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Project manager Raphael von Thiessen kicked things off with an introduction to the Innovation Sandbox. He explained the purpose of the sandbox and presented the selected AI projects. The Innovation Sandbox serves as a learning environment - like a laboratory, so to speak - in which companies, organizations and administrations can test out AI projects and develop expertise in the field of AI deployment without being completely left to their own devices. This is because the Sandbox project team advises submitted projects on regulatory issues and, if requested, provides new data sources. So far, 21 projects have been submitted, most of which came from smaller companies and startups, but also research institutes and some large companies.

At the practical seminar, the six selected projects were presented and discussed together with the participants. Using Mentimeter, participants had multiple opportunities to share their thoughts. So too on the question of where they see the greatest potential for AI in the public sector. The areas of administration, knowledge transfer & management, transport, cyber security, taxes, social affairs and communications stood out. Some of the projects presented actually fall into the above areas. For example, Parquery's Smart Parking project or AI-based administrative document search. Other projects surprised with their scope of application, such as the automated correction of primary school assignments, which aims to relieve teachers in order to create more time for individual support. The question of the risks of AI in the public sector was also raised; participants considered data protection, the threat to jobs, the question of ethics and quality, but also the fear of loss of control and the misuse of AI to be particularly important.

After the introduction to the topic, the participants divided into six groups to the corresponding World Cafés:

1. Smart parking through image recognition
2. Autonomous commercial vehicles
3. Infrastructure maintenance by drones
4. Machine translation of administrative texts
5. Automated corrections of primary school tasks
6. AI-based search of administrative texts

For fifteen minutes, each table discussed the opportunities and risks of using AI, where further areas of application lie, and what needs to be considered when implementing it. If the event management had not called for a rotation after the elapsed time and a conclusion after three rotations, the discussions would probably have continued until late in the evening. It was clear that the topic is more topical than ever. The evening showed that Artificial Intelligence and its diverse applications raise many questions and need promotion in a protected setting, one like the Innovation Sandbox, where responsible innovation can emerge.

Would you like to learn more about one of the projects or even initiate a similar project in your area? Then contact the responsible project manager Raphael von Thiessen. He will be happy to discuss the topic of AI with you.

Raphael von Thiessen
Project Manager Innovation Sandbox for AI
Division of Business and Economic Development
raphael.vonthiessen@vd.zh.ch

The presentation by Vlad Trifa, CEO & Founder of ZIMT AG, highlighted the need for an upgrade in the global food system and the challenges faced by food producers. Trifa emphasized the potential of blockchain technology in addressing these challenges and achieving goals such as traceability, transparency, and trust in the food industry.

The presentation acknowledged that traceability in the food industry requires complex IT integrations and collaborations. However, blockchain technology was presented as a solution to facilitate this process, offering a decentralized and immutable ledger that can securely record and track the journey of food products.

ZIMT AG proposed their solution, which leverages blockchain technology as the core component. Their ZIMT Hub serves as a digital data certification, utilizing blockchain to provide a trusted notarization service.

The presentation showcased past projects and pilots involving blockchain technology, including data collection for farmers in Brazil, cold chain monitoring of chocolate shipments, and a full digitization solution for Swiss wine makers. These examples highlighted the benefits of blockchain in streamlining data management, enhancing trust and loyalty from consumers, simplifying compliance with regulations, and optimizing processes and operations in the supply chain.

In conclusion, the presentation emphasized the transformative potential of blockchain technology in revolutionizing the food industry. By leveraging blockchain for traceability, transparency, and data certification, ZIMT AG aims to enable small and medium-sized food businesses to meet consumer demands and comply with upcoming regulations while building trust and improving efficiency throughout the food supply chain.

** This text was generated by ChatGPT based on the presentation of Vlat Tirfa and edited by the Innovation Zurich team.

Data will play a central role in the medicine of the future. Data makes it possible to better understand diseases and develop new therapies. The opportunities and challenges of data-based medicine were discussed at the conference in keynote speeches, parallel sessions and a panel discussion. In addition, an Investor Track, networking meetings and an exhibition space offered a variety of networking opportunities.

More precise therapies

The development in the direction of precision medicine was at the center as a fundamental trend. More and more precise data, as well as new technologies, are needed to better tailor treatments to the individual. Such technological innovations include organoids, as Professor Hans Clevers, Head of Research and Early Development and member of the extended Corporate Executive Committee at Roche, explained.

Bernd Bodenmiller, Professor of Quantitative Biomedicine at ETH and the University of Zurich, then provided insights into data-based methods for more precise tumor diagnostics. His team is working - in the meantime also within the framework of the start-up Navignostics - on the incorporation of single-cell data into "digital tumors" in order to simulate the course of the disease and the effects of therapy.

In the parallel sessions, numerous projects were presented that aim to improve medicine with the help of data. The challenges repeatedly mentioned were data management, data interoperability and privacy protection - or the question of who should own the data. Common, cross-institutional data standards are all the more important, the conference emphasized. This is the only way to overcome the isolated "data silos" that have existed up to now.

Professor Philipp Fürnstahl and Dr. Sebastiano Caprara reported on how such data standardization is to be achieved at Balgrist University Hospital in Zurich. With the OR-X project, a surgical research and learning center will also be available at the clinic from August 2023. Among other things, new surgical technologies such as augmented reality, robotics and artificial intelligence will be tested there. The project is correspondingly digitized and data-based.

The importance of data becomes clear at the latest when it is missing. This is the case, for example, in the field of gender medicine, as Catherine Gebhard, professor at the Inselspital in Bern, reported. The "gender data gap" can be seen, for example, in the fact that men are usually overrepresented in studies and women suffer more often from the side effects of treatments. According to Susanne Gedamke, executive director of the Swiss Patients' Organization, there are also blind spots with regard to patients' perspectives. Little is known, for example, about how they evaluate medical services.

