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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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Aloxy - Conference Houston

Next week we will be at the IoT in Oil and Gas Conference in Houston, come and see our disruptive manual valve position sensor on our booth!

We look forward to see you all in Houston.

BubblyDoo raises 800.000 EUR

Community Member and resident BubblyDoo recently raised 800.000 EUR from different sources to expand their business. BubblyDoo is a platform that enables customers to customize books for their children. Gender, names, appearances can all be modified according to the customer's preference.

Belgian newspaper De Tijd interviewed Toine Habets, one of the four founders of BubblyDoo.

The article is in Dutch and behind a paywall.

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The Big Score Sessions – apply to pitch

Want to pitch live on stage during one of our eight The Big Score Sessions in 2022? Apply now and maybe you will be one of the 64 startups to present your tech solution towards a live audience of VCs, investors and corporates. The eight sessions will take place during four days, on four different locations, in February and March, 2022. You will be notified in advance if you are selected to pitch.

The Big Score – Nov 30, Dec 1 & 2

Together with our presenting partner VOKA, we are eager to welcome Europe’s finest tech investors, rocket ship scale-ups and corporate pioneers. Our lean and mean format, organisational reputation and elite attendance guarantee deal making and the broadening of your network. Join us LIVE, for Europe’s finest sales and funding gathering in Ghent, Belgium, from November 30 to December 2, 2021.

https://www.thebigscore.eu/?utm_source=Website&utm_medium=The+Beacon+&utm_campaign=Community+Canvas

Go Global Rwanda & Uganda – October 11-16

Discover Africa’s booming tech scenes in Rwanda and Uganda in the framework of the Belgian Digital for Development program. Our Go Global Mission to Rwanda & Uganda, from October 11-16 , 2021, offers you a chance to mingle and collaborate with local business leaders and entrepreneurs who know best what Rwanda and Uganda have to offer for the future of tech development in Africa as well as on a global scale.

https://www.letsgoglobal.be/missions/go-global-rwanda-uganda?utm_source=Website&utm_medium=The+Beacon+&utm_campaign=Community+Canvas

HRTECH.conference – October 7

HRTECH.be is where HR tech solutions, innovations and insights come together with the aim to take a leap forward to HR tech integration. A place where all relevant businesses meet and showcase. Enjoy international keynotes, interesting breakout sessions, and much more, all in the wonderful setting of Handelsbeurs Antwerpen. Get inspired, get connected and be empowered! Be part of the HR tech revolution.

https://hrtech.be/?utm_source=Website&utm_medium=The+Beacon+&utm_campaign=Community+Canvas

Website

HRTECH.Awards - October 6

Who will become HRTECH.startup of the year? The HRTECH.be jury had the difficult task to deduct a shortlist of 3 HR tech startups; Ambassify, MobieTrain & TechWolf! Cast your vote now for your favorite startup and discover who will take home the award during the HRTECH.gala on Oct. 6!

https://hrtech.be/award?utm_source=Website&utm_medium=The+Beacon+&utm_campaign=Community+Canvas

Website

Valorizing the results of multi-year research into air quality monitoring

Flemish technology research on fine-grained air-quality monitoring available to be embraced by government, citizens and industry.
Download the report on the measurement and modeling of air quality in urban environments.

Imec White paper on Open Urban Digital Twins

An Urban Digital Twin (are also referred to as a Local Digital Twin) provides an up-to-date view of the situation in the city so that planned measures can be simulated and tested. In recent years, imec has conducted research into Urban Digital Twins. In this paper, you will learn more about the insights in the current state of play. Download the white paper.

The Beacon Chair on Smart Cities

The Beacon Executive Chairman Wim The Waele was featured in the most recent edition of FOKUS magazine. He shared his views on smart cities, the role of governments and the added value of technology.

https://issuu.com/smartmediabelgium/docs/fokusmodernestad_aug21

Website