Through various scholarship programs and internships, startups and the biotechnology incubator provide students in the STEM field with additional work and development opportunities to remain in Croatia. The startup Exaltum ultra, in collaboration with the biotechnology incubator BioCentar, is paving new paths for future STEM professionals.
– We established the company to enable our STEM students to develop their careers outside the academic community through commercial activities that have immense interest in the global market – explained Kristian Vlahoviček, founder of Exaltum ultra, which focuses on research and development of new technologies in the field of computational biology, aiming to develop computer programs and methods for smart data analysis that can be collected by reading genetic material in living cells or measuring their metabolism. Given the decline in prices of instruments that enable such data collection, the application of genomic methods in medical diagnostics is becoming increasingly common. Sequencing and genome analysis could soon become a basic, routine examination, said the Exaltum team, who see this as an opportunity.
Outside the academic community
Regular professor at the Faculty of Science, Vlahoviček believes that a vibrant scene of startup companies relying on high-tech, especially biotechnology innovations and services, is a prerequisite for raising the domestic economy in the 21st century.
– It is very important for us to engage the best students in biotechnology disciplines to stay in Croatia after graduation or their PhD, as there are often no positions for them in scientific institutes and faculties, and many of them do not wish to remain in academic circles – says Vlahoviček, who believes that Exaltum and similar startups offer STEM students the opportunity to work in small high-tech biotechnology companies under the same conditions as anywhere abroad.
