Every year the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organisation) celebrates World Intellectual Property Day to learn about the role that intellectual property rights (patents, trademarks, industrial designs, copyright) play in encouraging innovation and creativity.
This year's campaign celebrates the 'brilliance, ingenuity, curiosity and courage of the women who are driving change in our world and shaping our common future'.
Find out more about WIPO at their
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Alex Alexandrova, CEO of D-Beam
To mark the occasion, we spoke with Alex Alexandrova, CEO of STFC CERN Business Incubation Centre company, D-Beam. Alex is a laser physicist, turned entrepreneur who found the opportunity to commercialise a project she was working on whilst based at the Cockcroft Institute, Sci-Tech Daresbury. D-Beam provides optical diagnostics which have been developed as reliable and cost-efficient techniques for use at accelerator and clinical facilities, light sources, and reactors, i.e. for application in research, healthcare, security, environment and manufacture.
We asked Alex about what it's like to be an innovator:
“I am a laser and accelerator physics scientist, and an entrepreneur. Many of us can be discouraged by problems, but as an innovator I am inspired by them. I encounter them as challenges and turn them into opportunities. You can always achieve more than you think you can".
Find out more about D-Beam at their website
Accessing STFC and CERN Intellectual Property
The STFC CERN Business incubation Centre offers extensive support to entrepreneurs aiming to take high energy technologies from an initial innovative concept to market.
The BIC focuses on developing new products and services using technology originally developed for use in high energy physics research. It combines the incubation experience of STFC with the unique opportunity to access STFC and CERN intellectual property (IP), technologies and expertise. The centre will help businesses to grow from technical concept to market reality, from small start-ups into thriving high-tech companies.
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