Resources needed

In the panel discussion, it became clear once again that it's about more than just data. A good infrastructure, a governance framework, and a societal understanding of data sharing are equally important to making meaningful use of health data. This requires the appropriate financial resources. Overall, the panelists were confident that much would be achieved in the coming years with regard to the further digitization of healthcare and the use of data in medicine. At the end of the conference, the two start-ups aiEndoscopic and Positrigo received an award for the best presentations of their companies in the Investor Track.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming our society. Beyond the currently hyped systems such as ChatGPT or DALL-​E, which can generate images, the technology has also found its way into the daily work of lawyers and even judges. At present, such applications are still in their early stages, but AI has the potential to change our justice system. Yet as well as promising significant benefits, it also raises new ethical and legal questions. Most importantly, it will change the roles and skill requirements for lawyers and judges.

By deploying AI, law firms and courts will be able to work more efficiently and automate repetitive tasks. Let’s hope this will reduce the notorious backlog of cases in courts today. AI-​powered systems are already being used by lawyers, for example to analyse large amounts of data and contracts. And some courts in the United States are using AI systems to assist with sentencing decisions or predict an offender’s risk of recidivism.

However, there are pitfalls: today’s AI algorithms are often not transparent enough to meet the high demands for accountability in the justice system. Critics also fear that AI systems could perpetuate bias and discrimination. This is because the reliability of AI depends on the quality of the data input. If AI support systems are trained on biased data, this can lead to unfair outcomes.

To minimise such unintended consequences, it is imperative to rigorously test AI systems before deploying them. New regulatory guidelines are also needed. The EU rightly classifies the use of AI in the justice system as a high-​risk application and will regulate it strictly – in terms of transparency, oversight and cybersecurity, among other things – in the AI Act currently under discussion.

For me, the justice system belongs to the sensitive and critical areas of our lives where AI systems must not replace humans altogether. To guarantee accountability, we need to keep humans in the loop; I’m convinced that humans are needed as guardians of AI. Judges in the future will not only have to pass judgements, but also decide how AI is used in their work. They will have to know the advantages and disadvantages of AI and keep an eye on the associated trade-​offs and balance these in conscious decisions.

One such trade-​off, for example, is that between speed and thoroughness. AI is undoubtedly fast, and some lawyers argue that “justice delayed is justice denied". An imperfect decision rendered today may therefore be better than a perfect decision not rendered at all.

Another trade-​off is that between expediency and certainty. Today, there are still no standards governing the use of AI in the judiciary and its validity and reliability. Judges must use their judgement when they allow AI to support them in their work.

Often commercially developed

A third dilemma arises from the fact that today AI is often developed commercially rather than as an open-​source technology. I think developing companies have a legitimate interest in protecting their trade secrets, but this clashes with our insistence that legal decisions be transparent and accountable. If we want to provide the justice system with AI probabilistic analyses of DNA matches and decision-​making aids in sentencing, that means compromising on transparency in many cases.

AI has the potential to make the justice system more efficient, faster and qualitatively better, but it entails balancing trade-​offs and making compromises. As in the case of judges, the use of AI technologies in many other aspects of our lives entails an urgent need to equip the “humans in the loop” with a high degree of AI-​specific expertise and the self-​confidence to make these difficult decisions. As a society, now is the time to collectively define what these trade-​offs should be, and to build this capacity.

Author: Ayisha Piotti, ETH-News
Image source: ETH Zurich / Adobe Stock

The Fixposition AG  has a partnership with Sixents Technology from Beijing decided. According to a Media Release the Chinese company will use sensors from Fixposition that enable centimeter-precise positioning data.

Sixents Technology is a provider of high-precision positioning solutions based on global navigation satellite systems (GNSS). The company has installed about 3000 so-called permanently operated reference stations (CORS) across China. Sixents Technology's positioning data is reportedly used by players in a wide range of industries.

The combination of Fixposition's and Sixents Technology's technologies enables "high-precision global positioning for a broader range of application scenarios," Zhenzhong Su, co-founder and CEO of Fixposition, is quoted as saying. The collaboration will enable solutions for autonomous devices operating in complex environments where satellite signals are susceptible to interference, he said.

Fixposition is a spin-off from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich(ETH). The start-up's sensors are already being used in autonomous lawn mowers, sweeping robots and agricultural robots. ce/ssp

Since April 24, 2023 Patagonia has a base camp in the Impact Hub Zurich (Viadukt) and moves with the showroom to the industrial district in the heart of the city. This in the year of Patagonia's 50th anniversary and the move to transfer Patagonia's ownership to Earth last September. Profits that are not reinvested in the company are distributed as dividends to protect the planet.

Through this partnership, shared resources, networks and expertise will be leveraged to develop new and innovative solutions to complex environmental and social challenges. Partners will work on impact projects that have the potential to create significant positive change. Purpose over profit and collaboration over competition. The vision is to develop a new entrepreneurial model together and to combine the multi-faceted activities and networks. The Viadukt offers the two communities an ideal setting and space for joint coworking, networking and co-creation.

On May 15, 2023, Patagonia CEO Ryan Gellert will speak live from Ventura, California at an opening event.

About Patagonia

Patagonia is in business to save our home planet. Founded in 1973 by Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia Works ("Patagonia") is a certified B Corporation based in Ventura, California. As a founding member of "1% for the Planet", the company is internationally renowned for its product quality and environmental commitment. The unique ownership structure makes it clear that the earth is Patagonia's sole shareholder: profits that are not reinvested in the company are distributed as dividends to protect the planet.

About Impact Hub Zurich

The Impact Hub curates the largest network of creatives, startup founders and techies in Switzerland. The thriving community works together across organizations, cultures and generations to create a sustainable and livable future. The Impact Hub Zurich connects entrepreneurs, corporations, NGOs, public institutions and many other makers into a unique, collaborative innovation ecosystem. With over 700 members and a large network of partners, Impact Hub Zurich is one of the largest entrepreneurial communities in Zurich and Switzerland. With over 2,000 members in 6 Hubs nationwide and over 24,000 members in more than 100 Impact Hubs worldwide, they are also one of the largest national and global networks for innovation and social entrepreneurship.

