International University Startups & Spin-Offs Festival to be held in St Petersburg

The future billionaires to gather at HSE University – St Petersburg

On June 24-28, HSE University – St Petersburg will be hosting the International University Startups & Spin-Offs Festival, one-of-a-kind event that brings together teams from leading universities in the USA, the UK, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Turkey, Estonia and Russia at HSE University – St Petersburg’s venue.

22 teams representing projects in the field of the most promising technological areas such as Digital Medicine, Neurotechnology, and EdTech will compete for investors’ attention and the prizes provided by Rostelecom, the prime sponsor, and Kaspersky Lab, the partner of the festival.

More than 150 projects from 15 countries took part in the qualifying round. The selection was conducted by the experts from Rostelecom, VympelCom, Kaspersky Lab, Reactor of Commercialization, and the HSE SPb Centre for Innovative Entrepreneurship.
At the final pitch session on June 28, young entrepreneurs will present their innovative startups in front of an expert jury headed by Mikhail Oseevsky, President of Rostelecom. The jury includes representatives of the festival’s partner companies, the Russian venture funds along with experts from HSE.
Among the speakers of the festival are stars of innovation entrepreneurship—Robert Neivert, partner of one of the world's most famous accelerators ‘500 Startups’, San Francisco, USA; Karina Sotnik, Director for Business Incubation and Accelerator Programmes, University City Science Center, Philadelphia, USA; and Oleg Amurjuev, Programme Director at York Entrepreneurship Development Institute, Toronto, Canada.

Everyone who is participating in the festival has a chance to attend expert lectures. A number of practical sessions will be held for project teams. Students from various universities and cities are expected to attend the festival—not only from St Petersburg but Moscow, Novosibirsk, Tomsk, etc. According to the experts who conducted the selection, all the projects have significant potential in the global market, and are able to make their founders billionaires!

Projects that border on fantasy
Among the projects that will be presented at the festival there are those that go beyond today’s experience.
Artiness, the Italian project, presents a revolutionary mechanism for clinical research and human treatment using the technology of creating multidimensional holographic images. The company creates three-dimensional images of the human body in 4 projections (three walls and floor). X-rays, ultrasound, biopsies are used for making such images. This data is keyed into computer and processed in order to build the final image. Artiness has developed the algorithms that allow to create very accurate and detailed individual images of a particular human body. These images help to diagnose the disease and determine treatment strategy. Thus, doing an MRI to obtain images of tissues and organs is no longer necessary for a patient.

The German project Letos is a hardware-software complex based on artificial intelligence. Letos allows to predict human behaviors as a reaction to different situations. In particular, this system can be used to analyse driving behaviour. The complex consists of sensors that record facial expression, speech, hand movements, heart performance. All data is transferred to the cloud storage where it is being processed to make a conclusion about a drivers’ state and their possible reactions to various situations. The system can be of value for insurance companies when determining premium, car sharing companies when predicting the accident rate, and of course car drivers when choosing speed rate.

There is another project that is focused on ensuring road safety. Called Sphere has been developed by the HSE SPb students. Eponymous system that estimates driving behaviour data, is meant to be of use to insurance companies. It comprises an electronic device that collects data on the parameters of the vehicle, and the cloud server that processes data from the electronic device. The analytics allows to estimate the probability of a traffic accident involving a car that has this electronic device installed. This makes it possible for the insurance company to differentiate the rates of comprehensive coverage.

The project of the Turkish company Seyisco helps to solve a problem crucial for urban roads. The company has developed a device that fixes vulnerabilities in the road surface such as corrugations and irregularities. Located under the bottom of a car, the device allows to detect a problem on the road surface in a very short period of time. Using of cloud software, the device then visualises data and makes a map that provides optimised road management for cities and municipalities.

Timey, the Estonian project, is of great importance for everyone who, on the one hand, cares about their health, and for those who produce and sell food, on the other. Timey produces chemical indicators of small size to record any increase in storage or transportation temperature over the recommended temperature for a product. In most cases, this applies to refrigerated goods. The system makes it possible to control the quality of goods, as well understand where exactly supply chain failures. All in all, Timey removes dispute between a manufacturer and a seller about responsibility for the damaged goods.

Under the conditions of information overload, the problem of visual navigation in cities is becoming increasingly relevant. The Russian project Enterplace offers an innovative approach to navigation information placement inside buildings. Currently, any building has a large number of pointers but this does not always help to find the right room. The company develops design for indoor navigation information based on eye tracking―in this case, visitors will see exactly what they need and where they need it.

The festival is open but registration is required. A media scrum with the expert jury will be organised on June 28, 2019 from 15.30 to16.00, after summarising the pitch session. All speakers are available for comment throughout the festival.
International University Startups & Spin-Offs Festival is taking place on 3A Kantemirovskaya street, St Petersburg, Russia.

16 Soyuza Pechatnikov, 190121, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Contact: Marina Sannikova, Director of the Center for International Education
Email msannikova@hse.ru

HSE University - St Petersburg is part of the leading Russian university (HSE University, having four campuses), top 350 in the world according to QS World University Rankings. HSE University - St Petersburg is a dynamically research academic center with prominent expertise in Economics, Business, Management, IT and Social Studies.

This release was published on openPR.