Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and Soroka University Medical Center have been awarded a third of a new NIS 30 million grant program encouraging entrepreneurship launched this year by the Ministry of Innovation, Science, and Technology. Yazamut 360°, the University's entrepreneurship center, will receive NIS 10.8 million over four years. Their proposal was chosen as the best out of more than 20 applications, of which eight were funded. The BGU/Soroka partnership will receive the most money of any of the funded partnerships. The funds will be used to create "The Lab Pre-acceleration Program", which will support applied basic research in its early stages. It will focus on research with the applicative potential to become the basis for a company or to be developed as a product line by a company.
The Lab will complement Yazamut 360°'s Oazis accelerator, headed by Julia Sagalin and Michel Assayag. The two-year-old joint program with BGN Technologies, the University's tech transfer company, focuses on pairing academics with entrepreneurs to create deep-tech companies. Nearly 20 companies have already been formed, most have already received significant investments.
The Ministry launched the new program "Knowledge Accelerator" in conjunction with the Council for Higher Education and the Finance Ministry.
.png)
Prof. Carmel Sofer (pictured above), chair of Yazamut 360°, and Dana Gavish Fridman (pictured below), head of the center: "Yazamut 360°at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev was among the first to identify the need for structured, in-depth entrepreneurship training for researchers, and for early-stage funding of applied research. The new "Lab" program will complement our Oazis accelerator, and thereby promote basic research to industry and enable the formation of dozens of amazing startups based on the deep technologies developed in the University's laboratories."
.png)
Media Coverage:
Geektime
