ENISA_Ateknea

Ateknea apuesta a las startups españolas en el programa de financiación ENISA

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Ateknea Solutions, líder en el sector de consultoría para Pymes europeas, apuesta por el talento local y es por eso que apoya a las startups con proyectos innovadores a conseguir financiación a través del programa ENISA, dirigido a todas las Pymes domiciliadas en España y con especial atención a todos los ecosistemas emprendedores españoles que han sido casos de éxito e inspiración.

¿Cómo participar en Enisa?

Si eres una pyme española con un proyecto con un potencial crecimiento transformador, entonces eres candidato a ser un #ClienteEnisa. En este sentido, Ateknea brinda toda la asesoría y consultoría necesaria para obtener la financiación por parte de este programa.

Nuestro equipo experto en desarrollo de negocios, viabilidad de los proyectos y conocimiento en tecnologías innovadoras está para apoyar tu idea y llevarla al mercado con éxito.

Startups españolas con talento, vocación y energía

A través del programa de financiación ENISA, todas las startups y emprendimientos españoles que quieran crear negocios de impacto, son bienvenidas a trabajar de la mano con Ateknea Solutions, en alcanzar sus objetivos financieros para impulsar sus proyectos y lograr posicionarse dentro del mercado de la innovación tecnológica en distintos sectores.

A través de nuestros 22 años de experiencia, Ateknea Solutions siempre ha sido el aliado ideal para distintos proyectos innovadores que buscan financiación pública y/o privada en Europa. En este sentido, nuestra experiencia radica principalmente en  estudios de viabilidad, modelos de negocios, tecnologías de innovación y desarrollo de planes de marketing para distintas Pymes europeas dentro de diversos campos de la ingeniería e innovación.

¿Quieres conocer más sobre el programa Enisa? No dejes de visitar su web oficial y no olvides contactarnos para ser tu referente y asesor en tu camino al emprendimiento.

What to know about the new EIC pilot guidelines

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The European Commission’s Horizon2020 programme that funds research and innovation to reduce the time to market for bright idea will soon be coming to an end.  The Commission has recently announced information on the work programme for 2019-2020, Enhanced European Innovation Council pilot to test new funding schemes (official guidelines available here). The pilots will provide financial allocation of €2.2 billion (€1.0 billion in 2019; €1.2 billion in 2020) including a number of already existing instruments and some novelties that will anticipate the Horizon Europe 2021-2027 Programme.

The pilot is composed of two new schemes: the EIC Pathfinder pilot and the EIC Accelerator pilot. The Commission is scrapping the SME Instrument phase 1 and rebrand it as the EIC Pathfinder pilot, which will support collaborative research projects aiming at developing radical and innovative technologies. The last call deadline under the current phase 1 guidelines will be September 5th, 2019.

The SME Instrument phase 2 program will re-emerge as the Accelerator Pilot and be dedicated to SMEs and start-ups with a radically new, highly risky, and thus, non-bankable idea underpinned by a potential to scale up and business plan to roll out marketable innovation solutions.

What’s new with the Accelerator Pilot for grants and blended finance?

Whereas in the older version of the funding instrument, the Impact criteria was given 50% of the application’s weight under the EIC Pilot guidelines, each evaluation criterion will have equal weight:  33% Impact, 33% Excellence, and 33% Implementation.

If the innovator requests the equity component within the Accelerator scheme, they will be subject to due diligence.  There will be a 3-month time-to-inform and a 6-month time-to-grant for grants, while equity applicants will be given more time.

The Commission’s guidelines for submission now include two new sections. In Document 3 applicants will provide financial and corporate information in a spreadsheet following a specific template, which will be evaluated for financial need and role of EIC support.  Document 4, will be the applicant’s pitch deck, a high-level overview of various aspects of the proposal for the evaluators.  If invited to an interview, applicants will use the document provided in Document 4 with no possibility of updating information.

The evaluation panel will be comprised of a team of experts in the fields of technology, business and finance.  There are 3 possible outcomes: “go”, “no go” and “change into blended finance”.

