FLASHGuard, a team comprising students, researchers and professors from Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, represented Portugal in the international final of the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition 2026 in Boston, after winning the national round of the competition on 11 April. The project, which transforms cancer treatment through real-time beam monitoring for FLASH Radiotherapy, is the result of research carried out at the Laboratory of Instrumentation and Experimental Particle Physics (LIP) by the Particles4Health group and has become a spin-off from Técnico and LIP, RTBeamTech.
For Manuel Ratola, a member of the team and researcher at LIP, the competition proved to be an opportunity to showcase “the quality of the ideas, the talent and the entrepreneurial spirit that exist in the country”. “It is a tremendous honour to represent Portugal in a competition of this scale and prestige, especially as it is the first international edition of the MIT 100K to be held outside the United States”, he says.
Gonçalo Roriz, a master’s student in Engineering Physics, highlights the impact of participating on both a professional and personal level. For the student, the competition was “an excellent opportunity to raise the profile” of the startup and expand his “contact network”. On a personal level, he believes this experience represented “further strengthening and maturing” of the team’s entrepreneurial spirit, which has been “consolidated through participation and also victory in various entrepreneurship competitions”.
The team member also highlights the “extremely dynamic and inspiring” atmosphere experienced during the competition. “Being surrounded by teams from different fields and institutions created an atmosphere of strong knowledge sharing, creativity and entrepreneurial spirit”, says the researcher, adding that the event served as “a platform to showcase the best projects in Portugal, particularly at LIP and Instituto Superior Técnico, in a truly international context”.
Pedro Assis, a professor at Técnico who is also part of the project, believes that the team’s journey has been marked by “a very consistent evolution, both from a technological and strategic point of view”. “As a professor, it is particularly rewarding to see knowledge generated in an academic context transform into a solution with the potential for real impact on society and the healthcare sector”, he said.
According to Gonçalo Ribeiro, currently a visiting assistant professor at Técnico, “furthering the scientific development of the project, consolidating its technological maturity and contributing to the training of the next generation of scientists and entrepreneurs” are some of the team’s future objectives. “As far as FLASHGuard is concerned, our goal is clear: to continue developing the solution and help transform cancer treatment through innovation, making it more effective and safer”, he concludes.
In 2025, the FLASHGuard project had already won the 9th edition of the Lab2Market programme, an innovation acceleration programme organised by Técnico with the support of NTT Data, and the Youth Start-Up Competition 2025, promoted by the European Commission as part of European SME Week.
