The IIT incubator aims to grow in weight

To create a new entrepreneurial ecosystem, initially in Liguria, but with the ambition of positioning itself as a new reference on a national scale. These are the objectives of H4e (Hub for entrepreneurship), the incubator set up in June 2023 at the Erzelli Science Park in Genoa, on the joint initiative of Invitalia and the Italian Institute of Technology.

It is a technology transfer laboratory and a place dedicated to entrepreneurship, to promote the exploitation of technologies and the birth of innovative start-ups. The first company set up is Genoa Instruments, active in high-resolution microscopy. The incubator is also connected to Raise (Robotics and Ai for socio-economic empowerment), a joint technology transfer initiative between Iit, the University of Genoa, the CNR and the Liguria Region, financed under the Pnrr funds, for the creation of an innovation ecosystem dedicated to artificial intelligence and robotics in Liguria. H4e has become the initiative's operational headquarters, thanks to the collaboration between Iit's project management hub and Raise staff.

During H4e's first year of operation, explain the institute, "training, acceleration and investment activities dedicated to Iit projects and start-ups have been undertaken. In addition, the new course of H4e is marked by a broadening of the vision and, in particular, a programme based on cycles of seminars and events is in place to communicate the incubator's activities also to the external community of local start-ups. And this serves to intensify the creation of professional interactions and the birth of a new entrepreneurial ecosystem that, initially, may be purely Ligurian but has the ambition of becoming a national reference point, strengthening the role of the incubator'. With this new set-up, H4e, which covers an area of around 1,500 square metres on a floor of the Iit Centre for Human Technology (Cht), divided into modular offices, meeting rooms and laboratories, aims to be a meeting place for science, industry and human capital, always with the target of transforming the innovation born in the laboratory into a concrete economic opportunity.

Meanwhile, the IIT is proceeding along that path outside the incubator as well. In recent weeks, for example, Iama Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical start-up set up within the institute for the discovery, development and commercialisation of new drugs for neurodevelopmental disorders, has launched a €15 million funding round (following the previous one, which had been for €12 million). This will enable the company to tackle the human trials phase of the drug candidate Iama-6, which is intended to improve conditions in, for example, the autism spectrum by enhancing social behaviour and reducing repetitive behaviour and the severity of potential cognitive deficits.