Begovic: End-Goal is to Bring American Companies Which Invest in Biotechnology to Serbia

A delegation from Serbia, led by the minister of science, technological development and innovations, Jelena Begovic, has completed a visit to the United States of America. During the visit, among other things, they met with American investment companies, that is, investment funds, but also private companies, to which they presented the BIO4 Campus and the possibilities of the implementation of artificial intelligence in Serbia, and the minister also held an introductory address at the “Women in Science” panel within the 78th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York.

Venture capital funds

– We presented Serbia and our end-goal is to somehow bring them over to Serbia, for them to see what we’re doing in science, to see our startups – Begovic said.

These are mostly venture capital funds which invest in startups, some of them are truly fascinating, they have tens of billions of dollars and people work there who are in finance on one hand and want to do something good on the other, they want to invest in new biological medicines, in biotechnology, Begovic says.

According to her, the end-goal was to bring those companies over to Serbia.

We are opening the door to the financing of startups

– I hope that we will be able to bring over at least the first one and thereby open the door to the financing of primarily our startups in Serbia – Begovic said.

The BIO4 Campus was discussed at Harvard and Columbia University.

Begovic said that they had visited New York and Boston and that the BIO4 Campus project had been presented at three faculties with an explanation of the concept.

We tried to show what Serbia could provide

– The Atlantic is a big ocean that separates two continents. America is huge, it is the center of science and innovations, and we tried to show what Serbia could provide, why they should come to Serbia, what Serbia’s advantages were and we had met with a great response – she says.

She notes that they don’t know much about Serbia for one, and then also that they don’t expect one such project or this vision, which is a combination of biotechnology, natural sciences and information technologies, which is absolutely trendy in America.

– You’re walking through Boston and looking at buildings which are full of laboratories instead of stores. We have already agreed with the MIT to start negotiating. They are excellent when it comes to entrepreneurship, each professor there has several startups. We want to transfer that knowledge about entrepreneurship to Serbia and to first organize summer schools and courses for our students, for our professors, to truly learn from the best how things are done, and to also bring professors from Harvard and organize a series of lectures and thereby commence the connecting with America – says Begovic.

Ministarstvo nauke, tehnološkog razvoja i inovacija Republike Srbije

Ministry of Science Technological Development and Innovations

BIO4 Campus Belgrade

Columbia University

Harvard University

MIT

Jelena Begović

American companies

biotechnology

artificial intelligence

startups