From Science to Startups: UniLab Elevate Welcomes 11 New Teams
On September 26, UniLab Elevate kicked off its sixth pre-acceleration program, welcoming 11 early-stage deep-tech startup teams from Latvia’s leading science universities. Over the next six months, the science and technology-driven ventures will develop solutions in fields such as defence logistics, medtech, clean energy, seafood quality monitoring, pest control, and others - transforming research and tech-concepts into investor-ready businesses.
What’s coming in the program
The UniLab Elevate program, organised in partnership with Accelerace, the Nordics' leading pre-seed accelerator and investor, is a two-phase six-months long program that offers a structured path to find product-market fit and achieve investor readiness.
The first phase includes a self-paced business plan development on a proprietary platform coupled with expert-led workshops, AI business modeling and early fundraising. After the first three months, around half of participating teams will proceed to the second phase, where high-potential teams have the opportunity to receive kick-off financial support to initiate their startups and commercialization roadmaps.
“The demand for university team acceleration is growing - we see strong deep tech applications and teams formed between universities. In just a couple of weeks we received 25 applications, whereas our capacity is limited to support around 10 teams per year. Particularly important is the newly established collaboration with BioPhoT, an interdisciplinary research and innovation platform for biomedicine and photonics, where its participants simultaneously acquire first-hand entrepreneurial knowledge and develop their ideas together with UniLab,” shares Andris Baumanis, CEO of UniLab.
For personalised support, each team is matched with two selected business development advisors, who come from various different backgrounds, representing both industry and investors such as Bosch, Accelerace, New Nordic Ventures, Buildit VC, Agreen fund, Imprimatur, serial angel investors, entrepreneurs, C-level executives, and many more.
By the end of the UniLab Elevate pre-acceleration program, the teams are expected to have a commercialization roadmap, an established startup, and early investment readiness.
Meet the UniLab Elevate teams
In its sixth batch, UniLab Elevate is welcoming 11 teams with diverse scientific and technological backgrounds. Applications were open to all students, researchers, and staff members across Riga Technical University (RTU), Riga Stradins University (RSU), University of Latvia (LU), and Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies (LBTU), with some teams bringing members from multiple universities.
Team Spruceful tackles one of Europe’s most destructive forest pests, the spruce bark beetle, using an intelligent pheromone trap system that protects timber while optimizing monitoring efforts. Meanwhile, No-Fi develops lightweight shielding that reduces electromagnetic interference, improving reliability from phone calls and Wi-Fi to medical and aerospace systems.
In healthcare, Need4Bone speeds up bone graft surgeries with a prefilled blood tube, saving doctors 15-30 minutes per procedure, while SN-FORCE provides certification services that allow universities to bring medical patents into clinical use in months rather than years. HaloReGen offers a non-invasive LED device that reduces hair loss, restores scalp health, and delays greying naturally, and Cubelex combines tangible cubes with a gamified app to increase children’s literacy and speech therapy access both at home and in school.
When it comes to sustainability and energy innovations, FRESHWAVE produces low-cost optical sensors for real-time seafood freshness monitoring, reducing waste and increasing safety across the supply chain. BladeLife extends wind turbine blade life with smart coatings and real-time monitoring, cutting maintenance costs while boosting renewable energy efficiency.
In defence and dual-use tech, G-HOST develops a modular drone-attachable platform with AI target-lock, enabling realistic training and remote, low-risk threat response for security forces. Enitstar offers a logistics app for combat units, providing real-time equipment tracking, reporting, and faster tactical resupply decisions.
Whereas, team SustAIn builds a Latvian language LLM that securely analyzes documents, giving small and medium companies access to advanced tools while protecting sensitive data.
Joint accelerator of science universities
UniLab was born through cooperation between LU and RTU, later joined by RSU and LBTU, thus making it a national initiative of science universities for the transformation of science-intensive and technological business ideas into new companies.
The UniLab Elevate program is supported by the Ministry of Economics and the City of Riga.