A DroneHub is to be created in the NEST building. As a short video produced by the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa) shows, this will be a kind of aviary. A metal tube construction and mesh forms a cage covering an area of 90 square meters and measuring up to 11 meters tall. According to an Empa press release, the completed DroneHub will provide test environments for three research fields.

For the first, aerial 3D printing, an experimental facade fitted with interchangeable elements is used to develop drones that can carry out aerial inspection and repair work in the vertical. “The drones can detect and repair cracks, for example, without the need for elaborate scaffolding or endangering the safety of people,” explains Mirko Kovac, head of Empa's Sustainability Robotics and director of the Aerial Robotics Lab at Imperial College London.

The second area of application, robotic environmental sensing, focuses on the interaction between drones and nature. “They can place targeted sensors in nature and read the data with regular flights,” says Kovac. He adds that this is “very relevant” for energy facilities such as wind turbines or dams, as well as for collecting climate data in impassable and wide-ranging areas.

The third area of research will develop rules and technological standards for the coexistence of robots and humans, such as interfaces between buildings and flying robots. This relates, for example, to landing sites on or near buildings or positioning of charging stations. ce/mm/Café Europe

This May, Wetrok AG is launching a hybrid floor cleaning machine on the market. Robomatic Marvin can be used both manually and autonomously. According to a press release, the robot is a world first and operates on the basis of Artificial Intelligence (AI). It was developed in cooperation with Sevensense Robotics AG from Zurich. As is the case for all Wetrok products and cleaning systems, the cleaning robot was developed in the research department at the Swiss headquarters in Kloten in the canton of Zurich.

Visually, the robot has the look of a conventional scrubbing machine to “prevent fear of contact”. As such, it can be used 100 percent manually, although if required the Robomatic Marvin can also clean medium-sized areas in gyms, museums, shopping malls and hospitals in fully automated fashion. The machine can cover up to 1,400 square meters per hour.

For this, cleaners must first train the robot by driving it across a floor area. The machine saves this route and can then carry out this cleaning process independently. “This process can be used for numerous floor areas throughout the building – with the robot only having to be trained once for each area”, the press release states. For maximum safety, the robot is able to navigate around both static and moving obstacles.

While the robot is wiping surfaces, the cleaning staff can concentrate on more demanding tasks such as window cleaning or special cleaning activities. This spares cleaning staff from the monotonous work of cleaning large floor areas, while also generating efficiency gains when it comes to cleaning buildings and counteracting staff shortages. ce/ko/Café Europe

ANYbotics, a spin-off of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, has, according to a Media Release realized a $50 million capital raise in a Series B financing round. The round was organized by Walden Catalyst and NGP Capital cited. Bessemer Venture Partners, Aramco Ventures, Swisscom Ventures, Swisscanto Private Equity, Equity Pitcher Ventures and Verve Ventures as well as existing investors also participated.

With ANYmal, the Zurich-based company has created a robust walking robot capable of performing diagnostic and control functions in laboratories and industrial facilities where human access is difficult or dangerous. ANYmal can perform optical, acoustic and chemical controls. Error messages on systems are sent directly to a control center and maintenance work is triggered. The use of ANYmal increases the operational reliability of plants and reduces maintenance costs. The walking robot is used by companies such as PETRONAS, Shell, Siemens Energy, BASF and Vale were used.

"This funding validates our unique approach to addressing the fundamental challenges of operating complex industrial facilities," Dr. Péter Fankhauser, co-founder and CEO of ANYbotics, is quoted as saying in the release. "With this investment, we will expand internationally and accelerate the development of our robots' AI capabilities, such as in performing maintenance tasks, to revolutionize automated industrial operations." ce/ww

The foodward Foundation has been networking industry and science in the field of food since it was founded twelve years ago and, among other things, offers continuing education modules together with the Zurich University of Applied Sciences ZHAW and the Bern University of Applied Sciences. In the past few years, the partners in the network have increasingly established contacts with startups and innovative projects. This has shown that there is a need for startup-specific support. In a one-year conception phase, foodward, together with its partners, specifically set up a support program for food startups. "Our goal is to work with research, startups and industry to develop, test and establish sustainable innovations," says foodward CEO Alban Muret.

The support program Pioneer was launched in January 2023. Whether in the idea phase, in connection with the proof of concept or with regard to scaling steps: The program aims to offer a hand in the development and establishment of innovations and thus addresses food startups at different stages of development. Muret elaborates, "We look with the startup to see where it currently stands and what it needs for the next steps in its development."

Startups in the grant program do not attend ready-to-pour coaching modules. You will receive an individual support package based on your assessed needs and will be accompanied by foodward's network of experts. These include representatives from science & research and experts in the fields of law, strategy and financing. The grant program also counts on industry partners. At the same time, they provide part of the funding budget. Among the partners are the large dairy Emmi, the fenaco cooperative, the raw materials trader Kündig, Migros Zurich and other industrial partners. With their respective subsidiaries, points of contact and synergies can be offered along the entire value chain. In addition, the collaboration with the Department of Life Sciences and Facility Management at the ZHAW as a program partner provides access to know-how and infrastructure.

This individual approach seems to be well received by the young companies: Since its launch in January 2023, around 20 startups have already joined the program without a call for proposals or an active application. Among them about fabas, Gaiatech or Noriware. "Thanks to our many years of work in food, we are well connected and our partners recommend us to startups in their field," explains Muret. Other interested research project teams and startups can apply on an ongoing basis via a Apply online form .

(press release / FR)

Radiate Engineering & Design AG, based in Zurich, is founding the "UAV Division", a team focusing on lightweight construction, aerodynamics and structural optimization of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The UAV Division is specifically focused on the needs of the UAV industry and brings together all the necessary skills and resources to design, engineer, prototype, test, and certify civil commercial UAVs.

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles is a key technology of the future and will profoundly change the economy and society in the coming years and decades. UAVs will be of critical economic importance and offer many opportunities for regions in Europe and beyond. Unlike other industries, this huge growth market is still in its infancy and has yet to scale, so there is great potential for companies to take a leading role in this industry. According to a recent study by Drone Industry Insights, the global civil drone market is estimated to reach nearly $56 billion by 2030.

