11/12/2020

Campus Iberus presents the 7th edition of the Entrepreneurship Awards sponsored by the CLH Group

  • The proposals submitted by asphalt optics and Dive Medical S.L. are the winners in the “Business Ideas” and “Innovative company” categories

The proposals submitted by Asphalt Optics, in the “Business Ideas” category, and the company DIVE Medical S.L., in the “Innovative Company” category, are the winners of the seventh edition of the Iberus Emprende Awards, sponsored by the CLH Group.

The awards were presented at a virtual ceremony held via the Campus Iberus YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/CampusIberus) after the finalists had presented their projects to the panel. A total of 34 proposals were submitted in this edition, covering a wide range of sectors, such as healthcare, hospitality, agriculture and the environment, among others.

During the award ceremony, the Chairman of the CLH Group, José Luis López de Silanes, thanked the participants and encouraged them to persevere and make their projects a reality despite the particularly difficult circumstances we are currently experiencing. In his speech, he also took the opportunity to "ask the rectors to continue providing spaces at universities to foster the development of entrepreneurship and innovation".

Along with López de Silanes, the ceremony was co-hosted by the rector of the University of Lleida and current president of the Campus Iberus Consortium, Jaume Puy Lorens, who expressly thanked the CLH Group for sponsoring and promoting the competition.

The CLH Group and Campus Iberus have been cooperating, as part of the Group’s entrepreneurship support policy, for seven years now in this programme, which aims to contribute to the development of innovative projects and promote the creation of new businesses and jobs in the communities where the company is present.

The CLH Group has signed similar agreements with other organisations to foster entrepreneurship, such as the Institute for Business Competitiveness of Castilla y León (ICE) and the Promotion Institute of the Region of Murcia.

Winning projects

The winner in the “Business Ideas” category was the project submitted by Asphalt Optics (Menditech), and supported by the Public University of Navarre, which proposes a solution to the problems related to the lack of information on mobility in urban and interurban roads.

The product is based on an innovative fibre optic device that provides data on traffic flow, speed, acceleration, direction and weight estimation in real time. The idea focuses on the design, manufacture and installation of these sensors inside asphalt structures on different types of roads. A prototype has already been developed and is currently being pilot tested in collaboration with Pamplona City Council.

This category aims to foster entrepreneurship by promoting the creation of new businesses by students and graduates of the universities belonging to Campus Iberus. Participants are entrepreneurs that have yet to create their business but have developed a business idea. The winner in this category will receive 5,000 euros.

The winner in the “Innovative Company” category was Dive Medical, a team comprised of professionals from the University of Zaragoza. The company developed DIVE technology for the comprehensive, objective and automatic examination of vision in non-compliant patients from the age of six months.

DIVE displays visual stimuli on a high-definition screen and records the points of the screen that the patient is looking at using eye tracking. The software, which automatically collects the data using artificial intelligence, allows persons with no specific training to detect vision problems in children, thus facilitating their referral to a specialist.

This category aims to promote entrepreneurship by contributing to the recognition and strengthening of companies incorporated within the previous 48 months, regardless of their legal form and purpose, in the regions where they are based. The winner in this category will receive 7,000 euros.

Campus Iberus in 2020

Campus Iberus is a strategic alliance of the public universities in the central Ebro valley (La Rioja, Lleida, the Public University of Navarre and Zaragoza). It has approximately 58,000 undergraduates on 150 degree courses and 3,200 postgraduate students pursuing 82 doctoral degrees. The academic offering is completed with 154 official master’s programmes and 181 own degree programmes. The workforce totals 6,300 teaching and research staff (TRS) members and 3,000 administrative and service staff (ASS) members. This year marks the tenth anniversary of Campus Iberus.