Science and business: the Golinelli Foundation launches ReActor

The Golinelli Foundation of Bologna launches the first and only school of entrepreneurship and innovation: it's called ReActor - Already ready 13 teams with researchers between 25 and 35 years old, mostly women

The image of the scientist in a white coat, immersed in a laboratory full of smoking test tubes and with his hair tousled on his head is a bit dated, but the one in a suit and tie or on 12 heels, at the head of a board of directors or at follow the Wall Street quotes, still stride. Yet science and business are often made for each other and the Golinelli Foundation of Bologna has wanted to celebrate their marriage for years. The new step in this direction is called ReActor and is the first and only Italian school of entrepreneurship and innovation entirely intended for scientists eager to bring the fruits of their efforts to market.

The initiative is already in the starting blocks, with the identification of 13 teams that will take part in the first course. The teams are made up of researchers between the ages of 25 and 35, chosen from around ninety and coming from the initiative's four scientific partners: the University of Bologna, the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, the CNR Bologna and the Rizzoli Orthopedic Institute. Most are women, specialized in various fields: materials science, photonics, artificial intelligence, molecular biology and robotics.

Many groups are formed by scientists who have been collaborating for years on international research projects, with a very high level of scientific competence supported by dozens of publications in international journals, which, for the first time, are grappling with the entrepreneurial challenge of technology transfer.

The Golinelli Foundation, with an investment of one hundred thousand euros, through ReActor, will facilitate the integration between this frontier research and the market, in the belief that the science-entrepreneurship union represents one of the most powerful innovation engines of the country system. Help will also come from various industrial and institutional partners, including Fondazione del Monte, Banca di Bologna, Imperial Fashion, Bio-On.

“The territories that are able to compete internationally today have some characteristics in common – he explains Antonio Danieli, general director of the Golinelli Foundation – first of all a relevant demographic dimension: innovation is made and competition is made between groups of 15-20 million inhabitants, whether they are cities, agglomerations of cities, regions or macro-regions. Then a qualitatively and quantitatively high density of the labor market, possible only with the presence of important research centers and universities”. Therefore “a continuous, recurring and osmotic link is needed with other territories of excellence at an international level. This is the premise of the Golinelli Foundation's commitment to the ReActor project, a link in the virtuous training chain dedicated to promoting the development of an entrepreneurial culture in young people and stimulating their initiative. After the Giardino delle Imprese, designed for students in the last years of secondary schools, Icaro higher education for university students, ReActor is the final point before the last step of incubation-acceleration represented by G-Factor" .

ReActor – he says Simone Ferriani, scientific director of the programme – will feed the training path of the participants “through a very original mix: lectures, field work, comparison with established scientist-entrepreneurs, individual coaching and a training period in international entrepreneurial ecosystems, in Silicon Valley and in North America, as well as in London, all completely free for selected teams”.

The 13 lucky (but in this case especially good) groups are: