On Thursday the 4th, April 2019, CIVITTA partners delivered a business and science matchmaking event together with Vilnius Gediminas Technical University. The event officially started with an introduction by Margarita Prokopovič, a senior specialist from VGTU Knowledge and Technology Transfer Center. Additionally, a foreword was said by Antanas Čenys – a Vice-Rector for Research at VGTU. We had 45 participants in total (both scientists and business representatives). 3 scientists presented their success stories on collaborating with businesses, and we presented funding opportunities for business and science collaboration projects. The feedback we had from the businesses is that they were very interested in collaborating with scientists and that there’s a lack of such events so they were thankful. University representatives said that the number on scientists taking part in this event was exceptionally high when comparing to their usual events of such type.

Presentations were followed by face-to-face B2B matchmaking, where representatives had an opportunity to participate in group meetings with other participants based on field of interest or voluntarily discuss ideas on individual basis. Precise number of matchmaking meetings was slightly higher than planned due to interest of some attendants to discuss collaboration in both settings. Presentations and matchmaking part of the event were coordinated by VGTU and Civitta representatives.

See some photographs of the meetup here.