Switzerland has become a center for drone technology and expertise. This is thanks to the country's leading universities, such as ETH Zurich and EPFL Lausanne, which have created a solid foundation for attracting qualified professionals in this field. Integrated into this ecosystem, Radiate Engineering & Design provides UAV companies with the necessary conditions to develop, test and deploy their products in the field.

Aerodynamic and structural optimizations for maximum performance and efficiency.

With a focus on aerodynamic and structural optimization, products are optimized for performance and efficiency. Aerodynamic dimensioning is often at the very beginning of a development process. With the ability to produce wind tunnel models in its own prototyping lab, coupled with many hours of wind tunnel testing experience in Switzerland and Europe, the UAV Division enables rapid iteration between CFD optimization and wind tunnel validation. For the structural optimization of an airframe, digital twins are tested and validated against real load cases, using state-of-the-art FEM, novel methods and specially developed tools such as machine learning algorithms.

Simulation-Driven Engineering ensures a fast development process.

At the heart of the development process, the UAV Division team combines digital and physical development and relies on simulation-driven engineering. When developing a completely new airframe, be it for fixed-wing, VTOL or copter, the UAV Division offers tailor-made services to meet the exact needs and requirements of its customers. In addition, Radiate Engineering & Design is able to produce, test and validate concepts quickly and efficiently in its in-house prototyping lab right in the heart of Zurich. The goal here is to accelerate the development process in order to validate concepts in practice and during test flights as early as possible.

In-depth knowledge of production processes and a broad network enable cost-effective and efficient production.

Thanks to many years of experience in industrialization and an extensive network in Europe and Asia, Radiate Engineering & Design offers its customers access to competent and reliable partners for the procurement, manufacture and assembly of airframes. Furthermore, the UAV Division team has extensive expertise in fiber composites, injection molding and additive manufacturing. The team's expertise allows them to explore the limits of materials and manufacturing processes to achieve optimal results for the purpose at hand.

Certification and business development with external partners.

Together with external partners and leading experts in the field of regulatory and commercial use processes, Radiate Engineering & Design provides legal and technical expertise to meet the requirements of today's regulatory agencies. The UAV Division considers the requirements for safe operation at an early stage of development to pave the way for flight approval. In close cooperation with its partners, the UAV Division team is able to accompany application procedures up to the granting of the operating license by the authorities.

Timothy Habermacher takes over.

The new UAV Division will be led by Timothy Habermacher, a Master of Science ETH in Mechanical Engineering with many years of experience in the UAV industry, lightweight design, structural simulation and composite materials.

"Innovation never ends. That's why our goal is to accompany our UAV customers through the entire lifecycle of their products: from the idea to design, prototyping, continuous improvement through extensive testing, and finally to industrialization," says Timothy Habermacher. "We enjoy making our customers' ideas fly," he adds. 

The use of drones to detect damage to structures or roads in order to facilitate the generation of image data or to optimize the perspective is not new. AI-supported data evaluation is also no longer a dream of the future. However, artificial intelligence needs to be trained to perform certain tasks on its own. This is because damage is structure-specific; cracks in a bridge pier can be very different from those on a runway. For the best possible results, data from the intended use case must therefore be incorporated into the creation of new models - a time-consuming training process...

The full article is available on Drones.

very year, the TOP 100 Swiss Startup Award showcases the 100 most innovative and promising Swiss startups, selected by a jury of 100 leading investors and experts. The TOP 100 Public Voting runs parallel to the expert jury ranking and highlights outstanding Swiss startups that will be celebrated onstage on award night. The 10 winning startups will be announced in the TOP 100 Swiss Startup Magazine 2023. 

In order to highlight the broad spectrum of entrepreneurial talent in Switzerland, the TOP 100 Public Voting awards one winner for each of 10 sectors: Biotech, Cleantech, Engineering, Fintech, Foodtech, ICT, Medtech, Proptech, Robotics, and Security. 

All Swiss startups listed on startup.ch and founded on or after January 1st, 2018 are eligible for your vote.

• 3 simple steps to participate in the TOP 100 Public Voting Visit www.startup.ch for a list of all participating startups. 
• Choose your winning startup and click on the gold "Vote now" button on the startup's profile. 
• Sign in with your LinkedIn account. Each user has one vote only. 

All votes must be submitted by midnight on July 23, 2023.

Showzone is a spinoff of ETH Zurich and has developed software to make presentations «experienceable». The solution provides a digital extension alongside existing presentation content to significantly enhance the audience's sense of attention and experience. Currently they are in the Runway Incubator to further develop their idea and prepare for market launch.

Using a drag-and-drop solution developed by the founders, presenters can load their files directly into the app. After that, AI (artificial intelligence) does the rest without any further effort: a code is automatically generated with which the audience can enter a so-called zone via smartphone or laptop. The founders of Showzone call this process: «becoming part of the show». This allows the audience to use the interactive elements themselves. The founders of Showzone are sure that this will make the audience more likely to remember individual parts of the «show» even after the presentation.

Pilot users are already testing the MVP and providing feedback to help further optimize the product. Maybe you, as a participant of a seminar, will soon enjoy a presentation spiced up with Showzone!

ABB Robotics is equipping its autonomous mobile robots (AMR) with a technology that enables them to make smart navigational decisions. According to a press release from ABB Robotics, this technology developed jointly with Sevensense Robotics from Zurich combines artificial intelligence and 3D vision. It is called Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping, or Visual SLAM for short.

Visual SLAM uses cameras mounted on the AMR, which are used to create a 3D map of all objects in the environment in real time. The technology can differentiate between fixed navigational reference points such as floors, ceilings, and walls and moving objects like people or vehicles. This means it can dynamically adapt to its environment so that it is able to choose the safest and most efficient route.

According to ABB, as the environment does not change, production does not need to be stopped, and no additional infrastructure must be established, the visual SLAM technology contributes to a reduction in operation time versus 2D SLAM of up to 20 percent. The first products are expected to come to market from Q3 2023.

