​How can you attract international talent to your company?

​Co-organized by OpenHub and The POD, with the support of AILouvain and Agoria, this event is designed for companies looking to explore how the StudentLabs program can become a strategic lever for their innovation roadmap.

​StudentLabs offers companies a unique opportunity to collaborate with Belgian and international students on real innovation challenges. Backed by expert coaching from OpenHub engineers and a structured methodology, the program delivers concrete results quickly and affordably. Companies benefit from creative input, fresh perspectives, and full visibility throughout the process with an easy setup designed to remove common barriers (project framing, onboarding, and day-to-day follow-up).

The POD contributes by mobilizing its local digital member companies to feed the StudentLabs pipeline with concrete business challenges and project ideas for the 2026 edition and by connecting the right companies to the right student profiles.

​During this event, you'll hear from companies that worked with international students and past participants, understand how the program works in practice, and explore the opportunity to submit your own project ideas for the 2026 edition with a strong focus on “what does it mean for a company, concretely?” (effort required, expectations, and key success factors).

​Who is it for?

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This event is intended for companies based in Wallonia, Brussels, or Flanders that are active in innovation, product development, digital or operational strategy, and are looking for new forms of collaboration with talented students including SMEs, scale-ups and corporates, especially teams looking to prototype, validate assumptions, explore a new product direction, or accelerate a concrete challenge with limited internal bandwidth. Typical attendees include innovation managers, product leads, digital/tech leads, R&D or operations teams, and HR/talent leads supporting strategic hiring.

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Detailed program
 

​12:15 – 13:00 | Welcome & Lunch 
Informal networking lunch upon arrival. 

​13:00 | Institutional introduction 
Welcome speech by the Rector of UCLouvain. 

​13:15 – 13:30 | Student Labs program overview 
Presentation by OpenHub. 

​13:45 – 14:15 | Experience sharing 
• Two companies that took part in the 2025 edition 
• One student from the 2025 cohort 

​14:15 – 14:30 | Student Labs in practice 
How the program works, step-by-step, and what’s expected from participating companies. 

​14:30 – 16:00 | Project framing sessions 
Open discussion tables with companies and OpenHub experts to explore and define potential projects for the 2026 edition. 

⚠️ Registration - Participation is free of charge, but registration is required.