The grant-only finance scheme is targeted at SMEs with innovative projects in the development phase with a project that is not bankable or attractive for private investment.  The blended finance scheme awards up to €100 million in equity in addition to the grant. SMEs can request up to €17.5 million (2.5 million in grant + €15 million in equity). It will be available to innovative SMEs with an innovative idea at the early commercial stage of development (TRL 6) and potential to scale up.  Projects funded under the blended-finance scheme are subject to due diligence, which will mainly focus on evaluating compliance and risk level. The Commission will use the outcome of the due diligence to substantiate its final investment decision and to match investors with sufficient elements to take an informed decision so as to tailor the monitoring of the grant and equity to the particular features and situation of the company.

As per established protocol, proposals are assigned to expert-evaluators using keywords to maximise the affinity between the content of the proposal and evaluator profiles. A revised set of 15 keywords has been published and includes:

  • Agriculture / Rural Development / Fisheries
  • Biotechnology
  • Construction and Transport
  • Consumer Products and Services
  • Cultural and Creative Economy
  • Earth and Related Environmental Sciences
  • Energy
  • Engineering and Technology
  • Finance
  • Food and Beverages
  • Health
  • Information and Communication Technology
  • Public Sector Innovation
  • Security
  • Space

For a complete list of main keyword nomenclature and sub-keywords can be found using the following link:

The Ambrosia project: Aquaporin A/S visits Ateknea

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At Ateknea, we have had the opportunity to welcome Yunfeng Li and Jan Benecke from AQUAPORIN A/S at our premises to deliver them the test bench that our team has developed over the past few months.

Within the framework of SME Instrument phase 2, project AMBROSIA, our experts have designed and built-up a professional test-skid for wastewater treatment membranes. This test-skid will allow our clients assess the performance of their products under different working conditions.

Our engineers performed a training session with the AQUAPORIN team in order to introduce them to the overall functionality of the test bench, including the execution of many tests and runs of the whole process to reach client´s acceptance.

Well done AMBROSIA team!

Ateknea Fibership European funding

Ateknea x FIBRESHIP: the future of the European shipbuilding industry

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Ateknea is pleased to be part of a European consortium of 18 partners from 11 countries behind FIBRESHIP an ambitious innovation project that will develop a new market focused on the integral construction of large length ships in composite materials, a breakthrough for the shipbuilding and shipping industry.

 

 

FIBRESHIP will improve the competetiveness of the European shipping stakeholders in the global market and become a seed project with enormous potential to transform the whole maritime European industry. The consortium aims at developing the technology to enable the building of the complete hull and superstructure of large length ships in fibre-reinforced plastic (FRP) materials.

The project will concentrate its activity on three vessel categories identified as the most promising for market uptaking: light commercial ships, passenger transport ships and special service vessels. FIBRESHIP will fully demonstrate the developed solutions on a partial prototype to be built by the second part of the project, by improving the efficiency of vessels with beneficial impacts on industrial, economic, social, and environmental aspects.

The project will bring together an outstanding partnership representing the European shipbuilding and shipping industry of an international consortium with 18 organisations out of 11 countries. This is one of the most ambitious and highly valued projects so far funded by the European Union’s H2020 programme and has a total budget of 11 million EUR.

Horizon Europe: €100 billion towards a better future

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The new EU Commission budget is here. For Horizon Europe, the Commission has proposed €100 billion for Research and Innovation in the next long-term EU budget, 2021-2027.

Announcing the new budget, Carlos Moedas, the Commissioner for Research, Science, and Innovation, said: “Horizon 2020 is one of Europe’s biggest success stories. The new Horizon Europe programme aims even higher.”

Horizon Europe funding

The development of EU R&I funding through the years

With the newly proposed funding, which has increased from €77 billion from the previous period, the Commission plans “to strengthen the EU’s global scientific leadership, and re-engage citizens by setting ambitious new missions for EU research,” said Moedas.

