A project aiming to improve water treatment plants; a helmet that filters polluted air and takes samples to gather data about air quality; a robot that gathers data about microplastics in the oceans; and an app to mitigate the exposure of runners to pollution. These are some of the innovative solutions developed by students from Esade, the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya-BarcelonaTech (UPC) and the Instituto Europeo di Design (IED Barcelona) within the framework of the tenth edition of the Challenge-Based Innovation (CBI) program, a venture promoted by IdeaSquare and the Innovation Department at the CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) to encourage multidisciplinary teams of students, in conjunction with the teaching and research staff of several entities, to develop new solutions for the future of humanity.
This year’s CBI, within the framework of the EU ATTRACT Academy, has focused on SDG 3.9.1 concerning the reduction of deaths and illnesses caused by air pollution, SDG 11.6 related to the reduction of the environmental impact of cities; SDG 14.1, reduction of ocean pollution; and SDG 14.3, reduction of the acidification of oceans.
Specifically, 8 university teams consisting of 43 students aged between 21 and 49 from 14 different nationalities ― studying the Esade Full-Time MBA programs, the UPC telecom engineering and electronic engineering bachelor’s degrees, and the IED Barcelona Master in Design Management ― worked for 15 weeks on the start-up prototypes to address the challenge of air and water pollution using specific CERN technologies assigned to them, such as IALL, SNIFFIRDRONE, PiPe4.0 and H3D-VISIOnAiR.
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About Esade
Founded in 1958, Esade ranks among the top ten business schools in Europe in the most important International MBA, Executive Education and university programme rankings. Esade has agreements and works with over 100 universities and business schools worldwide. The school offers doctoral programmes in management studies and conducts cutting-edge research in the fields of Data Science & Market Decisions, Economics & Finance, Entrepreneurship, Globalisation & Geopolitics, Governance, Innovation & Operations, Strategy, Leadership & People Management and Social Innovation.
