FLASHGuard project wins 2025 edition of the Lab2Market programme
"LIP-developed technology for FLASH radiotherapy monitoring wins Técnico’s innovation award. "
The FLASHGuard project, developed at the Laboratory of Instrumentation and Experimental Particle Physics (LIP) in collaboration with the Department of Physics of Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), was the winner of the 9th edition of the Lab2Market innovation acceleration programme, promoted by Técnico with the support of NTT Data and i-Deals.
The final event took place on June 3rd at the Técnico Innovation Center powered by Fidelidade, with dozens of attendees present. After four months of intensive training, FLASHGuard stood out among the five finalist projects and was awarded the António Brandão Vasconcelos Prize, recognising the most innovative project of the edition.
The LIP team developed a real-time beam monitoring system for FLASH radiotherapy, an emerging cancer treatment technique that uses ultra-short radiation pulses to better spare healthy tissue and reduce side effects. The device ensures extremely fast and accurate measurements, essential for the safe and effective clinical application of this approach.
The project is part of the Particles4Health research group, recently created at LIP and led by Pedro Assis. The winning team includes Gonçalo Ribeiro (PhD), Carolina Miranda (Master's), Gonçalo Roriz (Master's), Pedro Assis, Bernardo Tomé, and Patrícia Gonçalves.
This award adds to other major achievements of the FLASHGuard project, which was presented at the FRPT 2024 international conference on FLASH radiotherapy and received two prizes at the JEF Awards 2025, recognising the contributions of LIP’s young researchers.
FLASHGuard is the first project from LIP and the Department of Physics to win the Lab2Market competition, a programme that has been fostering the transfer of scientific research to real-world innovation since 2018. Over its nine editions, Lab2Market has supported 45 projects and contributed to the creation of nine startups.
This victory highlights LIP’s innovation potential and strengthens its commitment to developing disruptive technologies in service of human health.