The Collider consolidates and starts its 4th edition with 40% of applications from outside Catalonia

• The MWCapital programme continues to grow and has prompted considerable interest at research and innovation centres throughout Spain and internationally, and received a total of 229 applications
• 15 technologies have been selected for the programme with a view to creating a company involving the collaboration of entrepreneurs and businesspeople
• Since its first edition, the programme has helped to create 14 startups, generated 62 jobs and provided training to 157 scientists from 62 scientific institutions

29 July, 2020

Barcelona, 29 July 2020.- Mobile World Capital Barcelona (MWCapital) is initiating the fourth edition of The Collider, its technology transfer programme, with strong growth outside Catalonia. The Collider brings scientific knowledge together with entrepreneurial talent to create highly innovative technological startups. Following previous editions, the initiative has now consolidated while the number of applications from research and innovation centres to take part continues to grow. This year, a significant 40% of the 229 applications received have come from outside Catalonia. Although a significant number are from Madrid, they have also come from centres throughout Spain, as well as some overseas applications from India and the United States. Oscar Sala, Director of The Collider, emphasized that “we have taken a very significant leap to reach the scientific ecosystem of all of Spain by underlining the importance of technology transfer as a springboard for competitiveness and talent”.

15 technologies focused on digital health and industry 4.0

Of the 229 applications received, The Collider selected 35, produced by 27 different research institutions and centres. These pitched their projects before a jury with a view to being chosen as one of the 15 finalists that will take part in the programme. 73.4% are associated with Industry 4.0 and sustainability projects, while 26.6% are focused on Digital Health. Now that the scientific proposals have been chosen, The Collider has begun the process of selecting the entrepreneurs to join the projects, and of creating teams that will work together for six months at the facilities of MWCapital in Barcelona to turn the project into a company ready to be launched on the market.

Of the 15 projects selected, for the first time 26.6% originated from outside Catalonia (2 from Madrid, one from Valencia and another from Jaén). The areas of research are rather diverse and include proposals for reducing the use of plastics in product packaging, a radar frequency data broadcasting solution, electrode devices for monitoring health adapted to the physiognomy of small children, the detection of skin cancer and the use of drones to optimize agricultural monitoring.

The finalist projects are being undertaken by research centres such as Eurecat-Technology Centre of Catalonia, the August Pi i Sunyer Biomedical Research Institute, Rovira i Virgili University, Ramon Llull University, the Institute of Polymer Science and Technology, Polytechnic University of Catalonia, the Jaume Almera Institute of Earth Sciences, the Institute of Agrifood Research and Technology, Autonomous University of Barcelona, University of Girona, the Institute of Corpuscular Physics, University of Alcalá and University of Jaén.

The Collider awards €2,000 to each of the 15 projects, as a result of its collaboration with the Ministry of Business and Knowledge of the Regional Government of Catalonia and with a view to encouraging the market’s endorsement of science.

Creation of 14 startups

The Collider brings scientific knowledge together with entrepreneurial talent to create highly innovative technological startups. To date, in its first three editions, the programme has helped to create 14 startups, generated 63 jobs and provided training to 157 scientists. In the last edition, entries were submitted for 163 projects from 27 research centres and research teams and from over 1,000 entrepreneurs worldwide, 36% of which were non-European. This yielded 5 highly innovative startups with a great capacity for growth: Cooling, a refrigeration technology that does not consume energy; Deep Detection, for improving detection in the production process; Exheus, for the analysis of bodily injuries and disorders; Geokinesia, a remote spatial sensing system for detecting ground deformation; and GoFasd, for diagnosing and treating neurocognitive diseases in children.

The Collider has established an alliance with GoHub to promote deep tech throughout Spain

The Collider has initiated collaboration with GoHub, the hub of Global Omnium in Valencia, with a view to creating the first deep tech forum in Spain. To achieve this, the two institutions will organize different activities throughout the year in order to show the deep tech solutions that are already being used to solve challenges in large corporations and thus to bring science and the market together and encourage technology transfer.