Interested startups and space enthusiasts, meet our summer feature and newest ESA BIC Finland project manager, Riccardo Notarangelo. Riccardo is a project researcher at the University of Vaasa.  His current project is the Research for the European University for Customised Education Project (#REUNICE). Between balancing project responsibilities, Riccardo has also taken on the student startup world. He is supporting and co-designing the Sprout and Bloom startup accelerator activities at the University of Vaasa with the support of local teams (InnoEco at UVA, and WCS at MUOVA/VAMK).

Currently, Riccardo wants to build up his role with start-up ecosystems. From an academic perspective, his involvement in the Mimir Fellows has been a first step. The Mimir Fellows initiative has led to research into the Boston Research to Business Ecosystem. Funded by VTT, Aalto, and the City of Espoo, a comprehensive report was the crowning achievement of the research trip. Now, Riccardo wants to take more practical action and get a closer look at how we support cutting-edge technology in Ostrobothnia and the Nordics as a whole.

From a societal perspective, Riccardo’s efforts focus on impact. He is a firm believer that a business’s roots should also take into account its impact on society and the environment, and that innovation and impact must be interconnected with mindfulness of sustainability and societal equity if they are to be truly successful. This is why Riccardo is here to support the ESA BIC Finland and ESA BIC Phi Lab initiatives.