While not featured in Hollywood blockbuster films like some universities from the UK, Boston, or California, Belgium’s KU Leuven University has topped the Reuters ranking as Europe’s most innovative university for four of the last six years. This Belgian innovation engine boasts more than 135 spin-off companies and has a dominant focus on healthcare innovation.

In this podcast we discuss the role that KU Leuven plays in Flanders with Professors Maarten De Vos and Inge De Prins, who introduce the latest effort to broaden the EU’s innovation capacity through their new initiative focused on health innovation fellowships. Named The Institute for Biodesign, it will open its doors this spring in collaboration with TU Delft and Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands. The institute’s Health Fellowship Network will be further supported by the European Institute of Technology (EIT), whose input in ensuring that KU Leuven’s new project comes to fruition is also discussed in the podcast.

Lastly, the podcast details how interested researchers, healthcare professionals, and industry partners can join the new Institute for Biodesign and offers some insights into what the programme will deliver in the future. We touch on the broad macroeconomic competitive challenges that the EU currently faces and how the fellowship network hopes to overcome these to keep breakthrough technologies and the value they create within Europe.

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