Canvas | Community | The Beacon

Headquartered in Leuven (Belgium) and with research sites across Belgium, in the Netherlands, Taiwan and the USA, an rep offices in China and Japan, imec leverages its state-of-the-art R&D infrastructure and its team of about 4,000 expert scientists, to drive open innovation across the globe. They unite world-industry leaders, Flanders-based and international companies, start-ups, and academia and knowledge centers, for R&D in nano-electronics and digital technologies, including advanced semiconductor scaling, silicon photonics, smart health, smart energy, smart mobility and smart cities solutions, artificial intelligence, beyond-5G and sensing technologies and more.

Next to its R&D offering, imec also leverages its expertise and large international industry network to support smaller organizations that have limited in-house R&D resources as well as larger companies with their innovation process from initial idea to fully functioning product, from the design of a product or chip, to prototyping, testing and optimizing, and manufacturing.

Finally, imec supports tech start-ups and scale-ups with a tailored offering. The imec.istart program is a business acceleration program that provides tech entrepreneurs with specialized coaching, facilities and overall support to help them grow their businesses, while the imec.scale-ups program focuses on larger innovative tech scale-ups looking to conquer the European market.

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Commissioned by the Flemish government, Lantis is building connections that make the city and region flourish. Lantis is responsible for the realisation of the Oosterweel connection, which will increase prosperity and improve the quality of life. Lantis is contributing to this by promoting mobility, including the construction of numerous bicycle connections and multimodal junctions on the city outskirts of Antwerp.

Lantis strives for operational excellence in order to carry out projects as efficiently as possible and deliver quality. Thanks to intensive cooperation with the surrounding area, the organisation works transparently and with a focus on results. Innovation and transformation ensure future-oriented projects with a lasting impact on the dynamics of the region. This is the Lantis way of successfully realising large projects in an urban environment.

Lantis stands for Liveable Antwerp through Innovation and Cooperation and is a public limited company. The day-to-day management is in the hands of the management committee led by managing director Luc Hellemans. David Van Herreweghe chairs the board of directors.

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As Europe’s second-largest port and largest integrated chemical cluster, the Port of Antwerp Bruges is a major lifeline for the Belgian economy: annually around 238 million tonnes of international maritime freight are handled. The Port of Antwerp Bruges accounts, directly and indirectly, for a total of around 143.000 jobs and more than €20 billion added value.

Innovation and digitisation enable our mission to be ‘a home port for a sustainable future’ as we aim to flexibly respond to a rapidly evolving maritime market. By supporting The Beacon, we want to ensure that our port platform finds relevant points of contact and vice versa. Furthermore, we want to facilitate the exchange effect created through the ecosystem being built around The Beacon.

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The city of Antwerp welcomes businesses, researchers, citizens and city officials to experiment with smart technologies that aim to make urban life more enjoyable and sustainable. Antwerp is a living lab where solutions are tested and co-created with its inhabitants. The city is home to highly innovative businesses and with 171 nationalities that live in Antwerp, it is above all a very diverse, and international city. The Ecosystem in Antwerp is developing rapidly, over the past years the amount of start-ups and scaleups in Antwerp doubled.

Innovative companies are the driving force behind the Antwerp knowledge economy. Their growth is crucial for our future. The City of Antwerp therefore strongly believes in the power of digital networking and is developing an ecosystem for digital innovation in which large and small businesses, startups, scaleups, researchers and capital providers with an interest in the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence can meet each other. Thanks to the cross-pollination that occurs in The Beacon, innovative products are developed that are relevant to Antwerp’s ‘smart city’ ambitions and to our financial stakeholders: industry and logistics.

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The University of Antwerp is a research university where pioneering, innovative research is conducted at an international level. Research and education are closely linked, with 20,000 students and 6000 staff spread across our nine faculties. As a driving force in the Antwerp innovation ecosystem, innovation is a constant focus.

The Beacon is the university’s pioneering pre-incubation structure for the domain of Metropolitanism, Smart City, Mobility & Logistics. It houses the IDLab research group and the Design Sciences Hub.

The IDLab research group of the University of Antwerp and imec performs fundamental and applied research on Wireless technologies, Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things. IDLab, headed by prof. Steven Latré, targets the most daunting challenges industry is facing to deliver digital transformation, connecting everything and extracting high value from data. Bringing researchers and industrial partners together at the same location facilitates knowledge transfer and enables the cross-fertilization and co-creation insights on smart cities, IoT and AI towards the industrial partners in The Beacon.

The Design Sciences Hub of the Faculty of Design Sciences is an interdisciplinary innovation and valorization lab. They offer design solutions for urban challenges and wicked problems in the triangle of urban planning, built environment, and urban health.

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Bagaar Launches second version of Telraam

Great news from our community member, Bagaar.

They are proud to present the second version of Telraam, a home traffic monitoring device they have developed for Transport & Mobility Leuven.

Over 1600 devices of version 1 are active all around Europe and the US. With version 2, they want to offer democratised access to traffic data all across the world.

Read the full case here

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Imec invests in research on datavaults

Exciting news from our partner Imec today.

Researchers from Leuven's technology Imec are stepping up their work on data vaults under the name SolidLab Flanders. The imec research groups at UGent, VUB and KU Leuven are joining forces for the next four years. The Flemish government is investing 7 million euro for the first two years.

