NGAL ® (Network Globally, Act Locally) has been an intensive hands-on business development programme for early-stage student teams, starting from Tartu and ending either in Charleston or Lincoln in USA.  The project was supported by the Harry and Reba Huge Foundation.

NGAL ® is an ambitious, high-impact business development programme linking five universities across countries and cultures through student-centered entrepreneurship. It is an intense, impactful, summer immersion and travel abroad programme for students who are company founders and who plan to take their company to scale.  

The programme enables you to develop your business idea and MVP together with student teams from two Estonian and three US universities. The universities involved are University of Tartu and Tallinn University of Technology, College of Charleston, The Citadel (Military College of South Carolina) and Nebraska Wesleyan University. The project is partly financed by Harry and Reba Huge Foundation. 

2019 NGAL ® took place 2. - 14. June. 4 students from team io_developers and team Timewire (2 people from each team) represented University of Tartu.  The main prize was 3000$!

Group picture while visiting Boeing headquarters

The University of Tartu team io_developers won the second place and a $2000 prize in 2019. Io_developers are developing application-controlled optical eyeglasses that enable focus adjustment. Team members Elchin Aghazada and Murad Mammadov praise the NGAL programme for the chance to experience the challenges of entrepreneurship and studying abroad, as well as for the international contacts. According to Elchin, the programme contributed to both his professional and personal development. Read more.

In 2018 the  University of Tartu team ResDec won the 2nd prize. The 1st award went to Tallinn University of Technology team Timey.

2017 winning team was Cody from the University of Tartu! „The first place surely came as a big surprise for us,“ says the leader of Cody, University of Tartu student Kaspar Kuus. „It took us a while to realize that three Estonian teams actually made it to the TOP 3. All the teams had been working really hard and did great progress during the programme, so it was almost impossible to forecast the winners.“

Team io_developers (2nd place in 2019) and  Maret Ahonen
Team Cody  (winner of 2017) with Helen Kokk