“Innovations Vouchers”

Selina Korban, Byblos campus

 The Department of Natural Sciences is hosting a presentation title “Innovation Vouchers.”

The lecture will be delivered by Fadi Fayyad from the Center for Innovation and Technology - Industrial Research Institute (CIT), a new entity at the Industrial Research Institute (IRI) established to secure sustained innovation support to the manufacturing industry.

In February 2012 CIT was awarded a EURO 200,000 grant from the European Union for the implementation of the action entitled: “Innovation Vouchers.”

CIT will act as a coordination body between the knowledge supply of research institutions, universities, independent researchers and the requirements of the local industry, as part of the reinforcement of the private sector competitiveness in Lebanon. This will take place through a voucher system, which aims to develop and implement an innovation financing voucher to encourage SMEs to engage researchers in solving their present competitiveness problems and produce new products, processes, services and business models.

The voucher will be especially needed for small industries that can not afford to finance their own R&D project and have no experience in working with research and innovation centers.