The first Innovation course organized by HiLumi and FCC in collaboration with CERN Knowledge Transfer group and IdeaSquare took place on January 31 and February 1, 2018 at IdeaSquare. Twenty students and young professionals interested in innovation and entrepreneurship from HiLumi and FCC projects took part in the two-day course and will continue working on their ideas in the coming few weeks.

During the two days, the participants gained insight into established innovation practices, knowledge transfer opportunities and different applications of CERN technologies from presentations given by the IdeaSquare team and visiting presenters. Giovanni Anelli from KT talked about how CERN technologies have turned into applications that benefit society in sectors such as medicine, safety and environment, as well as the innovation opportunities offered by KT. Philipp Topic from Vienna University of Economics and Business presented Technological Competence Leveraging, a systematic proactive and crowdsourcing-based method to identify new application fields for technologies, whereas Marcello Losasso presented the QUACO project as a case example of a PCP, a tool to boost innovation and to attract potential industrial partners. Moreover, Laure Esteveny talked about the CERN Alumni network activities, and the IdeaSquare and KT student programs were presented.

The students were encouraged to bring their own innovation topics to the course, and those who had one, had the chance to display it in an elevator pitch on both days. Using the knowledge and tools introduced during the course, the students then worked in three groups, developing and refining their ideas. During the group sessions, some ideas were abandoned, and at the end, 10 ideas that the participants found the most interesting and for which they had developed a plan were once more presented. As it was predefined that there would be three groups in the end each with one topic to work on, a two-round vote was organized to select the three final ideas. The vote was clear and the three most popular topics easily found. Each person selected the group they wanted to be part of, and these groups will develop their ideas with expert support during the next weeks. The results will be presented in an award ceremony to an invited audience on March 21.