The ambassador of the French Republic, H.E Christian Thimonier, the director of the French institute in Skopje, Emanuel Rember and the attaché for culture, Branko Chobanov, announced the cooperation with FEEIT while visiting INNOFEIT.
The hosta, Prof. D-r Dimitar Tashkovski, dean, and the vice deans Prof. Dr. Vladimir Dimchev and Prof. Dr Vladimir Atanasovski (manager of INNOFEIT), presented the previous achievements of the Center, that the European Investment Bank identified as a Regional center of excellence, the only one of it’s kind in the Western Balkans.
Ambassador Thimonier welcomed all activities of INNOFEIT and the plans to attract 25 PhD students who will work on fundamental and applied research for the needs of the local and global industry. He also underlined the signing of the agreement on business-technical cooperation between France and Macedonia.
“This agreement will allow the mobility of innovators from both countries to identify opportunities for joint research and development projects, in close cooperation with the industry. The French Institute and the Embassy in Skopje are available to encourage the opportunities for scientific and technical cooperation of key players from both countries, in order to boost economic growth and development based on advanced and new technologies” – says Thimonier.
“Through activities, INNOFEIT aims to attract young and talented scientists and researchers, by including them in various projects aimed at practical education, problem-solving learning, collaborative case studies on various engineering topics” – says Prof. Atanasovski.
“INNOFEIT will enable the commercialization of the developed technologies within FEEIT and UKIM. Support to the newly established companies / startups and spin offs will be enabled through different INNOFEIT instruments. But, special support will be provided through the newly established Business-Technological accelerator UKIM” – summed up Atanasovski.
According to the dean Tashkovski, the idea of creating INNOFEIT originated from the need for full application of the concept of triple helix, that is, promoting the cooperation between universities with the industry in the field of innovation.
“Global trends show that science contributes most to the technological development of economies and industry when Universities are the main partners in research and development projects. The first step has already been made with six INNOFEIT partner companies who saw the advantage of involving academic staff in their research and development projects and financially supported the opening of INNOFEIT. In the last call from the Fund for Inovation and Technological development for Innovation, INNOFEIT was one of the few teaching and research institutions that, together with four companies, submitted applications (three of which were approved), which will enable direct cooperation between teaching-scientific staff and students of FEEIT in the technological development of new products and services of Macedonian companies” – said Dean Tashkovski.
