The Center for Advanced Materials and Technology CEZAMAT WUT hosted the finale of the “Engineers for the Society” Tech-Athon 2023 event on the weekend of May 26-28. The event was organized by the Doctoral School WUT, the Innovation Center WUT and CEZAMAT WUT.

Tech-Athon 2023 is an event where teams develop concepts for innovative technological solutions with implementation potential, and then consult their ideas with mentors and present in the form of pitching before a competition jury. Teams consist of doctoral students of the Warsaw University of Technology and invited guests. In this edition, the teams presented solutions in the fields of biomedical engineering, photonic technologies, cyber security and data analysis, and energy storage and conversion.

The Tech-Athon 2023 event was officially opened by Prof. Adam Woźniak, Vice-Rector for Development at Warsaw University of Technology. – I am very happy that so many doctoral students of our university have applied to participate in this event. At Warsaw University of Technology, we have many special programs that support innovation and startups. Tech-Athon is one such project. I wish all the teams fruitful work. – said Prof. Adam Wozniak.

The Tech-Athon was attended by 10 teams, which had the opportunity to consult their ideas with 27 mentors from the business and scientific community. Mentoring played an important role, enabling teams to develop their projects based on valuable practical guidance from experienced professionals in technology transfer and bringing scientific ideas to market. Teams were supported by the knowledge gained from the mentors, and then presented their projects to the jury and event participants.

The competition jury, composed of Prof. Mariusz Malinowski (chairman of the jury), Prof. Zbigniew Brzózka, Prof. Piotr Lesiak, Prof. Robert Olszewski, Prof. Agnieszka Skala-Gosk, Prof. Bartłomiej Ufnalski, decided to award five teams. The first place (ex aequo) went to the Pd Meds team and the QPI4MED team. These teams received a prize of PLN 80,000 for developmental research of their project. Third place belongs to the Hydrogenius team, which was awarded a prize of PLN 60,000. The jury also decided to award two honorable awards to the PulseLayers team and 3D Hand team, which will receive a prize of PLN 30,000. The prizes were funded under the “Excellence Initiative-Research University” project.

– I am extremely pleased that such events as Tech-Athon are held at Warsaw University of Technology. I congratulate all the teams, because all the presentations were very interesting, and I wish you further success – said Prof. Mariusz Malinowski, Vice-Rector for Science at Warsaw University of Technology, during the presentation of awards.

The winning teams now face hard work. The prizes won will allow the teams to continue further development of their projects, and we will be able to see the results of these efforts during Demo Day, which will be held in 2024.

Congratulations to all the winners and participants of Tech-Athon 2023! Your work and commitment are extremely inspiring. Thank you for co-creating this unique event and we wish you continued success with your projects.