ABB and Sevensense entered into a strategic partnership in November 2021. This comprises a minority interest in the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich spin-off, which was founded in 2018. ABB acquired ASTI Robotics a few months prior to this. Sami Atiya, President of ABB Robotics & Discrete Automation, refers to the partnership with Sevensense as another milestone in the company's efforts to fully unlock flexible automation for its customers. 

ETH is strengthening its medical research and building a new site in Schlieren. A leased building (SSA) is currently being expanded accordingly for this purpose. It is located in the immediate vicinity of the Wagi site and thus of the Bio-Technopark Schlieren-Zurich. It is scheduled to be ready for occupancy in January 2025.

According to a media release, the SSA offers space for eight to ten professorships or research groups in the life sciences on approximately 7,000 square meters. The building will be used "very efficiently and flexibly," as will expensive scientific equipment.

According to the information, this is also intended to promote networking with the various research and industrial companies that maintain sites in the Bio-Technopark. In particular, ETH addresses the University Hospital Zurich, the University of Zurich and the pharmaceutical company Roche. An optimal research environment would also benefit from the close proximity to its medical spin-offs located there, such as Anavo medical, Acytronix or Suri BioTech.

This is because, in addition to basic research, ETH Zurich also contributes to "ensuring that research results reach clinics and patients quickly," Vice President Research Christian Wolfrum is quoted as saying. "Accordingly, it is also investing in translational research." It combines basic research with the practical application of research findings in patient care. mm

In recent months, various crises have affected investment activity globally and in the US, including the circumstances surrounding FTX and Silicon Valley Bank, rising interest rates, and high inflation, behooving investors to focus on their existing portfolio companies. This creates a particularly challenging environment for growth companies looking to raise new capital.

Yet, San Francisco Bay still represents around 20% of U.S. venture capital deal counts and more than 30% of total deal value. Dry powder held by venture capital funds is at an all-time high. For the Venture Leaders Technology 2023, who were chosen from over 150 applications by a jury of investors and technology experts, access to the startup ecosystem in Silicon Valley remains vital.

Success stories of some of last year's Venture Leaders underline the momentum that can be built on by expanding their network and insight: the agritech startup xFarm celebrated a capital injection of EUR 17 million and the ETH spin-off LatticeFlow secured USD 12 million, reaching significant milestones in their growth.

"This roadshow is very important for startups that wish to do business in the US—to understand the cultural differences, understand the mentality and the approach to investors, which gives this program a unique overview of the critical aspects for a Swiss company looking to succeed in the US," said Robert Skobrak, Director at program partner Rothschild & Co., who introduced to the Venture Leaders to pitching practices in a US context at the kickoff event in February.

VENTURE LEADERS IMPRESS SILICON VALLEY INVESTORS

The goal of the one-week Venture Leaders Technology roadshow is to accelerate the startups' expansion into the US market and build an exceptional business network through meeting top-notch investors and industry leaders in Silicon Valley. The members of the Swiss National Startup Team 2023 pitched to well-known investors such as Bessemer Venture Partners, Rothschild Global Advisory, True Ventures, DCVC, FyrFly Ventures, Tenacity, Swisscom, and Unionlabs. Furthermore, they participated in high-class workshops with Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Simon-Kucher & Partners, and HR expert Jodi Johnson.

The team impressed local VCs, who underlined the maturity of the Venture Leaders' vision as well as the innovative potential emerging from the Swiss startup ecosystem.

"It is great to see how mature and prepared the startups are that Venturelab brought from Switzerland," said Rohit Sharma, partner at True Ventures, "Not only in terms of revenue with paid clients but also with a clear strategy on how they wish to implement the funds raised."

"It is impressive to see how deep-tech oriented and lab designed the startups we bring from Switzerland are, which makes a clear difference to startups in Silicon Valley," said Ben Narasin, founder and director of Tenacity.

Juliette Invanez, project manager and representative for the Canton of Vaud, also highlighted the Venture Leaders' quality and openness to the opportunities the roadshow provides to a growing startup: "From the peacefulness of Pier 17, the team embarked on a pitching marathon, sharpening their presentation skills and embracing (sometimes harsh) feedback from US investors, strengthening their efforts towards global expansion. With Etat de Vaud as one of the program supporters, I am humbled and proud to work with brilliant entrepreneurs navigating their ventures with confidence and focus. Even more proud as 5 out of the 10 selected startups are established in Vaud, having already created dozens of highly qualified jobs in our region."

Between meetings and learning opportunities, there were many other chances to get to connect with representatives of the local innovation scene and make lasting connections, such as the welcome reception hosted by the Swiss General Consul Balz Abplanalp for the Swiss National Startup Team and selected friends; the special evening of pitching and BBQ hosted by Swisscom Oupost; as well as the Swiss Pitch Night hosted by Swissnex.

AN INVALUABLE EXPERIENCE

After an exciting week with their peers, the Venture Leaders returned to Switzerland, ready to build on the knowledge and connections gained on this exceptional roadshow.

"Last week I was fortunate to participate in Venturelab Technology Leaders 2023 in San Francisco. The exchange with other founders and the intense program gave me many takeaways," said Michel Mohler, co-founder and CFO of Lyfegen.

"Joining the great experience of visiting the San Francisco Bay Area with the top ten Swiss startups was a great honor," said Marco Hochstrasser of Nexoya. "Networking with brilliant founders, partners, and investors from around the world and gaining invaluable insights on how to help more marketing experts with our AI platform was very inspiring. The program was packed with thought-provoking workshops, enlightening pitch sessions, and social activities with the local community that made for a week filled with discovery and learning."

Lara Gervaise, team captain and co-founder of Virtuosis, described the week as intense but insightful. "The roadshow was packed with meetings, pitches, and learning about cultural differences and the Silicon Valley ecosystem," she said, adding that the final day's sailing tour in the Bay was a special highlight that rounded off a week of growth and connection and thanking organizers and partners.

This year's Venture Leaders Technology program is co-organized by Venturelab and supported by Canton of Vaud, Canton of Zürich, EPFL, ETH Zürich, Kellerhals Carrard, and Rothschild & Co.

