The starting pistol for the “Start-up Incubator” project at the Horst Görtz Institute for IT Security (HGI) at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) was fired on 1 December 2017. The goal: to encourage the founding of innovative, IT security start-ups in Bochum and to actively support spin-offs. “Bochum has one of the most vibrant start-up scenes in IT security in Europe. Furthermore, an extensively developed local, regional and national network exists, made up of companies and other organisations involved in data security. This ecosystem offers the ideal conditions for what we hope to achieve with our project,” explains Prof. Dr Christof Paar, who leads the project in addition to holding the Chair for Embedded Security at the HGI.
Making technical ideas market-ready
Now the capabilities already present in Bochum are, for the first time, being brought together in a coordinated manner thanks to the “Start-up Incubator” project funded by the Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF). The incubator offers support at each stage of a start-up’s life cycle, from the preliminary concept through to establishing an actual company. The project is specifically interested in helping to develop technological ideas with commercial potential to a point where they are market-ready, working with interested students and researchers at the HGI to identify opportunities for new start-ups and accelerating the development of new security-related companies and improving their chances of success through the targeted provision of support.
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