Centre of Excellence: Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship of Ahsanullah University of Science and Technology (CoE AUST) is an initiative to foster innovation and entrepreneurship culture among the students, faculties, and alumni to enable them to transform their innovative ideas into reality. The Centre aims to nurture the ideas of innovation, research, and entrepreneurial activities in various fields like the Internet of Things (IoT), Big data and artificial intelligence, Renewable energy, Energy efficiency, Circular economy, Carbon reductions, Electric/Autonomous vehicles, Smart cities and end to end solutions in areas as diverse as transportation and mobility, healthcare, retail and smart manufacturing will come under one umbrella or the centre to be known as the center of excellence in innovation, incubation, and entrepreneurship.
The Centre is not only to motivate the students but also to develop their hands-on skill to an industry standard and to provide a platform to incubate their innovative ideas into commercially viable products. The Centre helps AUST in extending its footprint further into the prospective industrial sectors to strengthen Industry-Academia collaboration in a mutually beneficial way.
A huge number of companies globally are facing a talent shortage that is driven by a lack of skilled candidates. This sends a strong signal to higher education institutions that they must prepare students for successful job outcomes by prioritizing in-demand and human skills, job-based learning, and hands-on projects. In collaboration with other entities of the education eco system, the CoE of AUST will strive to develop skilled candidates ready to meet industry requirements and to contribute directly to socio economic development of Bangladesh and beyond.
The centre will provide innovation, capabilities & development support via a range of critical services that include product/system design & solution innovations, R&D, technology & knowledge transfer, and sector-based technology road mapping. It will also facilitate partnership networking activities to encourage innovation sharing and collaboration and assists in manpower training and development.
The specific objectives of the CoE are:
- To nurture innovators to ideate in areas of societal importance.
- To provide an opportunity for everyone to innovate, ideate and design solutions by bringing knowledge and discoveries off the center and into the real world - where they can make an impact.
- To act as an institutional mechanism for providing various services including information to budding entrepreneurs, whether students, alumni or the community at large.
- To enhance the capacity of emerging innovators in evolving technologies and designing their innovations from ideation to impactful solutions.
- To facilitate the availability of the center’s resources to the incubates in a mutually beneficial way.
- To provide a conducive working environment for the incubates to nurture their innovative ideas.
- To facilitate efficiency development task such as productivity improvement for priority business areas.
- To develop partnerships and networks with local industries/institutions and assist them in problem-solving by offering them innovative solutions in terms of products, services, and processes.
- To coordinate with private and public sector funding sources, government agencies, industrial associations, chambers of commerce and industries to provide facilitation and networking for incubating companies.
- To nurture entrepreneurship knowledge through entrepreneurship studies and education and to assist entrepreneurs in developing viable enterprises that are capable of competing in the global business and industry
- To attain the sustainable development goal roadmap 2041 by ensuring functional education eco system between government, industry, and academia.
The centre will promote some core values which includes :
Integrity, Creativity, Team Spirit, Professionalism, Leadership and Commitment