Read the full article here

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Faktion's AI project selected for the AMAI campagne

Good news for our community members at Faktion.

Their AI project has been selected for further development in 2022 for the AMAI campagne.

exciting times ahead !

Read all about it here

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Dockflow renews partnership with Remant Cool Logistics

Good news for our Community members at Dockflow.

They have renewed their partnership with Remant Cool Logistics.

Dockflow allows Remant Cool teams to automatically and accurately monitor free time and demurrage costs. In turn, Remant Cool can optimize its customers' costs.

More here

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The Grain launches Checkmate

Our Community members at The Grain launched their lastest solution, Checkmate.

Checkmate is a solution designed to deal with the specific challenges of production planning & scheduling for manufacturing companies.

Want to know more ?

You can read their white paper on accelerated planning here.

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Positive Thinking Company is looking for recruitment talent

Our Newest community member, Positive Thinking Company is looking for 3 new recruitment colleagues to join their team in Belgium.

More info here

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Imec team wins international conference on indoor positioning

Congratulations to the Imec-WAVES team for winning this year's International Conference on Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation localization competition with novel algorithms for achieving high-accuracy positioning with Ultra-Wideband in industrial indoor environments.

Well done Imec !

Congratulate them here.

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Cubitec celebrates it's three year anniversary

Happy birthday to our community members at Cubitec.
They celebrate their third year today.

Keep up the good work !

Congratulate them here

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Cubitec named starter of the week in Data news

Congrats to our community members at Cubitec.

They have been named starter of the week in Data News magazine.

Read all about it here.

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The Beacon featured in Bloovi magazine

The Beacon is featured in Bloovi magazine.

Our General manager, Michael Geelhand de Merxem gave an exclusive interview about the beacon, it's ambition and our broad love for innovation.

Read all about it here

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SGS and SKYEBASE provide an innovative solution for industrial drone inspections

Congrats to Skyebase !

SGS Belgium and Skyebase have signed a cooperative agreement for the development of an Intelligent Asset Inspection Platform for Ship-To-Shore (STS) harbour cranes and the performance of industrial drone inspections.

Very exciting news

Read all about it here

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Skyebase recieves ISO 9001 and VCA petro certifications

Congrats to our community member Skyebase.

They now comply with the ISO 9001 and VCA petro standards !

Great achievement.

You can find more about it here

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Strides reveals your team's soft skills

In an extensive coverage by Belgian newspaper De Tijd, Strides co-founder Mark Van Achter explains how their game boost the performance of teams. Based on thousands of decisions a team makes in the game, the Strides algorithm estimates a team's productivity, curiosity and decision making skills. In time, it will also add leadership qualities and communication. 'In a game you quickly see the true nature of a team member', says Mark.

Strides has three gaming tables at The Beacon clubhouse, which can host teams up to 12 people simultaneously.

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Port of Antwerp digitizes radar network

Radar infrastructure plays an important role in the guidance of shipping traffic. As part of this, Port of Antwerp recently awarded a framework contract to Securitas to fully digitalise and further expand this infrastructure.

The 12 current analogue radars will be gradually replaced and, in addition, seven radar set-up points will be added. An IALA-compliant (International Association of Lighthouse Authorities) Vessel Traffic Service (VTS) is the final objective to be rolled out by the first quarter of 2022 and will have three sectors. The introduction of VTS is in full swing.

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CEO of Flow Pilots speaks at the Tedx Conference in Antwerp

This past Saturday, Dewi Van De Vyver spoke at TedXAntwerp! Dewi spoke about 'wicked problems', a problem that is difficult to solve because of incomplete, contradictory or changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize.
Wicked problems require us to look at problems in a different way.

Did you miss Dewi's TedxAntwerp? We will post the recording as soon if it comes online.

Minister-President of Flanders lauds Mobilidata (Imec)

Mr. Jan Jambon, Minister-President of the Government of Flanders, called Mobilidata thé innovative mobility project in Flanders, at the G-STIC conference "Shaping a Post Pandemic World" at the World Expo in Dubai. A few weeks back, his government approved the project, which includes the development of no less than 31 new smart city projects. The project is led by Imec, in collaboration with the Government of Flanders and private company BeMobile.

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CEO & Founder of Linkedcar Nominated

Congrats to the Founder and CEO of our community member Linkedcar.
Mario Schraepen is named "10 most Outstanding Business Personalities of the year "

Read the full story here

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Cegeka nominated for the Limburg innovation award 2021

Congrats to our community member Cegeka !

Cegeka, with its Mobilize platform, is among the last 4 remaining candidates for the Limburg Innovation Award 2021 from Voka - Chamber of Commerce Limburg.

Read all about it here.

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Marple raises 500K in growth capital

Amazing news for our community member Marple.

Marple, which develops smart innovation software for engineers, has raised 500,000 euros in growth capital in a second investment round. In addition to private investors, imec and VLAIO also put their money in the pot. With the capital, the Antwerp tech company wants to expand its team - both on the technical and the sales side - and further connect with the software market for R&D engineers.

Read the full article here.

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Peripass and Robovision combine vision learning with innovative yard management solutions

Awesome news from our two community members Peripass and Robovision. They have combined vision learning with innovative yard management solutions in a proof-of-concept for 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐫 𝐋𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐬 at the H.Essers site.

Read all about it here

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