Before start-ups can launch their medical devices or digital technologies on the market, they must first be tested and approved by a certification body. This complex, lengthy and, in particular, cost-intensive approval phase is often underestimated from the perspective of start-ups and investors. This phase is often characterized by stagnation and it is not uncommon for start-ups to lack the staying power to successfully survive this period. So how can we prevent a product's success story from ending before it even hits the market? To get answers to this question, Nila-Pia Rähle is a guest in the current episode. As co-founder of Effectum Medical AG, Nila helps startups get their products approved and identifies ways to bring them to market faster. Listen to this episode and learn, among other things, what should be considered for the successful approval of a medical device, the importance of the risk classification of the product and what we can learn from other countries to make Switzerland more attractive as a start-up location in the future.

"Marketplace Healthcare" is the podcast about management and leadership in healthcare. Alfred Angerer is a professor at the ZHAW for Management in Healthcare and the founder of Marktplatz Gesundheitswesen. In the podcast he interviews exciting people with whom he discusses the current trends. In doing so, he is looking in a forward-thinking direction that does not neglect topics such as digitalization and process optimization.

From June 1, 2023, so-called civil aviation uses on military airfields will also be possible during the conversion phase. The Dübendorf airfield is currently undergoing such a conversion phase from military to civil use, which will last several years. However, in order to allow aviation companies to settle there and use the airfield during this transitional phase, the Federal Council amended the Ordinance on Aviation Infrastructure accordingly at its meeting on April 26, according to a media release.

This opens up new possibilities for the Dübendorf airfield, as in the future it is to serve not only the air force and civilian emergency organizations such as REGA and the Zurich Cantonal Police, but also the Zurich Innovation Park, which is currently being established there. In the now adjusted regulation, search, rescue and police flights are no longer counted towards the quota of civil aircraft movements. Thus, a contingent remains at Dübendorf that permits civilian movements for other purposes - such as test flights for research purposes.

The Federal Office for Civil Aviation points out that the amendment to the ordinance solves a current challenge in Dübendorf. However, he said, the new rule applies to all military airfields. ce/mm

It is still not a common occurrence for experts from different fields to join forces. "In the process, co-creations enable new perspectives and thus new solutions to problems," said Carmen Walker Späh, the Canton of Zurich's Director of Economic Affairs, at the second event of the Innovation Zurich platform. More than 150 participants had the opportunity to think outside the box. With a focus on medtech and cleantech, Zurich institutions and companies showed how they live cross-industry innovation and what docking points there are. The topic is central to Innovation Zurich: Initiated in 2022 by the cantonal Division of Business and Economic Development, the Greater Zurich Area location marketing organization and Innovation Park Zurich, the platform now networks around 700 players in innovation ecosystems.

When innovations evolve

The evolution from cleantech to medtech of Zurich-based greenteg is a prime example of cross-industry innovation. CEO Wulf Glatz presented the story behind it. The ETH spin-off started in 2009 with its greenteg technology, a scalable heat flow sensor. The founders saw its future in a cleantech application in terms of thermoelectric generators, but implementation was difficult. Wulf Glatz: "So we considered which sector could still benefit from our technology." As a result, the sensor was established in the building sector for measurement purposes. Currently, its use in a portable device is very successful in professional sports, for example - several Olympic athletes use it to control their temperature. Work is underway on further medtech development.

Claudia Scheckel is co-founder and CEO of the Schlieremer UZH spin-off Oncobit. She reported how interdisciplinary collaboration, even across university boundaries, has reduced the burden on cancer patients. Oncobit test procedures with proprietary software enable, among other things, uncomplicated testing and analysis of blood samples for cancer markers.

Complexity needs new approaches

Oncobit was supported by Innosuisse, the Swiss Agency for Innovation Promotion. The company is now part of the new Healthtech Park in Schlieren near Zurich. Such infrastructures help to ensure that innovative cross-connections are perceived and opportunities exploited. The Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research Empa, with sites in Dübendorf, St. Gallen and Thun BE, is also increasingly functioning as a driver of innovation. This was explained by Empa Director Tanja Zimmermann. As an interdisciplinary research institute with around 600 scientists, Empa sees itself as a bridge between research and practice. The five focus areas range from the built environment to health and energy - paralleling key sectors of the Swiss economy as transfer takes center stage. Tanja Zimmermann said, "Problems are becoming more and more complex." Excellent basic skills are needed to enable multidisciplinary syntheses.

Entrepreneurship makes the difference

The panel discussion, moderated by SRF journalist Kathrin Hönegger, focused on the prerequisites for successful cross-industry innovations. Empa Director Tanja Zimmermann emphasized: "We are finding out how helpful a structure with strong horizontal networking is. Silo thinking must become a thing of the past. Martin Kayser, as CTO of the Wyss Zurich Center, agreed. The center is a joint accelerator of UZH and ETH Zurich, bringing together multidisciplinary teams for translational research in regenerative medicine and robotics. According to Kayser, infrastructure could still be expanded in terms of shared use, for example. But in general, there is no lack of top projects at the site. "There is often a lack of entrepreneurial thinking," he said, urging experienced entrepreneurs to become even more involved in the innovation process of startups.

Meeting people from the business world in particular, exchanging ideas - according to Stefan Leuthold, that is a key to bridging the gap between research and the market. The cluster manager of the Health Tech Cluster Switzerland and CEO of the Healthtechpark Schlieren summed it up in his experience: "It needs coffee breaks or as the Swiss say 'Kafichränzli'." With the help of mutual support, Zurich's locational advantage of cutting-edge research could be fully leveraged. And greenteg founder Wulf Glatz added: "Meeting spaces like those created by today's event promote the ecosystem enormously." That's what they want to achieve with the Innovation Zurich initiative. "It's about trust through physical proximity," concluded Fabian Streiff, the head of the canton's location promotion department.

Migros and Schindler will test the self-driving delivery truck built by LOXO as part of a pilot project starting February 8, 2023. And this is how "Migronomous - powered by LOXO" works: Schindler employees can place a Migros order online. Employees at the Migros Mall of Switzerland branch in Ebikon load the delivery vehicle with the ordered products, which then travels at a maximum speed of 30 km/h to Schindler's premises 500 meters away. Once there, Schindler employees can use a code to open the compartment containing their order and remove their purchases.

