TECHNOVATION HUB: SEVEN YEARS OF INNOVATIVE ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Since 2016, Technovation Hub has been the incubator and promoter of innovative entrepreneurship in the Faculty of Engineering Technology. The seven-year anniversary gave added luster to the annual Innovation & Networking Evening that took place on 16 May 2023 in Leuven. The student teams belonging to Technovation Hub stepped up to share their achievements and plans for the future with the public and each other.

A 'hub' has multiple meanings. It can be a device that is part of a network, a transshipment point in a distribution network, the center of the spokes of a wheel or a central airport from which an airline operates. In each case, it is about 'connectivity' and 'exchange'.

In his opening speech, Prof Bert Lauwers, dean of the Faculty of Engineering Technology, linked both concepts to Technovation Hub's mission: encouraging and supporting entrepreneurship among engineering students. First, the dean briefly reflected on the history of the seven-year-old: “Technovation Hub owes its existence to the student teams and indirectly to the Postgraduate Programme in Innovation & Entrepreneurship in Engineering. Inspired by pioneers such as the Solar Team, Formula Electric Belgium, and CORE, quite a number of new initiatives emerged, each with its own ambitions and -above all- its own questions and wishes. To accommodate and support them professionally, a special organisation was set up within KU Leuven's Science & Technology Group. This offered a home to the existing and new teams through the postgraduate programmes, providing a legal network, financial support and the use of KU Leuven's infrastructure and facilities. The aim was to avoid or remove as many obstacles and barriers as possible for the teams so that they could concentrate optimally on their core business.”

Niche

As an incubator of innovative entrepreneurship, Technovation Hub is in good company, both inside and outside the university. At KU Leuven, Prof Lauwers explicitly referred to KU Leuven KICK with initiatives such as KICK Challenge, the Learning Garage, Studio Start, the Incubator Track and the Product Innovation Projects (PIP). Outside the university community, Technovation Hub is on the same page as VOKA Bryo, Leuven Young Entrepreneurs, the Flemish Agency for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, imec.istart and several others.

“In this wide range of opportunities, Technovation Hub has found a niche for ambitious engineering students and recent graduates who combine their scientific and technological knowledge and skills with entrepreneurial talent,” says the dean. That the teams also manage to attract more and more students from other faculties – e.g., Engineering Science, Bioengineering Science, Economics and Business Engineering to Medicine –he calls a particularly positive development. “As is well known, real innovation does not always arise within the boundaries of one's own discipline but rather at the interfaces where they meet.”

© Filip Van Loock

Aquathermy

The guest speakers at the Innovation & Networking Evening were Stijn De Jonge, Jan De Nayer and Sebastian Baes, the founders of Extraqt, a spin-off of the student cooperative CORE, which in turn is part of Technovation Hub. Extraqt's story illustrates how technological innovation coupled with entrepreneurship can create breakthroughs in climate-neutral heating and cooling of buildings and cities. To do so, it uses aquathermy, which is the extraction of heat or coolness from rivers, canals and lakes. In their master's thesis, Jan and Sebastian showed how the heat from the river Dijle can be used to heat the city centers of Leuven and Mechelen for an entire winter without endangering the river's ecosystem. In just two years, the start-up Extraqt has grown into an authority in aquathermy with the ambition to boost society towards sustainable energy management. To illustrate, aquathermy can lead to a 65% reduction in CO2 emissions compared to heating with gas and even up to 99% when the heat pump uses renewable electricity.

Competitions

After the official part and the honoring of the collaborators of Technovation Hub Academy, participants swarmed across campus for the workshops in which the student teams announced their priorities for the year ahead. For the teams taking part in international competitions, the stakes are high. Such is the case for Formula Electric Belgium, iGEM and the Innoptus Solar Team. They will have to compete with teams from the best universities in the world in the coming months. Perhaps the Solar Team is facing the biggest challenge: defending its world title at the World Solar Challenge in Australia in October.

Yves Persoons

www.technovationhub.be