News

SPARK Finland has been active in supporting SPARKees both in increasing the maturity of their solutions and also becoming fundable projects and companies. Support is provided by the community of our SPARK teams, mentors, managers and SPARK global network.

This community enables us to support all of us also in those situations, when support is desperately needed… when things start to collapse and funding is missing.

And many times – if you just don’t give up, and you focus on learning the lessons and keep on working towards the solution – positive things happen. And at SPARK you are not left alone when things get tough. But without taking the responsibility of your own project things don’t happen.

During the past month five SPARKees have received remarkable grants for boosting their projects. Newcast, Biomarkkerit, Maculaser and FastEV received Business Finland two year TUTL grants (from €530.000 to €900.000) for preparing commercialization of their solutions. Team Parikka has been successful in two financing opportunities. Head of the team, Dr. Mataleena Parikka, received €238.000 clinical scientist grant from the Academy of Finland, and more than 1 million euro grant from Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation.  

These are once again great achievements by competent and inspired people that have taken the responsibility of their projects… continued sustainable and tenacious work under challenging environment… focused on their top notch ideas… and showed their ability to learn and adapt to the existing situations. That is the true SPARK spirit!