This spring, Beata Filipek-Gorniok from the Department of organismal biology will work together with a mentor to develop DanioReadout, a zebrafish model system-based service platform, for commercial use. Photo: Tiffany Klingström.

2022-01-27

14 researchers join UU Innovation's mentor program

The UU Innovation mentor program of spring 2022 is now up and running. At the kick off on 24 January, all participating researchers met their mentors on Zoom, marking the beginning of a six-month collaboration.

In the UU Innovation mentor program, researchers from Uppsala University who want to create impact with their research results are matched with experienced mentors from outside academia. The mentors will bring new perspectives on ideas and the applications of research findings in business and society, and create new networking opportunities. The researcher will receive coaching from UU Innovation’s advisors during the course of the program and the mentor serves as extra support.

“The heart of the program is the personal dialogue between the researcher and mentor. We seek out and hand pick a mentor who can best support the development of each researcher’s idea and it’s amazing that so many want to contribute with their time and expertise to innovators from Uppsala University,” says Nhils Forslund, Advisor at UU Innovation and Program Head along with colleague Hillevi Englund.

Research and innovative ideas in many areas

Uppsala University is a broad research university with great innovative power. This is reflected among the participants in this spring's mentor program who come from ten different departments across the University’s three disciplinary domains. Among the 14 participants are researchers in, for example, medical genetics, cultural anthropology, and Russian studies.

One of the participants in the program is Beata Filipek-Gorniok at the Department of Organismal Biology. For the past five years, she has been working at the Genome Engineering Zebrafish infrastructure unit within SciLifeLab.

“We have recently begun to investigate the commercial potential of the services that the unit currently offers researchers nationally. We have extensive experience of providing our services in the academic environment and believe that they have the potential to be very useful in industry as well. For that purpose we have developed the DanioReadout service platform. This program is a great opportunity to shape the idea to turn it into the best possible value proposition and business model.”

Beata Filipek-Gorniok hopes that her mentor can contribute with a sharp business-oriented perspective on the DanioReadout platform as well as relevant contacts with potential users outside academia.

“I’m very happy to be a part of this program and really look forward to also getting to know all the participants and learn more about their innovative ideas,” says Beata Filipek-Gorniok.

Sara Gredemark

Interested in the UU Innovation mentor program?

The next application period to the UU Innovation mentor program opens on 15 March. The program is open to researchers and PhD students from all disciplinary domains who have a research-based idea that has the potential to create value in society. Get in touch with UU Innovation now if you need help with identifying what innovative ideas you create in your research. That will give you a better chance of getting accepted to the program.

Learn more about the UU Innovation mentor program

Program participants

These are all participants in the UU Innovation mentor program in the spring of 2022:

Anish Behere, Department of Public Health and Caring Sciences
Matthew Blackburn, Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies
Daniel Camsund, Department of Cell and Molecular Biology
Jordi Carreras-Puigvert, Department of Pharmaceutical Biosciences
Beata Filipek-Gorniok, Department of Organismal Biology
Josefin Johansson, Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology
Nikolaos Kavalopoulos, Department of Medical Biochemistry and Microbiology
Liza Löf, Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology
Chris Meyns, Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology
Helga Müllneritsch, Department of Modern Languages
Johanna Ohlsson, Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies
Elena Raffetti, Department of Earth Sciences
Emil Rosén, Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology
Leonie Wenson, Department of Pharmaceutical Biosciences

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