The UZH Innovation Hub as a Co-Creator

Acquiring skills in in­no­va­tion and entre­pre­neur­ship is key to trans­fer­ring re­search re­sults to so­ci­ety in the fu­ture. This is why the train­ing for­mats used at the UZH In­no­va­tion Hub are de­signed to sup­port stu­dents at dif­fe­rent sta­ges of their aca­dem­ic careers.

In ad­di­tion to the mo­dular Entre­pre­neur­ship Boot­camp, which has al­ready been at­tend­ed by more than 150 stu­dents in pre­vious years and had over 70 par­ti­ci­pants in 2025, the Entre­pre­neu­rial Skills work­shop se­ries is spe­ci­fi­cal­ly aimed at PhD can­di­dates and post­docs. This course for­mat was pi­lot­ed in 2024 in col­la­bo­ra­tion with the Gra­duate Cam­pus and be­came part of its core port­folio in 2025. The con­tent of this work­shop se­ries has been honed to teach prac­ti­cal skills re­le­vant to the early sta­ges of the in­no­va­tion pro­cess, from iden­ti­fy­ing in­no­va­tion po­ten­tial and va­li­dat­ing ideas to de­ve­lop­ing entre­pre­neu­rial per­spec­tives. Sixty early-career re­sear­chers also took part in the six half-day work­shops along­side the stu­dents. With this pro­gram, UZH is fo­cused on pro­mot­ing entre­pre­neu­rial skills at the doc­tor­al and post­doc­tor­al le­vels, while also sup­port­ing the trans­fer of aca­dem­ic know­ledge into practice.

UZH is launch­ing its first minor Mas­ter’s pro­gram in In­no­va­tion & Entre­pre­neur­ship de­signed to sys­te­ma­ti­cal­ly teach entre­pre­neu­rial skills to stu­dents from all fa­cul­ties. Span­ning three se­mes­ters, the minor pro­gram allows stu­dents to ac­quire key fu­ture skills, in­clud­ing in­no­va­tion com­pe­tence, prob­lem-solv­ing skills, entre­pre­neu­rial think­ing and adapt­ability. Rather than view­ing in­no­va­tion and entre­pre­neur­ship pure­ly in terms of busi­ness or tech­no­lo­gy, the pro­gram in­cor­po­rates theory from fields such as psy­cho­lo­gy, so­cio­lo­gy, eco­no­mics and law, there­by fos­ter­ing a nuanced un­der­stand­ing of in­no­va­tion processes.

Extern­al part­ners add their ex­per­tise to com­bine aca­dem­ic foun­da­tions with real-world use cases, en­cou­rag­ing in­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary team­work among stu­dents. The minor pro­gram is ma­naged in close col­la­bo­ration with the Fa­cul­ty of Busi­ness, Eco­no­mics and In­for­ma­tics, as well as other fa­cul­ties, and is of­fered across the uni­ver­sity through the School for Trans­dis­ci­pli­nary Stu­dies. This allows UZH to re­in­force the sys­tem­at­ic in­te­gra­tion of in­no­va­tion and entre­pre­neur­ship into its teach­ing, there­by giv­ing stu­dents the skills they need to res­pon­sib­ly im­ple­ment in­no­va­tive so­lu­tions in so­ci­ety and the economy.

“This pro­gram is a stra­te­gi­cal­ly im­por­tant step in teach­ing in­no­va­tion and entre­pre­neur­ship, and in in­te­grat­ing these topics into the early stages of aca­dem­ic edu­ca­tion. It is a for­ward-look­ing ini­tia­tive for the Uni­ver­sity of Zurich,” says Eli­sa­beth Stark, Vice Pre­si­dent Research.

Last year, a total of 45 PhD can­di­dates, post­docs and re­sear­chers ap­plied for In­no­va­tion Grants and Entre­pre­neur Fel­low­ships fol­low­ing a call for pro­po­sals. Ele­ven In­no­va­tion Grants were award­ed with the aim of sup­port­ing the de­ve­lop­ment pro­cess from an ini­tial idea to a va­li­dat­ed value pro­po­si­tion. The award­ing of nine Entre­pre­neur Fel­low­ships, un­der the Sus­tain­able So­ci­ety, Di­gi­tal In­no­va­tion and Bio & Med­Tech fund­ing lines, aims to bring re­search re­sults to mar­ket by found­ing start-ups with po­ten­tial for com­mer­cia­li­za­tion. This brings the to­tal num­ber of in­no­va­tion pro­jects sup­port­ed by the two early-stage fund­ing pro­grams to 83 since 2019.

The In­no­va­tor Mor­nings event se­ries, which has been run­ning since 2025 and takes place three times a year, ge­ne­rat­ed sig­ni­fi­cant in­te­rest, at­tract­ing more than 150 par­ti­ci­pants. The event pro­motes dia­logue be­tween aspir­ing entre­pre­neurs, re­sear­chers who re­ceive fund­ing and UZH start-up found­ers. It pro­vides in­for­ma­tion on cur­rent in­no­va­tion pro­jects and of­fers in­sights into the ex­pe­ri­ences of UZH entrepreneurs.

In 2025, the fund­ing pro­gram was also ex­pand­ed to in­clude the Mar­ket Va­li­da­tion Lab, which was suc­cess­ful­ly pi­lot­ed in 2024 and pro­vides re­sear­chers with a guid­ed pro­cess for de­ve­lop­ing a strong value pro­po­si­tion for re­search-based in­no­va­tions. Also launched this year was the Pro­duct Lab, which is of­fered in col­la­bo­ra­tion with the Trans­la­tion­al Me­di­cine Ac­ce­le­ra­tor and Bio­Med Entre­pre­neur­ship teams. Re­sear­chers re­ceive sup­port with re­for­mu­lat­ing their re­search goals as hy­po­the­ses about a fu­ture pro­duct, and then with using these hypo­the­ses to iden­ti­fy clear mile­stones for their project.