The pilot project is very demanding. To achieve maximum success, the vehicle will be gradually guided into autonomy until it becomes fully automated in the final phase.

The vehicle operates between the Migros branch and Schindler's company premises from Monday to Friday. "We are strongly interested in linking vertical mobility with innovative, self-driving transport options. Connected transport solutions can make cities more livable and sustainable and make a decisive contribution to decarbonization," explains Christian Studer, Head New Technologies at Schindler.

Innovative, emission-free and Swiss

The self-driving delivery service is made possible by sensors attached to the vehicle that permanently scan the surroundings, passers-by, traffic and traffic signaling. The vehicle runs emission-free thanks to its electric motor. The LOXO Alpha can transport up to 64 shopping bags. "There is great potential in this to reduce private traffic on Swiss roads because customers no longer need to go shopping by car," says Lara Amini, co-founder of LOXO. The "LOXO Alpha" was developed and built entirely in Switzerland by engineers. It is the first completely self-driving delivery vehicle to travel on public Swiss roads.

At Migros, the growth curve for online orders has been pointing upwards for years. Migronomous can play a valuable role in on-demand delivery. "For Migros, it was quickly clear that it wanted to be the first retailer in Switzerland to actively participate in this pioneering project. A self-driving delivery service fits in with our pioneering spirit," says Rainer Deutschmann, Head of the Safety and Transport Directorate. "We can definitely see self-driving delivery services being an addition to our existing transportation fleet in the future."

Migros has been committed to sustainability in transport for years. The retailer relies on a multi-technology strategy for maximum CO2 emission reduction. This means that an ever-increasing proportion of different low-CO2 forms of propulsion - trucks with electric motors, bio-gas and hydrogen propulsion - are being used in road transport.

Ascento from Zurich is seeing a rise in demand ahead of the official market launch of its security robots, which can efficiently monitor large outdoor areas. According to a company press release, the autonomous security robot guards created by the spin-off from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich are already in use at various customer facilities. These include the security firm Securitas, which has been testing the robot with the national Swiss railway company SBB.

A brief video shows the Ascento robot patrolling the site of the SBB Railway Technology Center in Hägendorf in the canton of Solothurn as part of a pilot project. Securitas tested the robots in pilot projects for several months and is now a paying customer. Security providers can rent robots by the hour. “This ‘all-included’ approach is why Securitas have been using it for over six months now,” said Miguel de la Iglesia Valls, CTO at Ascento.

The all-weather robot can navigate rough terrain, bumps, steps and even snow with its two off-road tires. Its “head” houses the computer, battery, sensors and artificial intelligence. It is equipped with a thermal camera that detects people and vehicles, while the 360° camera captures images of the surroundings. The robot can communicate with a control center in real time via a live feed.

Ascento was officially incorporated in February 2023. According to a press release on startupticker.ch, the startup is currently ramping up production of its security robot to deliver the security solution to interested customers by the end of this year. CE certification will make it available for the mass market. The startup is also planning a seed financing round in the near future. mm/Café Europe

At the latest since the publication of the dialog-based chatbot "Chat-GPT" by OpenAI, terms such as "artificial intelligence" and "machine learning" have been on everyone's lips. But what exactly is behind the nebulous term artificial intelligence? At what point is AI already an integral part of our daily lives and what potential does this technology have for healthcare? To find answers to these and other questions, Dr. Jasmina Bogojewska is the guest on the current episode of Marktplatz Gesundheitswesen. The bioinformatician with a PhD is a lecturer at the Center for Artificial Intelligence at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences and therefore the ideal interlocutor for this topic. Listen into this episode to learn, among other things, how artificial intelligence is developed, the importance of data quality in this process, and the influence of political and social will when it comes to driving the development and use of artificial intelligence.

"Marketplace Healthcare" is the podcast about management and leadership in healthcare. Alfred Angerer is a professor at the ZHAW for Management in Healthcare and the founder of Marktplatz Gesundheitswesen. In the podcast he interviews exciting people with whom he discusses the current trends. In doing so, he is looking in a forward-thinking direction that does not neglect topics such as digitalization and process optimization.

The start-up incubator and accelerator Tenity, which operated under the name F10 until February 2023, has announced the closing of its fintech fund, the Tenity Incubation Fund I. According to a press release, the aim is to establish the fund as the “first institutional investor” for start-ups in order to help actively shape their entrepreneurial future.

The investors include the SIX Group and UBS Next, which is the strategic venture and innovation capital unit of UBS, in addition to Julius Bär and the House of InsurTech Switzerland of the Generali insurance group. Their investments are set to create a “tangible impact for innovation in the financial industry”, the press release explains. The second closing is planned for the fourth quarter of 2023.

The fund is aimed at early-stage companies that are yet to enter the market. It will also provide access to networks and business expertise as part of a four-month incubation program. Overall, this will create “a fertile ground for companies to perfect their product, master go-to-market strategy, and increase their chance of future success”, comments Maximilian Spelmeyer, Chief Investment Officer (CIO) at Tenity, in the press release. According to information from the company itself, the Tenity investment team is planning to establish a portfolio of around 400 companies in Switzerland, Western Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. heg/Café Europe

PharmaBiome, a biotechnology company based in Schlierem, Switzerland, is collaborating with Roquette, a French food specialist based in Lestrem, to develop new dietary fibres. According to a media release, this partnership aims to develop novel nutritional and health ingredients that act in the gut microbiota or intestinal flora and thus contribute to a healthy diet. The two companies have already been working together since 2017.

PharmaBiome's proprietary microbiome technology, NicheMap, for the production of innovative prebiotic solutions will use soluble dietary fibres produced by Roquette. Roquette has been working on the Nutriose range of soluble dietary fibres for several years. They help to selectively change the gut microbiota towards a healthier composition.