Horizon Europe is to be implemented through three pillars:

Horizon Europe

Here at Ateknea we are delighted to see the EU’s continued commitment to developing a more environmentally-friendly society, boosting job creation and growth, and strengthening the EU’s global scientific leadership while improving people’s daily lives through Research and Innovation.

We look forward to contributing to the creation of a better future, continuing to help innovative, revolutionary ideas become market-ready solutions that can have an impact on the society of tomorrow.

To see more about the Horizon Europe budget, click here.

Ateknea and LEDMOTIVE work on the final development of ELLIOT

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After being approved for Phase 2 SME instrument funding last January 2017, the LEDMOTIVE team has been working with Ateknea’s engineering team to develop the final stage of the ELLIOT project. Last week, both teams took part in a demonstration session to improve the design of the communications unit and the cloud software development of the EU funded project.

ELLIOT is an EU funded technology that is being developed to be able to reproduce any light spectrum for the professional lighting industry (research, art, and health) based on LED luminaires. The objective of the project is to develop an ecosystem of interconnected and standardized products for the mass market that allows outstanding lighting quality while minimizing energy consumption.

The system consists of a family of products that include:

  • A light source able to record, process, and playback light spectral fingerprints in real-time, regardless of whether they are natural, artificial, or custom-made for different applications.
  • A web-based system that allows the interaction between end-users and light sources.

Our team is participating in two main elements:

  • Design of the communications units: Ateknea is designing and developing a set of communication options in separate small modules connected to the LED modules.
  • Cloud Software Development: Ateknea is developing the cloud platform that allows users to join the LEDMOTIVE community, remotely control the LED lamps, and manage all possible configurations related to them.

With these improvements of the ELLIOT project, LEDMOTIVE has been working on a solution that meets the needs it set out to achieve, allowing an increase in energy efficiency in the lighting industry. With Ateknea’s support, the project is set to reach its final stage very soon!

 

Restb.ai is approved for SME Instrument Phase 2 funding!

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Last week, the European Innovation Council released the latest results of the SME Instrument, delivering some excellent and exciting news: with Ateknea’s help, Restb.ai has been approved by the European Commission for Phase 2 funding!

The project selected to receive funding is CV4RE (Computer Vision for Real Estate), an AI image-tagging AI tool designed to automatically identify the different categories and features of a home (fireplace, hardwood floors, etc.) from large volumes of listings images, with 99% accuracy. This revolutionary (and proprietary) proptech was designed by Restb’s talented team specifically for Real Estate companies, and trained on over 10 million images to describe photos with an expert eye.

 

The benefits are widespread for both buyers and sellers in the Real Estate sector, providing precisely categorized information about database images, allowing potential customers to more effectively search for their future homes, and Real Estate companies to attract, engage, and convert more (and happier) buyers, as well as allowing screen readers to describe critical visual content to the visually impaired.

With the SME Instrument EU funding they will now improve their products and develop new ones to accelerate the adoption of their solutions by the market, working with Ateknea’s experienced team of engineers to bring this disruptive and sector-altering innovation to the European market and beyond!

 

Lightkey and Ateknea’s collaboration comes to a successful close

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Lightkey, which was approved for Phase 2 SME Instrument funding by the European Commission in June 2016, is a technological solution designed for hotels, resorts, and offices that allows users to access their rooms with a specifically encoded LED light, and without the need for any hotel or office personnel.

Created by Lightbee, the Lightkey system is one of the first solutions that allows secure and scalable access without any of the drawbacks of the currently available mobile access solutions. Like all the best innovations, it is simple yet brilliant. Users access their VLC (Visible Light Communication) which they are sent via a mobile app. Once activated, each user’s particular LED will allow them to securely enter their rooms.

