Friday, 3/31/2023
The XVI National Championship Start Up
Programme (SUP), organized by Junior Achievement Portugal, which took place on
March 24th, 2023, in Cascais, awarded this year two prizes to students from the
University of Minho - the Communication Prize awarded to a team oriented by
Professor Nuno Marques, under the scope of the Curricular Unit of Principles of
Entrepreneurship; and the Ready to Grow Prize awarded to a team also oriented by
Professor Nuno Marques together with Professor Elisabete Sá, under the scope of
the Curricular Unit of Introduction to Entrepreneurship.
The Communication prize, an award sponsored by
the company REM, aims to reward the most influential and persuasive
presentations at the event. The winning team, composed by the students Bárbara
Silva, Beatriz Araújo, Carolina Costa, Diogo Silva, Joana Balão, and Nuno
Silva, developed the ODER project, which consists in a solution to improve the
quality of life of people with visual impairment, specifically, glasses that
use ultrasound technology to identify objects above the waist and integrates
with a mobile phone application, with several features, such as a GPS system
(to locate the person), which produces audio description of places and has the
possibility to include audio content of tourist places and places of interest
(among others). The project was developed with the collaboration of Association
of the Blind and Visually Impaired of Portugal (Associação dos Cegos e
Amblíopes de Portugal ACAPO), which provided several members to participate
in the market study and share difficulties and needs, as well as identify
opportunities for improvement in existing products. This contribution was very
relevant for the development of the new product and the team would like to
publicly thank them.
These students consider that the Start Up
Programme (SUP) project was a very enriching experience. These students will
now have the opportunity to do an internship and are very proud of the project,
as they have put their skills to the test, which has greatly increased their
competences.
The Ready to Grow Prize, an award which aims
to reward the maturity and depth of projects and is sponsored by the José de
Mello Group, was awarded to the team, made up of students Henrique Sousa, Hugo
Afonso, Leonardo Durão, Lucas Falcão and Santiago Cote, who developed the
Salisolutions Project.
This team has developed a solution to a problem
arising from the desalination of seawater as a method of obtaining drinking
water. The SaliSolutions project consists of reusing brine to grow two
salinity-tolerant and commercially valuable species, specifically microalgae
and salicornia (an edible, salty, healthy plant that can replace salt).
The students applied their biology,
sustainability and business knowledge to develop and commercially evaluate a
solution in which the two species are integrated into a sequential remediation
system that will gradually remove salts from the brines and make them safe to
be disposed of back into the sea or even reused for other purposes, in a
circular economy approach. Additionally, it has yet another positive
contribution to the environment, as microalgae and glasswort absorb carbon
dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. A project that contributes
to several of the UN's sustainable development goals.
The team believes that the "Ready to
Grow" award from the José de Mello Group, a group with which they share
values, fits in well with what they were looking for at this stage, as it now
allows them to have access to monitoring by the group's specialised human
resources, to research and plan, how they can develop the idea and move from
"paper to practice".
The startup programme (JA) is a project that
aims to help higher education students to create a company and identify
entrepreneurial opportunities. Through pedagogical simulation techniques,
students plan a company and defend a project before a demanding panel made up
of executives from renowned companies.
Junior Achievement is a global, non-profit
organisation, founded in 1919 in the United States of America and present in
over 100 countries, aimed at promoting youth entrepreneurship and training
young people to become the entrepreneurs and leaders of the future. In the year
2022 it was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The School of Economics and Management
congratulates the EEG students and the teachers Nuno Marques and Elisabete Sá
for this distinction!
Gabinete de Comunicação
Escola de Economia e Gestão
Universidade do Minho
Telefone: 253 604541
Email: gci@eeg.uminho.pt
