Undergraduate students Giovanna Shizue Tomita Lima (Faculty of Chemical Engineering) and Vitória Rebelo Mendes (Faculty of Applied Sciences) were the winners of the Inova 2021 Award, organized by Inova Unicamp Innovation Agency, in the Bank Assessment and Popular Vote categories, respectively. You pitches of its Scientific Initiation projects with potential for innovation were presented at the webinar of the Prize final last Thursday, November 25th.
This year, the Award had something new: participants were encouraged to indicate what type of innovation your research promoted and justify the reason in the submission document. The options were: Product Innovation, Process Innovation, Organizational Innovation, Marketing Innovation, Business Model Innovation and Social Innovation.
The executive director of Inova Unicamp, Ana Frattini, explains that the new requirement encourages students to think of their research projects as an innovation. “We want students to know about the possibility of patenting a technology and even developing a technology-based business based on that Intellectual Property”, she comments.
Inova 2021 Award Winners
Os six finalists for the Award underwent training in pitch and made their presentations to the evaluation panel and the public. The members of the panel were: Débora Gallas, journalist and PhD in Communication and Information from UFRGS; Fábio Pagani, serial entrepreneur; Mariana Zanatta, manager of the Scientific and Technological Park at Unicamp and Incamp; and Thiago Loureiro, project director at Liga Empreendedora.
Giovanna Shizue Tomita Lima, a student at the Faculty of Chemical Engineering (FEQ) at Unicamp, was chosen by the panel, with a Social Innovation project called “Mapping the health situation of a rural settlement located in the city of Valinhos”. Guided by professor Jefferson Picanço, this is an awareness project aimed at a rural settlement, for which booklets were developed with guidance on bathrooms and other basic hygiene issues.
Candidate chosen in the Popular Vote category, Vitória Rebelo Mendes is a Sports Science student at the Faculty of Applied Sciences (FCA) at Unicamp. Guided by professor Leandro Mazzei, his project is entitled "Identification of critical success factors: a case study on the women's football team at Ferroviária Futebol S/A”. The category nominated was Business Model Innovation.
About the Inova Award
Created in 2008 by the Inova Unicamp Innovation Agency with the support of the rectory, the Inova Unicamp Innovation Initiation Award is in its 14th edition. It aims to value students and professors at the University who carry out research with the potential to generate products for society. Since 2019, participating students have had their projects evaluated through presentation of pitch to an evaluation panel made up of entrepreneurs and Innovation experts.
Original article published on the Inova Unicamp Innovation Agency website.
Watch the recording of the event:
