EcoWires, a solution that uses sustainable materials to develop flexible electronics, won the Best Startup Award at Pitch Day. This event marked the end of the 13th edition of the School of Startups of UPTEC – Science and Technology Park of the University of Porto, a programme supported by Santander Portugal Foundation. 

Rita Martins and Inês Freitas, founders of the project, developed a highly scalable printing technology for flexible electronics, which replaces plastic and metal-based inks, typically used in the development of flexible circuits, with cellulose and carbon inks. The project convinced the jury composed of Tiago Ilharco (NCREP), Sérgio Rodrigues (COREangels), Cristiana Cruz (CM Porto) and Luis Reis (Altice Labs), who awarded the PhD students in Chemical and Biological Engineering the highest score.

Last year, these researchers from the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP) had already achieved second place in the national edition of ClimateLaunchpad, the world’s largest cleantech ideas competition.

In addition to the jury, the public also had the opportunity to vote for what they considered to be the best pitch: QCertify, a platform that automatically identifies all existing encryption in an organisation and implements new post-quantum encryption protections.

The Best Evolution Award, which highlighted the progress of one of the business projects throughout the programme, went to MUTU, a SaaS platform geared towards more efficient collaboration between suppliers.

During Pitch Day, 10 of the 21 projects that were part of the latest edition of the School of Startups took to the stage. Over three months, participants had the opportunity to take part in practical workshops on topics such as market analysis, differentiation, intellectual property and pitch training, as well as enjoying individual mentoring with experts and access to UPTEC’s workspaces.

Over the last 13 editions of the UPTEC acceleration programme, 540 entrepreneurs and more than 240 business ideas have been supported, resulting in more than 80 companies.

This School of Startups was financed by the PRR (Plano de Recuperação e Resiliência). 

29 January 2026