OREANDA-NEWS. February 05, 2014. SEB and University of Tartu will sign a cooperation agreement creating the Vega Fund. Through this novel grants fund for students and researchers at Estonia’s institutions of higher education, SEB Pank will be funding the introduction of knowledge-intensive solutions into everyday use with EUR 150,000 over three years.

According to Kalev Kaarna, Head of Idea Lab at the University of Tartu, many high-potential research results of researchers and students remain unused, never make it to functioning prototypes, and find no application in the everyday life, as research groups lack the funds needed for completing their development. “Often, it is just a small cash injection that is missing for conducting tests and converting research results into a form comprehensible to an entrepreneur or customer,” Kaarna described the gap the Vega Fund has been set up to fill.

“That said, Estonian entrepreneurs often source new ideas from abroad, even though our researchers, too, have ideas that enterprising spirit could introduce into everyday life. For the past seven years, SEB, with its Ajujaht (Brain Hunt) programme, has been seeing to it that there is more entrepreneurial spirit in Estonia; now we, in parallel, also wish to contribute to ensure that our enterprising spirit is backed up by worthy substance,” Riho Unt, Chairman of the Management Board at SEB, laid out the reasons for the need to establish the Vega Fund and the decision to chip in for student projects. “The constitution of the Vega Fund collaboratively with the University of Tartu is an important step in bringing the knowledge tucked away at institutions of higher education into practice and in strengthening the position of Estonian businesses in the face of global competition,” Unt added.

Whereas in interdisciplinary teams at Idea Lab at the University of Tartu, students from all faculties can think up brilliant solutions to practical problems and develop idea concepts and prototypes on paper, the newly created Vega Fund will enable the progression of something being on paper to being implemented.

“The Vega Fund is the first funding facility set up for the implementation of innovative ideas based on students’ specialist knowledge to support both exciting ideas in their early stages and more mature development projects which might interest the business community,” explained Kaarna, who will be coordinating competitions at the Vega Fund. “Grants may be sought for building prototypes, developing knowledge-intensive services, and assembling a new team in order to assist Estonian researchers in taking their research results to the market as a business idea.”

Unlike other funding schemes of a similar nature, the Vega Fund is be open to projects from all fields and imposes no constraints with respect to the project budget. Applications to this funding facility may be submitted in the categories of small development projects, large development projects, and new teams, with students and researchers from other institutions of higher education also eligible to apply alongside those from the University of Tartu. An application will be evaluated by a panel of seven experts based on the novelty of the solution, capability of the team, and the degree to which the business model has been thought through.

Development project competitions will be held twice a year, with applications under the first call for proposals being accepted from 23 January through 1 March. Grants for creating a new team may be sought by students on an individual basis. Team grants are awarded once a year; this year, the deadline for submitting applications is 1 March.

The formal launch event for the Vega Fund will be held from 11am on 23 January, in the atrium on Level 4 of the SEB headquarters (Tornimae 2, Tallinn), with researchers and student teams from the University of Tartu presenting their most innovative inventions and demonstrating how businesses might benefit from them.