Past events | Innovation

Headquartered in Leuven (Belgium) and with research sites across Belgium, in the Netherlands, Taiwan and the USA, an rep offices in China and Japan, imec leverages its state-of-the-art R&D infrastructure and its team of about 4,000 expert scientists, to drive open innovation across the globe. They unite world-industry leaders, Flanders-based and international companies, start-ups, and academia and knowledge centers, for R&D in nano-electronics and digital technologies, including advanced semiconductor scaling, silicon photonics, smart health, smart energy, smart mobility and smart cities solutions, artificial intelligence, beyond-5G and sensing technologies and more.

Next to its R&D offering, imec also leverages its expertise and large international industry network to support smaller organizations that have limited in-house R&D resources as well as larger companies with their innovation process from initial idea to fully functioning product, from the design of a product or chip, to prototyping, testing and optimizing, and manufacturing.

Finally, imec supports tech start-ups and scale-ups with a tailored offering. The imec.istart program is a business acceleration program that provides tech entrepreneurs with specialized coaching, facilities and overall support to help them grow their businesses, while the imec.scale-ups program focuses on larger innovative tech scale-ups looking to conquer the European market.

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Commissioned by the Flemish government, Lantis is building connections that make the city and region flourish. Lantis is responsible for the realisation of the Oosterweel connection, which will increase prosperity and improve the quality of life. Lantis is contributing to this by promoting mobility, including the construction of numerous bicycle connections and multimodal junctions on the city outskirts of Antwerp.

Lantis strives for operational excellence in order to carry out projects as efficiently as possible and deliver quality. Thanks to intensive cooperation with the surrounding area, the organisation works transparently and with a focus on results. Innovation and transformation ensure future-oriented projects with a lasting impact on the dynamics of the region. This is the Lantis way of successfully realising large projects in an urban environment.

Lantis stands for Liveable Antwerp through Innovation and Cooperation and is a public limited company. The day-to-day management is in the hands of the management committee led by managing director Luc Hellemans. David Van Herreweghe chairs the board of directors.

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As Europe’s second-largest port and largest integrated chemical cluster, the Port of Antwerp Bruges is a major lifeline for the Belgian economy: annually around 238 million tonnes of international maritime freight are handled. The Port of Antwerp Bruges accounts, directly and indirectly, for a total of around 143.000 jobs and more than €20 billion added value.

Innovation and digitisation enable our mission to be ‘a home port for a sustainable future’ as we aim to flexibly respond to a rapidly evolving maritime market. By supporting The Beacon, we want to ensure that our port platform finds relevant points of contact and vice versa. Furthermore, we want to facilitate the exchange effect created through the ecosystem being built around The Beacon.

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The city of Antwerp welcomes businesses, researchers, citizens and city officials to experiment with smart technologies that aim to make urban life more enjoyable and sustainable. Antwerp is a living lab where solutions are tested and co-created with its inhabitants. The city is home to highly innovative businesses and with 171 nationalities that live in Antwerp, it is above all a very diverse, and international city. The Ecosystem in Antwerp is developing rapidly, over the past years the amount of start-ups and scaleups in Antwerp doubled.

Innovative companies are the driving force behind the Antwerp knowledge economy. Their growth is crucial for our future. The City of Antwerp therefore strongly believes in the power of digital networking and is developing an ecosystem for digital innovation in which large and small businesses, startups, scaleups, researchers and capital providers with an interest in the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence can meet each other. Thanks to the cross-pollination that occurs in The Beacon, innovative products are developed that are relevant to Antwerp’s ‘smart city’ ambitions and to our financial stakeholders: industry and logistics.

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The University of Antwerp is a research university where pioneering, innovative research is conducted at an international level. Research and education are closely linked, with 20,000 students and 6000 staff spread across our nine faculties. As a driving force in the Antwerp innovation ecosystem, innovation is a constant focus.

