-organisers: Aleap, Health2B, Melanor, HelseOmsorg21-r?det, Oslo Science City, Norway Health Tech, Oslo Cancer Cluster, The Life Science Cluster, Inven2 and Oslo Science Park
- See the event on arendalsuka.no, save the date and meet us in Arendal.
10 October and 5 December: Innovation hangouts for academia and industry
With this meeting place we want to inspire, give self-confidence and knowledge about innovation processes and facilitate collaboration that puts more research to use for the benefit of patients and society. We will have inspirational talk, role model talk and networking.
Place: Oslo Science Park
Time: 17.00–20.00
Co-organisers 10 October: The open innovation arena Health2B in Oslo Science Park and The Intervention Centre at Oslo University Hospital.
The programme will be out on the event webpage in August. Save the date!
Co-organisers 5 December: The Life Science Cluster
The programme will be out on the event webpage in October. Save the date!
Reminder School of Health Innovation
Apply for admission to course 2 Entrepreneurship in healthcare fall 2024 – deadline 28 June
New action plan for innovation at UiO
UiO has a new action plan for innovation. The UiO Growth House has an important role in the follow-up of the action plan and is in the process of making plans that will support the innovation work at UiO and our owner faculties.
New head of section in the UiO Growth House
Beate Rygg Johnsen is employed in the new section manager position in the UiO Growth House. She has worked in the UiO Growth House since October 2022 as a senior innovation advisor. Beate has an education in biochemistry from UiO and had 30 years' experience from global industry when she came to UiO in 2020. Now she will lead the operational work to further develop the UiO Growth House innovation services and will be the leader of the innovation advisers. Together with the director and head of communications, she is part of the Growth House management team.
Happy summer holidays from the UiO Growth House!
Contact us if you have an early-phase innovation idea!
We offer tailored guidance and support, including seed funding up to NOK 200,000. Contact us if you want to discuss how to proceed with your early-phase innovation idea.
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Published 28 June 2024