On October 13, the Investment Commission of the Lviv City Council chose the Lviv IT Cluster as the winner of the competition for the creation of a Research Center for Engineering Students.
The next steps are approval of the commission's decision and signing of the investment agreement. After that, the Lviv IT Cluster together with its partners - the USAID program "Competitive Economy Program in Ukraine" will announce an architectural competition to determine the best concept for the Center. Then, there will be the creation of a working project and finally its implementation.
The Lviv IT Cluster has been contributing to the transformation of higher education for more than 8 years. Together with IT companies and 4 universities of Lviv, 19 bachelor's educational programs were modernized and launched, including 8 at Lviv Polytechnic National University. A separate entrepreneurship course is being introduced to these programs to equip students with the skills that will help them turn their ideas into startups. The next stage involves creating inter-university teams and their interaction.
The Research Center will include laboratories for cross-sector research and spaces for the development of student startups and entrepreneurial skills:
- Design Thinking Lab.
- IoT Lab.
- AI Lab.
- Robotics Lab.
- AR/VR + Gamedev Lab.
- Mechanical Processing Lab.
- HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) Lab.
- Cybersecurity Lab.
- Radio Electronics Lab.
- Data Center.
The Research Center will provide an opportunity to develop new products in the challenging field of deep tech, a crucial initiative given the current scarcity of science-based products in Ukraine, which stems from a lack of dedicated spaces for their creation.
The implementation of the project is supported by the USAID Program "Competitive Economy Program in Ukraine".
The Research Center will be located in Lviv at the address: 5 Kalicha Hora Street. This is a three-story building, built in several stages in the middle of the 19th century. To implement the project, it is necessary to completely reconstruct the building and equip laboratories with with the necessary technology.
The Ministry of Education and Science also supported the creation of the Research Center, as mentioned in the Memorandum of Cooperation between the Cluster and the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine which was signed in June.