2022 KIC's activities Innovation, Business Creation, Education Governance and Outreach, HEI

The food system is facing great challenges in feeding a growing population with sustainable, safe and healthy food with trust and fairness. Universities have a responsibility to work in partnership with government, industry, and society to tackle and provide solutions for our food system. Thus, QUB partnered with EIT Food, a large pan-European competency centre funded by Horizon Europe and bringing together over 100 of Europe’s leading agrifood companies, research institutes, universities and startups to guide and accelerate the innovation process that will transform the food system.

In partnership with EIT Food, QUB delivered innovation, education, business creation and strategic programmes.

EIT Food Roadmaps: QUB co-designed and published two roadmaps with academic and industry partners for A Net Zero Food System; and a Fully Transparent, Resilient and Fair Food System which identified and responded to the areas of greatest need and where EIT Food can have significant and distinctive impact. These reports stretched beyond the boundaries of what EIT Food could do on their own and were published as a public call to action.

Education Programmes: QUB co-designed and delivered four courses to attract, develop and empower the food sector and its future talents and leaders. This included two advanced innovation and entrepreneurship training programmes to inspire participants to be at the forefront of innovation, and provide training for entrepreneurs on their startup journey; and two professional development courses: The AgTech Farmer’s Academy to educate and empower a new generation of farmers to adopt digital technologies that drive a resilient, sustainable and profitable food system; and a 2-day course on the Rapid detection of chemical contaminants in food.

Innovation Programmes: The Carbon Neutral project was delivered with six-partners to accelerate the journey to net zero agriculture production. It achieved this by identifying the greatest sources of greenhouse gases from livestock farming, using cutting edge technology to measure methane and demonstrate mitigation options and supporting farmers to lower their missions.

Business Creation Programmes: QUB delivered EIT Food’s Seedbed Incubator, a 6-month market discovery programme to support innovative and impactful entrepreneurs and startups to transform their disruptive technologies into market validate propositions.

EIT HEI Initiative: The EntreUnity project, led by QUB, built a network of entrepreneurial universities who reflect on societal challenges and provide scalable platforms for affecting transformative change, moving HEI’s away from the narrow research commercialisation perspective and opening up opportunities for local contextualised roles in the regional innovation ecosystem.