The big winners of the 2022 edition of the Best Business Idea Award: Go Green Go Social of NOVA FCSH in partnership with Santander Universities, were announced on December 13. First place was awarded by the jury to CarBio-Solo, which received a cash prize of 2,500€. The second and third places were awarded to Green Phoenix and IMA - Inventory of Support Materials, respectively.
As in previous years, the award aims to stimulate the creation of new business ideas based on sustainability principles within the Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, among students, graduates, faculty, staff or researchers of the University.
Innovation and entrepreneurship are part of the NOVA culture, being promoted within the ecosystem of the University to foster knowledge transfer and to transform research results into social and economic value.
As an agent of transformation, NOVA intends to contribute to the UN's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
The winners were announced during the Final Pitch, the third and last stage of the Prize, before a jury composed by Rui Pedro Julião, Sub-Director of NOVA FCSH for Innovation, Value Creation and Campus Development, João Seixas, Pro-Rector of NOVA University Lisbon for the area of Socio-Territorial Innovation, Susana Galvão, representative of Santander Universities, Eduardo Graça, President of the Board of CASES - António Sérgio Cooperative for Social Economy and João Batista, Co-founder & Creative Director of The Agency, as representative of the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem.
About the winning project
1st Place: CarBio-Solo
CarBio-Solo was born in early 2021 by the hand of three Masters students at NOVA University of Lisbon: Henrique Cerqueira, student of Environment and Natural Resources at NOVA FCSH, Carlos Álvaro specialized in Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems also at NOVA FCSH and Pedro Carvalho graduated in Management at NOVA SBE. Meanwhile the team has changed to include Tomás Machado, former student of NOVA FCSH and currently employed at the company HP Drones, and Sérgio Prazeres, also a former student of NOVA FCSH and manager of the company The Use Concept.
The idea has its genesis in the Master's dissertation "Carbon Sequestration in Soil - Mitigation of Climate Change in Mediterranean Ecosystems", but could only be realized thanks to the integration of Geographic Information Systems technology and notions of Economics and Management that complement the team. Under the motto "Burying the Carbon, Unearthing the Future", the project seeks to bring transparency, verifiability, and monitoring that the participants consider lacking in traditional carbon offset schemes.
The project's scheme is subdivided into three distinct products aimed at different individual, corporate, and public clients. The focal point is carbon capture and sequestration, offering the market a way to mitigate their carbon footprint in a transparent, additional, and fair way.
The project won first place in the 2022 edition and a cash prize of 2,500€ for its development.