Famalicão's Centre for Research, Innovation and Higher Education (CIIES), in Vale São Cosme, is to be redeveloped into the Famalicão IN Hub. The future of CIIES was revealed this Friday, 21 June, on the last day of the Innovation and Science Week organised by the Famalicão municipality.
With the requalification and adaptation of the current space and this new concept, the municipality is designing a structure of excellence for the future of research and innovation development in the municipality, with doors open to higher education institutions, non-business entities in the Research and Innovation system, spin-offs and technological start-ups, interface institutions between universities and companies and institutions with a high level of scientific and technological knowledge.
"We want to integrate all the research and innovation agents into this new space so that the territory is increasingly a generator of knowledge and, in this way, a generator of wealth," explained mayor Mário Passos.
With the Famalicão IN HUB, the municipality intends to create a reference campus for research aimed at companies in the manufacturing industry, complement and valorise the capacity installed in the territory, strengthening the local innovation ecosystem and attracting entities from the scientific and technological system, startups and spin-offs, creating all the conditions to work together and produce knowledge that is transferred from universities and research units to the business fabric.
It should be remembered that CIIES, which currently brings together a group of entities such as the University of Minho, IPCA and TECMEAT, with a total of 13 laboratories and 137 researchers, has been an important centre for implementing the strategy "from Made IN Famalicão to Created IN Famalicão", which underpins Vila Nova de Famalicão's position as the European Entrepreneurial Region 2024.
At Friday's ceremony, the President of the National Innovation Agency (ANI), António Grilo, praised the municipality's "comprehensive and complete" strategy, "which demonstrates its vision of what innovation development is, that it is not resigned to its position and that it is planning for the future".