PhD student of the Energy for Sustainability Initiative wins second place in a program developed by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) - Food

Fernando Caixeta Lisboa, a Ph.D. student of the Sustainable Energy Systems program of the Energy for Sustainability initiative, won second place, and € 2500.00 prize, in the Global Food Venture Program, promoted by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) - Food, with the WEF (Water-Energy-Food) Agro tool project.

The Global Food Venture Program aims to provide training and insights for an innovation and partnership ecosystem focused on food processing and agriculture across Europe. This year, in June, the program started at a summer school in Madrid - Spain. In July, a pre-incubation Bootcamp was held in Lausanne - Switzerland. In October, there was an International Bootcamp in San Francisco, US. Having its ending at the Global Food Venture Final Pitch Event in November in the city of Lisbon.

The WEFAgro tool project derives from the Ph.D. project supervised by Professor Pedro Saraiva and Professor Fausto Freire. The project aims to build a platform for Sustainability and Efficiency in the Quality Management system for agro-industrial companies. Through the use of Business Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence systems, the platform will encourage the sustainability of the productive transformation processes through the reduction of water and energy consumption, as well as promoting the reduction of the waste of agribusiness raw materials.

The business idea was initially supported by the International Workshop on Innovating promoted by MIT in June 2018 and the Explorer Business Ideas Accelerator Program, integrated with the University of Coimbra (February to July 2019).

It is currently incubated at HIESE - Business Innovation Habitat in the Strategic Sectors in Penela (rural-based incubator managed by the IPN - Pedro Nunes Institute) and is supported by the CETEIS - Trans-boundary Centers for Innovative Entrepreneur. Besides, the project is financially supported by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) of Brazil.