The KT Entrepreneurial Researchers Club has been launched as a new meeting place for researchers, postdocs and PhD students who are curious about innovation, entrepreneurship and the many routes research can take beyond the laboratory.
The club was founded by Postdoc Saul Ismael Utrera Barrios from DPC, Senior Researcher Pedram Ramin from PROSYS, and Innovation Partner Shehnaz Atchia Westergaard from DTU Skylab.
For Saul, the idea is simple: innovation should feel accessible, not intimidating.
“Many researchers have ideas that could move beyond the lab, but they do not always know where to start. Sometimes innovation is presented in a language that feels far from the way we speak as scientists. The club is meant to work almost like a translation space, where researchers can meet, ask questions and learn from people who have already gone through the process,” he says.
The initiative is strongly supported by Head of Department Professor Anne Ladegaard Skov, who has placed innovation high on the department’s agenda. She has initiated the hiring of both an in-house entrepreneur and a new innovation faculty member.
"At the Department, we have a strong tradition in close collaboration with Danish and international entities within chemical and biochemical engineering. Over the last few years, we have placed increased focus on establishing spinouts, with great success. We believe that there are even greater possibilities for engaged university-company collaboration. With the upcoming employment of an entrepreneur-in-residence and an innovation assistant/associate professor, we hope to strengthen both the collaboration with companies and the number of spinouts created. Also, we hope to inspire younger researchers to consider the entrepreneurial path; therefore, we have established the KT Entrepreneurial Researchers Club to foster inspiration and knowledge sharing," says Anne Ladegaard Skov.
A department with strong innovation potential
The launch of the club comes at a time when innovation is receiving increasing attention across DTU Chemical Engineering. According to internal figures from DTU Skylab, the department ranks among the most active at DTU in relation to early-stage innovation funding such as Discovery Grant, Proof of Concept and InnoExplorer.
Still, the founders believe that there is room to do more.
“KT sits at a very interesting intersection between chemistry and engineering. That means many of the ideas developed here have a natural route towards applications that can benefit society. We already have strong examples of this, but we believe there is still a lot of untapped potential, especially among PhD students and postdocs,” says Saul.
He points out that early-career researchers are often the ones closest to the experimental observations, the data, the unexpected results and the practical problems that appear in the laboratory.
“They are the people who see things happening first. They prepare the samples, run the experiments, analyse the results and write the papers. Very often, they are also the ones best positioned to connect a scientific result with a real need in society. But to do that, they need the tools, the network and the confidence to take the initial steps,” he says.
A strong start
The first meeting of the club brought together around 40 researchers from across DTU Chemical Engineering.
The event was built around an informal interview-style conversation moderated by Shehnaz Atchia Westergaard with Ahmed Ammar from DTU Electro, founder of Lotus Microsystems, who shared his experience of building a company and returning to DTU to continue innovating.
The large turnout was an encouraging sign for the founders.
“We were genuinely surprised by the response. It showed that there is real interest in innovation at KT among our students and postdocs,” says Saul.
The club will meet on the last Thursday of each month, in an informal setting, with short talks, conversations, networking, games, pizza and drinks.
We need to make innovation part of the academic conversation
For Saul, the club is also connected to a broader reflection on the academic career.
“We are used to thinking about academia as research and teaching. But at DTU, innovation is also an important part of this picture, especially if we take seriously the idea of translating fundamental research into practical applications,” he says.
He stresses that this does not mean weakening our fundamental research.
“Basic research must remain free, ambitious and driven by curiosity. That is essential. But we also live in a time with urgent technological needs, stronger links between universities and industry, and many tools that allow us to shorten the distance between knowledge and application. The club is a small seed in that direction,” Saul says.
The founders hope that the club will help create a culture where innovation is not seen as something reserved for people with a natural talent for business or sales.
“If we can help students, postdocs and researchers see that innovation is accessible, and that even a simple idea can grow with the right support, resilience and model, then we may be helping future technologies, collaborations or, who knows, perhaps the next big Danish company made at DTU take their first steps,” he concludes.
