LightCode Photonics recently closed a pre-seed investment round of €425K, led by United Angels VC and Superangel. The round also included a list of early backers from renowned Estonian angel investors, such as Bolt co-founder Martin Villig, the country’s former CIO Taavi Kotka, Teleport co-founder Sten Tamkivi, and co-founder of Pipedrive Ragnar Sass. Read More

This year, the university decided to finance 15 experimental development projects with the total amount of 462,350 euros. For 2021, the university’s development fund received experimental development grant applications for 34 projects in the amount of approximately 1.2 million euros. Read More

Last year brought many rapid developments to the University of Tartu in terms of business cooperation and applied research. We launched a number of new initiatives ourselves, and the environment around us is changing rapidly. Read More

An international consortium led by researchers from the University of Tartu (UT) and start-up GScan OÜ received 7.5 million euros from the European Commission to create a large-scale prototype of a cosmic-ray tomography device. In the course of security checks, the device would enable border control, customs and law enforcement authorities to detect illegal goods in trucks and sea containers safely and fast. Read More

Estonian company Crystalspace, partnered with Tartu Observatory of Tartu University and Krakul, has been selected by Maxar Technologies, a trusted partner and innovator in Earth Intelligence and Space Infrastructure, to build two cameras that will act as a stereo pair to monitor the operations of a robotic arm that will collect regolith samples from the Moon. Read More

The startup accelerator Startup Wise Guys and the EIT Digital innovation community have published the third edition of the Baltic Startup Scene Report. As a new component, the 2019/2020 report focuses on startup founders. It appears that most of the founders in the Baltics have studied at the University of Tartu. Read More

As one means to promote the transfer of research results to everyday life, the Feasibility Fund has been established at the University of Tartu. Indrek Must, Associate Professor of Soft Robotics at the University of Tartu, participates in this year’s application round of the programme. Photo by Andres Tennus

On 20 October, the University of Tartu signed a memorandum with Mainor Ülemiste and Technopolis Ülemiste (the developers of Mainor and Ülemiste City) to enter into a broad-based cooperation in the fields of research, development, teaching and traineeship. Read More

University of Tartu researchers participated in a study published in Science, indicating that about 10 per cent of young and healthy people who develop severe COVID-19 have misguided antibodies that attack not the virus, but the immune system itself. Another recently published study showed that another 3.5 per cent of such patients carry a specific kind of genetic mutation. In both cases, the patients did not have type I interferons that are essential in protection against viruses. Read More

In the first half of 2020 the University of Tartu has concluded agreements on research and development with various enterprises in the value of 3 million euros. This reflects the result of the same period last year. The value of current research projects under negotiation exceeds 4 million euros.