The opening programme of the “Strengthening Entrepreneurship Education for Youth Workers” project, funded by the European Union (EU) and implemented under the Erasmus+ programme with the support of the Turkish National Agency, was held at the Hasan Kalyoncu University (HKU) Sine Amphitheatre. After touring the HKU campus, 48 participants from 21 different countries examined on site the entrepreneurship activities carried out by the Kalyoncu Innovation and Technology Transfer Office (KALİTTO).
152 PATENT APPLICATIONS WERE MADE WITH THE SUPPORT OF KALİTTO
Speaking at the opening of the programme, HKU Rector Prof. Dr. Türkay Dereli gave statistical information about HKU’s activities in the field of entrepreneurship. Dereli: “The foundations of 47 companies were laid at the HKU pre-incubation centre. Seed investment was obtained from donors for 14 of them. 13 companies are currently active. To improve university-industry cooperation, we established the Kalyon Garage Prototyping and Entrepreneurship Centre and, together with the OSB Directorate, the Technopark. In the OSB Technopark, academics and entrepreneurs carried out 41 official R&D and software projects. With the support of KALİTTO, a total of 152 patent applications were made by our students and academics. In the last 3 years, our university has carried out 33 R&D projects with industrial organisations. Our university’s academics took part in these projects, which have a total budget of 4 million 460 thousand TL. In addition, to take successful ventures to the international market, the ‘Starcamp International Incubation and Acceleration Centre’ was established in Palo Alto – Silicon Valley. In our SMARTNET EU project, with a budget of 2.7 million Euros and carried out in partnership with 3 universities in Türkiye, we are developing artificial intelligence-based technology transfer mechanisms. Within the scope of the project we are opening today, you will have the opportunity to get to know our university and our entrepreneurship interfaces more closely, and you will help to support young people’s ideas and their referral to appropriate acceleration mechanisms. We will also develop multifaceted cooperation between our institutions,” thus announcing HKU’s projects that support young entrepreneurs. Later in the programme, project experts informed the participants about the Gaziantep and Türkiye entrepreneurship ecosystem.
