What does entrepreneurship have to do with fundamental research?
CERN is renowned for its world class particle physics research and important scientific discoveries like the Higgs Boson. In the pursuit of its fundamental research mission, CERN has often had to develop innovative technologies, which in turn have been used to create many new products and services across areas as diverse as library management, solar collectors, medical and biomedical technologies, aerospace applications, safety processes, the environment and others, through established companies or start-ups.
Promoting high-tech entrepreneurship to a younger generation is a natural evolution of the innovative activities that are already taking place at CERN. The CERN Entrepreneurship Student Programme - CESP- is aimed at master's level students and builds on CERN's scientific expertise and knowledge, assigning a technological dimension to their entrepreneurship training and education.
CESP will bring together graduate students from all around the globe for a 5-week practical and theoretical training at CERN, to take place during the summer. Step-by-step, students will Explore - Evaluate - Exploit, under the supervision and coaching of CERN experts. They will be given the opportunity to behave as entrepreneurs during their residency at CERN; they will move from theory to practice and will actually work on identifying potential new technologies, assessing their commercial potential, developing a business plan for their exploitation and even a product prototype if applicable. Our goal is to see the first CESP take place in summer 2018, but if this is to be achieved we will need sufficient external funding.
Young entrepreneurs are vital to the future of any nation’s economy. Simply creating opportunities for business endeavours is not always enough. Young people need to be well-trained, well-equipped and confident to seize them. Our ambition is to help them by enriching their entrepreneurial skillset and giving them the confidence to become entrepreneurs in the future, ideally boosting high-tech venture creation.
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