One-liner: a UPV-only challenge bootcamp in semiconductors, microelectronics and photonics, sponsored jointly by Valencia Innovation Capital and IDEAS UPV — four afternoons, real city/industry challenges set by VIC, and an acceleration phase for the four best teams.
⚠️ Read this first — who can actually apply
UPV students and recent graduates only. The UPV course listing is explicit: pricing is 0 € for Alumno UPV, 0 € for Titulado UPV, and "No permitido" for público en general. A founder with no UPV affiliation cannot join this. It is a talent-pipeline programme, not an open startup call — file it under the university layer, not the funding layer.
Within UPV it is deliberately wide: open to bachelor's, master's and doctoral students and recent graduates in any discipline. The organisers state plainly that they are not only looking for technical profiles — they want engineering mixed with business, design, product, communication and UX, and will help solo applicants form multidisciplinary teams during the bootcamp.
What a participant gets
- 20 contact hours over four intensive afternoon sessions, in Spanish, on campus.
- 2 ECTS and a certificate of aprovechamiento.
- Work on real challenges posed by València Innovation Capital — city and industry problems where semiconductors, microelectronics and photonics could be part of the answer.
- Mentors, innovation/entrepreneurship methodology, and a Demo Day pitch to a jury.
- The four teams with the most potential enter an acceleration programme — specialised mentoring, market validation, and connections to companies and ecosystem stakeholders. This is the part that makes it more than a course.
Schedule and place
| Session | Date | Time |
|---|---|---|
| 1 — Exploración del reto | Tuesday 13 Oct 2026 | 15:30–20:30 |
| 2 — Ideación, validación y storytelling | Thursday 15 Oct 2026 | 15:30–20:30 |
| 3 — Sprint de solución | Tuesday 20 Oct 2026 | 15:30–20:30 |
| 4 — Demo Day | Tuesday 27 Oct 2026 | 15:30–20:30 |
Venue: Sala Polivalente StartUPV, Edificio 9B, acceso Oeste, 1er piso — Campus de València. Promoted by: Vicerrectorado de Estudiantes y Emprendimiento. Teaching team: Israel Griol Barres (profesor asociado), Lorena Pedros Cayo, Alexandra Lucas Del Rosal (técnicos superiores).
Key facts
- ⚠️ Enrolment status is ambiguous and worth re-checking before pointing anyone at it. The
CFP page shows "Inscripción online cerrada" with a zeroed countdown as of 2026-09-16,
while the IDEAS UPV article still says "Registration is now open". Seats are explicitly
limited, with participants selected from applications to build a diverse cohort. Treat
enrolment as probably shut; confirm with IDEAS UPV before advising.
#status/verify - This is one of VIC's announced 2026 semiconductor initiatives that has actually landed. Valencia Innovation Capital's 2026 slate listed Chip Boost, Seed Semiconductor Grants, Semiconductor Start and a Semiconductor Hub as announcements with no convocatoria. This one has real dates, a real venue, a syllabus and ECTS — the first of that family to become concrete, and it arrives through the university, not through a city convocatoria.
- Sits beside UPVfab (the UPV microfabrication cleanroom) and Valencia Silicon Cluster in the semiconductors layer — this is the talent end of that chain, UPVfab the infrastructure end.
Relations
- Run by: StartUPV
- Partners with: Valencia Innovation Capital
- See also: UPVfab
- See also: Valencia Silicon Cluster
- See also: Valencia Chip Boost
- See also: Semiconductors (niche)