In 2025, the In­no­va­tion Hub’s fund­ing stra­te­gy will con­tinue to in­clude DRIVE. DRIVE is a re­la­tive­ly new struc­tural fund­ing pro­gram for in­no­va­tion ini­tia­tives at UZH, which has created a tool that ac­ce­le­rates the bot­tom-up de­ve­lop­ment of in­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary ini­tia­tives and struc­tures. Since the pro­gram was launched in 2024, a total of 33 ap­pli­ca­tions have been sub­mit­ted. Of the 26 pro­jects put for­ward in 2025, three will re­ceive fund­ing under the DRIVE | trans­fer fund­ing line, and two will re­ceive fund­ing as part of DRIVE | action. As a re­sult, the fol­low­ing ini­tia­tives will also be launched:

• A col­la­bo­rative plat­form for di­gi­tal twins in mus­culo­ske­letal medicine
• The AI Fel­low­ship Pro­gram for early-career re­sear­chers, in­clud­ing the creation of a co­hort-based com­mu­nity through work­shops, sum­mer schools, sym­posia and mentoring
• UZH Space, a uni­ver­sity-wide, trans­dis­ci­pli­nary um­brel­la or­ga­ni­zation in the field of space research
• The Res­pon­sible In­no­va­tion (RI) com­mu­nity at UZH
• The Bio­tech In­cu­bator or­ga­nized by and for students

“If the In­no­vation Hub is to go be­yond its role as a simple know­ledge pro­vid­er and act as an ac­tive co-creator of in­no­va­tion net­works, col­la­bo­ra­tion with play­ers from in­dus­try is key,” says Maria Oli­va­res, head of In­no­va­tion at the In­no­va­tion Hub. In ad­di­tion to the In­no­va­tion Coun­cil, which was estab­lished in 2019 and is made up of re­pre­sen­ta­tives from in­dus­try, busi­ness and the start-up sec­tor, a new in­dus­try en­gage­ment ma­nager po­si­tion will be created in 2026. The goal is to im­prove the in­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work for de­ve­lop­ing in­dus­try partnerships.

One example of in­ter­na­tion­al col­la­bo­ra­tion in a new, emerg­ing in­dus­try was the world’s first Star­lab Space Hack­athon, which took place in No­vem­ber 2025. The In­no­va­tion Hub or­ga­nized the event to­gether with the Star­lab con­sor­ti­um, no­tab­ly Air­bus, as well as other part­ners from aca­demia, in­dus­try and In­no­va­tions­park Zürich, there­by con­tri­but­ing to the new space eco­no­my. The fo­cus of the event was de­ve­lop­ing new pay­load con­cepts for the fu­ture Star­lab space station. The event was at­tend­ed by 220 people. Of these, 60 par­ti­ci­pants were se­lect­ed for the hack­athon. Work­ing in teams, they con­tri­but­ed ex­per­tise from 14 dif­fe­rent dis­ci­plines in­clud­ing cog­ni­tive psy­cho­lo­gy, lin­gu­is­tics, soft­ware and aero­space en­gi­neer­ing, can­cer re­search and bio­tech­no­lo­gy. After 30 hours, the six teams had de­ve­loped con­cepts for re­search­ing semi­con­duc­tors un­der zero-gra­vi­ty con­di­tions, 3D me­tal print­ing in space, and ideas for how as­tro­nauts could wash their clothes in space.

Parti­cu­lar­ly note­worthy here is the cross-border col­la­bo­ra­tion be­tween aca­demia, busi­ness and po­li­tic­al re­pre­sen­ta­tives from the Can­ton of Zurich and the Fe­de­ral State of Baden-Würt­tem­berg in Ger­many. Part­ners in­clud­ed Star­lab Space, uni­ver­si­ties and stu­dent as­so­ci­ations from Ger­many and Switzer­land, the Ger­man Aero­space Cen­ter, and other aero­space companies.

The grow­ing num­ber of ta­lent­ed in­di­vi­duals iden­ti­fied and sup­port­ed, in­no­va­tion pro­jects re­ceiv­ing guid­ance, part­ner­ships estab­lished, in­no­va­tive col­la­bo­ra­tion models created, and new­ly found­ed start-ups all de­mon­strate the suc­cess­ful de­ve­lop­ment of a sus­tain­able in­no­va­tion sup­port pipe­line. On average, half of the entre­pre­neurs who re­ceive sup­port go on to found their own com­pa­ny. Since the pro­gram began, 17 com­pa­nies have been created.

In 2025, three of the four UZH spin-offs arose from Entre­pre­neur Fel­low­ship pro­jects. All four new­ly found­ed spin-offs are bring­ing in­no­va­tive ideas from re­search to mar­ket, in­clud­ing di­gi­tal tools for as­ses­sing cog­ni­tive abi­li­ties, an app for measur­ing eye mis­align­ment, an in­no­va­tive gene the­ra­py for rare di­seases, and dia­gnos­tic ser­vices. This brings the total num­ber of spin-offs found­ed at UZH since 1999 to 165.

In addition, UZH re­sear­chers re­gis­tered 57 in­ven­tions and 27 pa­tent and trade­mark ap­pli­ca­tions last year. These figures re­main con­sis­tent­ly high and re­flect the in­no­va­tion po­ten­tial at UZH. Pro­tect­ing re­search-based in­tel­lec­tual pro­per­ty is ex­treme­ly im­por­tant, as it often paves the way for com­mer­cia­liz­ing in­no­va­tions in the market.

Further information: 

UZH Innovation Hub