Here at Ateknea we are proud of our work to develop this technology. With the SME Instrument funding our engineers completed a variety of tasks to make this project possible. They developed:

  • An Electronic Door Lock module that permits the reception of the VLC and allow users to open their doors
  • A standalone device to send master Lightkeys
  • A mobile app (for Android and iOS) that sends the Lightkeys to the module
  • A security concept implemented in the server to manage the Lightkeys of each user and which is connected to the mobile app and the door lock.

SME Instrument funded project

Research and Innovation engineers

 

It’s a perfect solution to a complex logistical problem: increasing security, ease-of-use, and reducing costs.

We look forward to seeing what is next for Lightbee and Lightkey!

 

New Born Solutions & Ateknea: EU funding success!

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New Born Solutions and Ateknea Solutions work together to democratize healthcare in Europe, with EU funding.

Great news from Brussels! We are happy to announce that New Born Solutions, a Barcelona-based startup dedicated to saving lives and democratizing healthcare via cost-effective technology that detects superficial body fluid infections without needles, has been approved for SME Instrument Phase 1 EU funding.

With the help of Ateknea’s H2020 expertise, New Born Solutions’ latest development, Neosonics, the first non-invasive screening device designed to early detection and monitoring infant meningitis, has received €50,000 in EU funding after the European Commission gave their technology the go-ahead in late April.

The Neosonics solution is innovative, simple, and revolutionary.  

There are an estimated 165 million infants at risk of meningitis each year.

Where current practice dictates that a white blood cell count be taken from a child’s spinal fluid through a lumbar puncture (which immediately triggers the need for more medication irrespective of the diagnostic results), Neosonics uses high-resolution ultrasound to non-invasively count the white blood cell in the cerebrospinal fluid below the infant’s fontanel, the region of the head where the bones are not yet closed.

It means an early diagnosis can be quickly made in a cost-effective and non-invasive way, decreasing current complications to rule out the disease in industrialized countries and infant mortality rates, especially in developing countries. By enabling early and non-invasive detection, it could vastly reduce the amount of patients with life-long disabilities and provide quantitative and reliable data for monitoring patients’ treatment response.

We at Ateknea are excited to continue working with New Born Solutions, and to see Neosonics through to the market.

Ateknea helps Is It Fresh to revolutionise the food logistics sector with EU funding

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Did you know that an average of 180kg of food is wasted per person per year in the EU? Or that a third of the food produced globally goes to waste? A large part of this figure can be attributed to the misconception that food is spoiled when it reaches its expiration date. Since 2011, Is It Fresh has been working to create wireless sensor technology that can measure actual product freshness in real time. With Ateknea’s help, they have been approved for Phase 2 level EU funding from the Horizon 2020 SME Instrument programme.

The start-up has developed technology that combines the methods of printed electronics, functional inks, and roll-to-roll manufacturing to come up with a sophisticated tag for a cost of less than 1 cent. It is cheap enough to be integrated into every type of food packaging and can wirelessly deliver information about the origin, freshness, and remaining life of the product inside. Thanks to the EU funding, this could allow the whole food supply chain to both track products with a unique ID and measure their actual freshness in real time, making informed decisions at every stage and vastly reducing food waste.

The technology will allow for more efficient – and more environmentally friendly – processing at every stage of the food value chain, from manufacturing to logistics, to retail, to consumer, with the potential for wide-ranging and significant improvements to the way in which we produce, distribute, and effectively manage food at a global scale.

EU funding for Is It Fresh

 Ateknea worked with Is It Fresh to:

  • Prepare the documentation that helped Is It Fresh to achieve approval for Phase 2 EU funding from the EU’s Horizon 2020 SME Instrument programme.

And will now focus on the technological development of the project:

  • Delivering the source code and deploying a working system for the monitoring tool.
  • Providing an integrated and working Visual Inspection Tool able to detect any defects in the printed tags that could exclude them from being functional. This can include holes in a layer, dust particles, discontinuities, etc. The Visual Inspection Tool will be able to decide whether the tags must be discarded due to detected errors or, if the errors affect a non-critical area, they can still be used.

Ateknea and Is It Fresh will now work together on the development of the tool as well as its journey to market.