The NOVA University Lisbon, through the Nova Tourism and Hospitality (TOHO) platform and NOVA Impact, is a partner of the Mind The Tourism program - mind your footprint, mind your health. Launched by NEST - Tourism Innovation Center, this program focuses on encouraging the creation of sustainable innovation solutions in the tourism sector. NOVA conceptualized the program and is organizing several initiatives, with emphasis on the roundtables and the Hackathon. Planetiers, an entity that promotes sustainable change, is also involved in the organization of the program, with a series of talks on opportunities for innovation in tourism. Mind The Tourism program aims to map opportunities for innovation in tourism and promote the creation of sustainable technological solutions, ready to test in the market. To this end, the program will bring together several stakeholders from the tourism industry around sustainable innovation. SMEs, startups, the academic community, companies and professionals will identify and work on the greatest tourism opportunities around three axes: Sustainability, Safety, Health and Well-being. The program is divided into two phases. The first phase concerns a set of talks and roundtables, where several priority challenges for tourism will be identified. In a second phase, which corresponds to the Hackathon, the challenges identified will be addressed to develop, in record time, technological solutions. In the end, three solutions will be chosen to be implemented in the market, through pilot projects. 1st phase - Opportunities Debate and Mapping To inspire the discussion on problems and identify opportunities in the tourism sector, Planetiers will bring together a set of national and international experts who will address the main themes for the future for tourism in a series of talks. European Ecological Pact, Climate Change, Carbon Footprint and Solutions, Big Data for Carbon and Solutions, Circular and Disruptive Solutions and Future Fit Tourism are the themes of these sessions, which will be available from March 15th on NEST's Youtube channel. In turn, between March 29th and April 9th, NOVA promotes roundtables, which will bring together specialists and entities from the public and private sector related to the sectorial topic under discussion, to make tangible the problems and opportunities associated with the three axes of the program. Among the guests will be representatives of associations and municipalities, companies in the sector, technological startups, individuals of recognized merit, among others, who will share their knowledge and promote the identification of solutions based on data and technology. The themes of the sessions are: Sustainable Mobility in Cities, Healthy and Ecological Restoration, Safe, Healthy and Sustainable Accommodation, Future Events, Cultural and Identity Heritage, Nature and the Ocean. These sessions will be broadcast live on NEST's YouTube channel. 2nd phase - Hackathon The second phase of the program is a Hackathon between April 30th and May 2nd, for the development of technological solutions for the opportunities mapped in talks and roundtables. This phase of the program will have the support of NOVA Information Management School (NOVA IMS), NOVA Medical School, Turismo de Portugal, Lisbon City Hall, NOS and Brisa - Via Verde. Applications for the Hackathon will open on March 29th on the program's website. All the initiatives of Mind The Tourism program are free to access and take place online.

NOVA University Lisbon launched today the Innovation District, a project aiming to create a new global city in Almada, that will combine a unique and sustainable lifestyle in a new geography of innovation and technological knowledge. The first steps of this project, which involves a group of owners and investors and has the strategic support of the Municipality of Almada, were taken in 2019. By intervening in the areas of Monte da Caparica and Porto Brandão - distinguished by their potential for innovative knowledge, for the landscape and for the unique natural conditions - the Innovation District will provide the creation of a new city, modern and requalified, that will be a place of vanguard of ideas and innovations, attracting companies - national and international - and people. The Innovation District comprises a total area of ​​399 hectares, of which 110 hectares are green areas, and an investment of more than 800 million euros is estimated for its implementation. Among the main figures that define its size are the arrival of 4,500 new inhabitants to the new city, the creation of 1,000 new housing units, an area of ​​250,000 m2 for the implementation of new economic activities that will contribute to the creation of 17,000 new jobs and 86,000 m2 of tourist infrastructure. Based on the Live-work-play concept, the Innovation District will be a unique and plural city, designed to raise the quality of life of each of its inhabitants for whom all the various interest points will be within a short 15 minute distance.   NOVA School of Science and Technology | FCT NOVA, projeto do arquiteto João Pedro Falcão de Campos   With the Campus of NOVA School of Science and Technology as its central point, the Innovation District places knowledge, qualified talent and innovation as an engine for urban development and transformation. As a space of innovation It also intends to become a magnet for companies and people, contributing to promote the development of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area and leveraging its internationalization potential. Finally, it is a project focused on creating a creative, diverse, energetic and sustainable community, inspired by a better quality of life. The project includes the creation of a new sustainable city, anchored in the objectives defined by sustainable development until 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2050, integrating an array of innovative environmental solutions.

