Following the footsteps the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, the University of Szeged is the second university in Hungary, and the first outside Budapest, to join Demola, the international innovation network, as part of the university’s “Virtus” Enterprise Catalyst Programme. Demola has been around in Hungary since 2012 and will establish its first Central-Eastern European hub in Budapest.
After the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME), the University of Szeged (USZ) has also joined the Finland-based Demola international innovation network as the second Hungarian university. The aim of Demola is to support collaboration between university students and companies and to create a community that works with creative ideas and methods to solve real market problems, be it IT, engineering, business, marketing, design or social.
The Szeged centre will operate similarly to that of Budapest: each semester the industrial partners come up with various industrial or business problems and the university recruits students who will work jointly with the top representatives of the companies and the Demola facilitators for 8 weeks to solve the problems.
Demola’s operation in Szeged will start in the second half of April, with two domestic companies in the first round: the university will work together with Univer Product Zrt. and Transmoduls Kft. on industrial issues, but in the long run they will not take only local companies into consideration.
In addition to Hungary, Demola is present in 15 other countries (Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Japan, Spain, France, Lithuania, Latvia, Portugal, Slovenia, China, Mexico, South Africa, Namibia) and welcomes over 50 universities among its members.
The cooperation with the USZ is not the only breaking news at Demola in Hungary: as a result of the development in Hungary, Demola Global has decided to establish its Central-Eastern European hub in Budapest later this year.
We at Forbes.hu have also reported of several startups that emerged from Demola: Diabtrend would help diabetes patients by predicting how the blood sugar level of the user will develop in the next few hours, while Miutcánk (OurStreet) is a community building platform designed to bring together residents of the same neighbourhood.
