New co-working space for entrepreneurship projects at the Torribera Food Campus
The Torribera Food Campus is hosting a new workspace for entrepreneurship projects promoted by StartUB! in collaboration with the Focus InnoFood platform, with the aim of promoting innovation in the agri-food sector. This is the first of several facilities of this kind that the University of Barcelona intends to open on its campuses in the coming years. Javi Aoiz, creator of the My Luno AI platform for nutritionists, is one of the first users of the new co-working space: “It is very interesting for us to work here: we can’t have a better audience than the one on this campus and, in addition, we can communicate with start-ups, like ours, which operate in the same field as we do”.
The Torribera Food Campus is hosting a new workspace for entrepreneurship projects promoted by StartUB! in collaboration with the Focus InnoFood platform, with the aim of promoting innovation in the agri-food sector. This is the first of several facilities of this kind that the University of Barcelona intends to open on its campuses in the coming years. Javi Aoiz, creator of the My Luno AI platform for nutritionists, is one of the first users of the new co-working space: “It is very interesting for us to work here: we can’t have a better audience than the one on this campus and, in addition, we can communicate with start-ups, like ours, which operate in the same field as we do”.
Javi Aoiz, who studied a degree in Human Nutrition and Dietetics and a master’s degree in Nutrition in Physical Activity and Sport at the UB, has devised a platform that integrates multiple applications to “help nutritionists optimize their work: nutritional planning, menu planning and even creating content for social networks”. Aoiz has had the support of StartUB!, the UB unit dedicated to promoting innovation and entrepreneurship among students. He went to the StartUB! headquarters on the Diagonal Campus, where he received advice on defining the bases of the project and setting up the company. Now, he is seizing the opportunity that there is a new StartUB! space on the same campus where he studied. He says he is convinced that the field of nutrition has “many opportunities” for people with entrepreneurial projects.
The director of the Torribera Food Campus, M. Carmen Vidal, also points out the possibilities for innovation in the sector: “The campus is already quite consolidated in teaching in bachelor’s and master’s degrees and research with integrated research groups, especially in the Institute for Research in Nutrition and Food Safety, which has the María de Maeztu distinction. Now is the time to also promote knowledge transfer, innovation and entrepreneurship”. He assures that “there is a demand for food with the five Ss: saludable, sostenible, socialment justa i satisfactòria gastronòmicament (healthy, sustainable, safe, socially just and gastronomically satisfactory), and to achieve this, our researchers and students can surely contribute with ideas and research and innovation projects”.
One co-working space every year for the next five academic years
Mercè Segarra, Vice-Rector for Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Transfer, puts the new co-working space initiative in context: “The UB’s Governance Plan includes creating at least one co-working space every year for the next five academic years. The aim is to involve the UB community in all the activities organized by StartUB!, such as different strategies for accompanying and supporting the creation of start-ups, transversal training programmes in entrepreneurship or the organization of ideation days (Innovation Days), among others”.
Regarding the new co-working space, she points out that “the opportunity to have this facility at the Torribera Food Campus has been accompanied by the agreement with the company TranXforma Food, to create the UB Focus InnoFood innovation platform. The aim of the agreement is to promote entrepreneurship, innovation and the transfer of knowledge generated at the university in the fields of nutrition and gastronomy in the food and gastronomy industry”.
The new space, with about forty square metres and capacity for about thirty people, is called StartUB! Focus InnoFood. Someone in charge of the facility accompanies the users so that they can develop innovative projects. The plan is to open a new StartUB! area next year on the Mundet Campus, in the Palau de Les Heures, where the UB community from the fields of education, psychology and social work will be able to come together.