Sciencepreneur Hands-on aims to accelerate knowledge transfer at NOVA, supporting scientists with a technological or scientific breakthrough to identify the best path for its commercialization, through a one-on-one guidance on how to build a go-to-market strategy, from research results to impact. The first edition of this program took place between 7 December 2020 and 12 March 2021. Over three months, three teams with promising scientific and technological projects participated in an immersive program that allowed them to acquire skills to accelerate their solutions with the support of dedicated mentors, and from the entire NOVA Mentor Network, who accompanied the evolution of the teams and facilitated the validation of their business models. The three selected entrepreneurial projects for this first pilot edition are from the health and life sciences field, demonstrating the potential for innovation in this field at NOVA. Among the projects are: a device to assess the effectiveness of taking inhaled medication associated to respiratory diseases (Easy Breathie); a highly specialized gene editing service done by scientists for scientists (GeneTagus); and the only diet available worldwide for rearing malaria mosquitoes, that do not require blood and can contribute to the global efforts towards the eradication of this disease (BloodLess). The program culminated with a final presentation of the developed solutions developed to a renowned panel of national and international specialistas and venture capitalists and specialists, namely: Daniela Couto (Partner, Biogeneration Ventures), Ricardo Perdigão Henrique (CEO, Bionova Capital) , Duarte Mineiro (Partner, Armilar Venture Partners) and David Braga Malta (Venture Partner, Vesalius Biocapital). The overall quality of the projects was highlighted by all those present in the session, who have mentioned that the potential to give rise to NOVA's next spin-offs is evident. Find out below the testimonies of the selected project promoters about the technologies they are developing, as well as about their participation in this program: Easy Breathie “We aim to empower asthmatic patients to better control their disease, but also to allow real-time monitoring by their assisting doctors, leading to more personalized healthcare delivery and closer relationship with the patient. To this end, we are developing the smart inhaler Easy Breathy, a medical device that turns the traditional inhaler of an asthmatic patient into a smart and connectable inhaler. Through a sensor adapted to the inhaler that the patient already uses, we are able to transmit useful and reliable information to a mobile application, which will help not only the patients to have a better quality of life, but also their doctors to better manage the disease and associated medication. This project results from a collaboration between students and researchers from NOVA University with backgrounds on computer science, biomedical engineering and medicine.   By participating in the Sciencepreneur Hands-on program we were able to mature and outline in more detail the value of our solution and what are the next steps to be taken both in terms of technology and business development, which would not be possible without the valuable help of our dedicated mentors. The sharing of experiences with everyone involved in the program was undoubtedly positive and very enriching.” GeneTagus “We are a research group working at CEDOC, Nova Medical School. Like hundreds of research groups around the world, we have adopted CRISPR-Cas as the preferred genetic editing technology for manipulating cell lines. We kind of stumbled on a real market need and quickly realized that we could offer a quality service at a very competitive price, meeting the needs of various research groups worldwide. Therefore, we launched our service in October 2019 and, even without a sales department, in September 2020 we had already reached 33 customers from 15 different countries, with revenues of 185 000 €.   The participation in this program was essential to structure and create the bases in order to make our service more professional and business oriented. As scientists, we often find very difficult to perceive the potential and economic value of our research activity. This program has equipped us with various tools that will allow us, among other things, to leverage our growth in the market. We highlight the excellence of everyone involved, from the mentors to the organizers, culminating in the group of experts of the jury - together, the feedback given by each one of them was the best support we could have had for the moment and the future.” BloodLess “Mosquito-borne diseases, such as malaria, kill millions of people every year. To control the infections, we have to control the mosquito that transmits the disease. This requires the production of mosquitoes on a large scale, and females of the malaria-transmitting mosquito need to feed on blood to produce eggs and thus complete their life cycle. This leads to the need for high volumes of blood (human or human), for rearing mosquitoes on a very large scale. To respond to this need, we have developed an effective, blood-free artificial diet for breeding mosquitoes, which can contribute to the global effort to eliminate malaria. This artificial diet can be applied in remote locations where the disease is endemic (especially in Africa), allows the elimination of the use of animals for rearing mosquitoes, reduces the risk of accidental introduction of pathogenic organisms, the variability of batches, and has the potential to be used in innovative infection control applications worldwide.   We appreciate the immense support and the opportunity to discuss BloodLess from another perspective than the usual perspective of a scientist in the laboratory of IHMT NOVA. With participation in this program, we are certainly much more ahead than when we started and we highlight the numerous tips, the comprehensive and pragmatic vision of our mentor, as well as the comments of the experts in the final session that will certainly allow us to evolve.” If you want to apply for the next edition of Sciencepreneur Hands-on, you just need to have a technology or scientific breakthrough with the potential to be valued from an economic perspective. You can also take a look into the Sciencepreneur | The Basics course, to acquire basic skills in business modeling and value creation from research. Stay tuned and follow our social media, where the next opportunities will be announced in due course.