The Beacon is the university’s pioneering pre-incubation structure for the domain of Metropolitanism, Smart City, Mobility & Logistics. It houses the IDLab research group and the Design Sciences Hub.

The IDLab research group of the University of Antwerp and imec performs fundamental and applied research on Wireless technologies, Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things. IDLab, headed by prof. Steven Latré, targets the most daunting challenges industry is facing to deliver digital transformation, connecting everything and extracting high value from data. Bringing researchers and industrial partners together at the same location facilitates knowledge transfer and enables the cross-fertilization and co-creation insights on smart cities, IoT and AI towards the industrial partners in The Beacon.

The Design Sciences Hub of the Faculty of Design Sciences is an interdisciplinary innovation and valorization lab. They offer design solutions for urban challenges and wicked problems in the triangle of urban planning, built environment, and urban health.

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Smart Asset Inspection Demo Day

SAIDD is back! Save the date and pre-register now for the second edition of this inspiring demo day

Tech meets Chem

Get ready for a new edition of Tech meets Chem

Data-driven port operations | COOCK Smart Port 2025

Join us at COOCK Smart Port 2025 for an exciting in-person event on November 16, 2023, where we dive into data-driven port operations.

Kubernetes Management & Observability | opencloudification

[Webinar] Kubernetes Management & Observability – Open Source Tools & Solutions

Initial Training Program | Cortlex Meetup

Initial Training Program (ITP) by Cortlex

Wireless Community Event

Wireless is the future. From smart buildings and self-driving cars to smart factories and smart cities, …

Lunch & Learn: Smart Mobility for Business

Discover how implement a custom-made mobility plan with Mbrella.

Smart Mobility Day

Embark on a day full of insights around the data strategies within mobility in Belgium and Europe.

The Future of Electric Mobility/Smart Mobility Week

Learn all about loading infrastructure in the city of Antwerp and their perspective of the future of electric mobility.

Slice and strategize

A brainstorm moment for our residents to make The Beacon an even better workplace.

Lunch & Learn

Our regular concept where we introduce our newest members and/or share knowledge amongst the community.

Sunset BBQ

Our annual summer event to bring our members together for some drinks, food and fun!

Belgian Vietnamese Alliance Roadshow

Roadshow event dedicated to sustainable and smart port development, with a focus on the Vietnamese market.

Smart Port Week

During The Smart Port Week The Beacon hosts and organizes a series of events and activities, focused on the topic of smart ports.

Singapore Maritime Week

The Beacon & Scaleup Vlaanderen joint economical mission to Signapore

Beacolympics 2023

We challenge our members every year to bring out their most athletic selves during our Beacolympics month. This year our Beacolympics disciplines were: running, padel, yoga, and ping-pong.

Together we take it to the next level

Missed an event?

Missed an event?

Smart Asset Inspection Demo Day

Tech meets Chem

Data-driven port operations | COOCK Smart Port 2025

Kubernetes Management & Observability | opencloudification

Initial Training Program | Cortlex Meetup

Stay informed!

Wireless Community Event

Lunch & Learn: Smart Mobility for Business

Smart Mobility Day

The Future of Electric Mobility/Smart Mobility Week

Slice and strategize

Lunch & Learn

Stay informed!

Sunset BBQ

Belgian Vietnamese Alliance Roadshow

Smart Port Week

Singapore Maritime Week

Beacolympics 2023

Smart Asset Inspection Demo Day

Tech meets Chem

Data-driven port operations | COOCK Smart Port 2025

Kubernetes Management & Observability | opencloudification

Initial Training Program | Cortlex Meetup

Wireless Community Event

Lunch & Learn: Smart Mobility for Business

Smart Mobility Day

The Future of Electric Mobility/Smart Mobility Week

Slice and strategize

Lunch & Learn

Sunset BBQ

Belgian Vietnamese Alliance Roadshow

Smart Port Week

Singapore Maritime Week

Beacolympics 2023