PrintoCent InnoFest 2021 with a special focus on sustainability

We have always had a keen interest to produce material and energy efficient solutions. Now we would like to contribute to a world with less waste while improving the quality of life. Thus this year we challenge our innovators to go green i.e. think of solutions that will benefit from the frugal nature of printed solutions: while requiring less production resources also the end products are lighter, which makes them handy to ship and actually the entire product lifecycle becomes notably eco friendlier than with traditional manufacturing methods. The competition categories are the same as in previous years, yet this year we give extra points to teams that can incorporate sustainable elements to their solutions. Let’s be creative with green! 

We invite: Developers, designers, multidisciplinary innovators, startups, industry partners, brands, students, investors and media to learn more about printed intelligence and activities around PrintoCent. And while becoming more familiar with the printed opportunities we challenge you to ideate new solutions while exploiting printed intelligence and electronics.

To participate in the competition, you should have a novel idea and a skilled team. To support the competitors, we’ll provide world class technical experts from VTT, Oulu based universities, other research institutions and companies to guide you and to embrace the most potential aspects of your ideation. Moreover, if your team needs additional ideators, we’ll be happy to assign some fresh student powers from the University of Oulu and Oulu University of Applied Sciences to strengthen your team composition.

The key is to have an open mind with a desire to come up with the most splendid ideas and solutions. Event registrations is still open and from all the applications, the 20 teams will be selected on the basis of their idea: originality, feasibility & business potential.

Following the result proven InnoFest traditions, also this year’s event gives an opportunity for teams to compete for the 1st prize (1111 euros, technical support, business development and marketing support) and it offers a setting for selected companies to showcase their solutions.

Our motto is “Pay attention – ideas are around you” and PrintoCent InnoFest is especially looking to have innovative solutions in the following areas:

THE HONORABLE JURY IN 2021

We are proud to announce that our honorable jury has the following members:

Mirko Brummer – Medtech and Rapid Diagnostics

Ashley Colley – Product Design

Petri Kalliokoski – Funding

Antti Tauriainen – Manufacturing of Printed Intelligence

Jury backgrounds and areas of special expertise:

Mr Mirko Brummer majored as a microbiologistfrom the University of Helsinki in 1997. He has worked in the R&D of Aidian Oy (former Orion Diagnostica Oy) for over 20 years. Mirko has focused on early stage developments and technology projects, one of them being the introduction of the isothermal nucleic acid amplification technology SIBA into the company. His team is constantly involved in new technology evaluations and developments with a special focus on human Point-Of-Care (POC) testing. Mirko has also gained substantial expertise relating to patents and other immaterial rights and oversees the patent portfolio of Aidian as it’s Patent Counsel.

Mr Ashley Colley has more than 25 years professional industry experience, including e.g. 10 years at Nokia as a Principal Designer, where he led teams that developed the core of more than 50 million shipped devices. Colley is a co-founder of the successful health tech startup Oura Health (www.ouraring.com) and is the inventor of more than 30 patents/patent applications. In his research career, Dr. Colley is a Docent at the University of Lapland, focusing on the domain of Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Colley has published more than 100 peer reviewed scientific articles and is currently project manager for the €7M EU H2020 project DecoChrom (www.decochrom.com), exploring potential applications for electrochromic technology.

Mr Petri Kalliokoski is an entrepreneur and technology investor. He is the owner and CEO of highmetal.fi, a scale-up company in food technology, mechanical engineering and advanced automation. Mr. Kalliokoski is a Chairman in several fast growing tech companies, e.g. ukko.fi and mcare.fi. He also serves as a Chairman of Innovestor.fi, which has a portfolio of 90+ startups in tech and health & life science domains. Prior to Petri’s entrepreneurship career, he was acting as a deputy CEO of VTT Technical Research Centre, one of the largest research institutes in Europe (www.vtt.fi).