"Project developed at LIP reaches the final stage of MIT’s prestigious entrepreneurship competition."
The FLASHGuard project, developed within LIP, is currently in Boston to participate in the final of the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, one of the world’s most prestigious university technology entrepreneurship competitions.
The team secured a place in the final stage after winning the first edition of the MIT $100K Portugal Entrepreneurship Competition, held in Coimbra. FLASHGuard thus becomes one of the first teams from outside the MIT ecosystem to reach the international final directly, taking place at Kresge Auditorium on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Founded in 1990, the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition brings together students, researchers, investors and entrepreneurs from the MIT and Greater Boston innovation ecosystem. The Launch phase corresponds to the competition’s grand finale, where teams present not only prototypes but full business plans before an international panel of investors and experts.
Developed within LIP’s Particles4Health group, led by Pedro Assis, FLASHGuard proposes a solution for beam monitoring in FLASH radiotherapy, an emerging oncology approach that uses ultra-high dose rates with the potential to reduce damage to healthy tissue.
The technology adapts principles and instrumentation from particle physics to address the real-time monitoring challenges posed by this new therapeutic regime.
The team includes researchers and students from LIP and IST’s Department of Physics, including Pedro Assis, Bernardo Tomé, Patrícia Gonçalves, Gonçalo Ribeiro, Gonçalo Roriz and Manuel Ratola, among others.
Participation in the MIT $100K final follows several recent distinctions received by the project, including victories at the European Commission’s Youth Start-Up Competition, Lab2Market@Técnico and the Lispolis Ignite programme.
The final will take place on the evening of May 12 and can be followed online from 11:00 PM Lisbon time through MIT’s official livestream on https://web.mit.edu/webcast/100k/s26/launch/ .