"This project with PharmaBiome will allow Roquette to offer new microbiome-tailored dietary fibres with scientifically proven health benefits," Laetitia Guérin-Deremaux, head of research and development at Roquette, is quoted as saying. Dr Tomas de Wouters, CEO of PharmaBiome, calls the joint project an important milestone in the long-standing collaboration with Roquette, "where we have made the leap from understanding the effect of fibres to developing and optimising fibre products". gba/Café Europe

The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority has granted a fintech license to Relio. After the successful approval process, the Zurich-based startup can now provide a digital account for businesses. According to a press release from Relio, the offer is of particular interest to clients with complex business models and international cash flows.

In this market segment compliance and anti-money laundering requirements have resulted in high costs for both banks and customers. Relio solves this problem by automating many compliance tasks, according to CEO Lav Odorovic. He states: “Thanks to our license, we work independently of partner banks and their outdated structures, processes and technologies. This is the only way we can drive the digitalization of compliance and save our customers a great deal of bureaucracy.”

The fintech license introduced by the legislator in 2019 aims to make it easier for innovative fintech companies to enter the market. The approval processes are simpler than for a full banking license and capital requirements are lower. Public deposits are limited to a maximum of 100 million Swiss francs and cannot be invested or earn interest. Instead, they are used to protect clients through the Swiss National Bank. mm/Café Europe

The Mono Vest FROM KERSTIN is a vest radically designed according to the principles of the circular economy. Unlike conventional textiles, which are always made of a mix of materials that is practically impossible to dissolve, the Mono Vest is made of only one family of materials.

To enable recycling, all components are made of a mono-material, more precisely polyamide 6, which includes all components such as fabric, filling material, sewing thread and zipper. Only the logo and slider must be removed before recycling. 

An important milestone on the way to a circular economy.

The concept of the Mono Vest was promoted the year before in the first selection of the NTN Innovation Booster "Applied Circular Sustainability" . An initiative of Innosuisse, the Swiss Agency for Innovation Promotion of the Swiss Federation.

Access in Bitcoin & Co. is often not easy for "newbies". And one very important issue that keeps coming up is the safekeeping of crypto assets. Because the following still applies: "Not your keys, not your coins".

Sanela Lüscher also had to deal with these challenges a few years ago. To simplify access to bitcoin and crypto, she founded Honesto over four years ago. Honesto's idea grew out of a problem at their former company: a customer wanted to pay their bill in Bitcoin. Sanela noted that it is complex. In particular, she was troubled by the sharp fluctuations in the exchange rate and did not quite know how to convert the customer's Bitcoins into francs. She quickly realized: It has to be easier.

She quickly realized that Bitcoin and Blockchain is more than just another payment platform and can provide an opportunity for many people, especially in politically unstable countries, nations with high inflation or simply where the rate of "unbanked" people is high.

Sanela is not only a full-blooded entrepreneur, but also a mommy of three children and a man of life. How she gets everything under one hat, she also tells in this episode! Listen in to a super exciting entrepreneur story!

Stève Mérillat will take over the management of Technopark Winterthur at the beginning of June. The board of directors has decided "after an extensive search" in favour of the current managing director of Composites United Switzerland as the successor to Thomas Schumann, informs Technopark Winterthur AG in a corresponding press release. Mérillat is said to have "the ideal skills and experience" to "lead the company into the next era".

The designated new managing director is to use his broad network of companies, universities, associations and funding organisations to strengthen Technopark. As a long-time resident of Winterthur, Mérillat knows the city and its needs well, writes Technopark Switzerland AG. "He is politically committed and will ensure that Technopark Winterthur continues to play an important role in promoting startups in the region."

Thomas Schumann is retiring after seven years at the helm of Technopark Winterthur. His departure marks the end of an era, says Daniel Anderes, Chairman of the Board of Directors, paying tribute to the outgoing Managing Director. "Satisfied tenants, a vibrant community, an attractive programme of events and black figures are testimony to Thomas Schumann's excellent commitment and the passionate work of the entire team." hs/Café Europe

Hangar 9 at Dübendorf Airport: The plain metal door to the hangar does not give away the fact that the traffic of the future is being planned here. But then the view into the large hall opens up: drones race up and down - but not only that, they complete an obstacle course in the process, navigating precisely through archways suspended at different heights. On site: UZH professor Davide Scaramuzza and his team. The researchers demonstrate what the smart quadrocopters - drones with four propellers - can do. With its size, the hangar offers an ideal testing ground for the nimble flying acrobats.

In recent years, interest in autonomous vehicles in the commercial sector has grown exponentially, including the need for extremely fast, safe and robust drones. Commercial quadrocopters, however, are slow and their batteries run out after 30 minutes. These devices are not useful for searching for survivors in an earthquake or for reconnoitering a failing bridge. That's why Davide Scaramuzza and his team are working on more efficient drones.

Three-dimensional map in seconds

"However, several challenges still need to be overcome to make this happen," explains the computer science professor, whose research is funded by the European Research Council. "For a drone that flies fast, we need to develop more efficient perception algorithms." Specifically, the on-board cameras of his drones capture 30 frames per second. They must be able to process all the data generated by the camera very quickly to create a three-dimensional map of the environment, so they can detect and avoid obstacles. To achieve maximum performance, systems need real-time algorithms that respond to both aerodynamic disturbances and unpredictable obstacles. The hangar in Dübendorf offers researchers a good and safe opportunity to test the drones and their capabilities.

At the moment, the test flights are still taking place in the secured hangar. In the near future, however, the researchers also plan to use the outdoor area to test how the drones perform in wind and weather and to develop them further until they are ready for the market.

Test site rich in variants

This test site is made possible by LINA. The acronym stands for: Shared Large-scale INfrastructure for the Development and Safe Testing of Autonomous Systems. "LINA will provide the infrastructure for safe testing of autonomous systems in the canton of Zurich, from basic research to the development of marketable systems by industry," says LINA project manager Brigitte Rohner. She manages the funding project together with Michel Guillaume, Head of the Center for Aviation at the ZHAW.

Thanks to this new infrastructure, researchers from the University of Zurich, the Zurich University of Applied Sciences, and the Zurich University of the Arts can test the efficient and safe testing of autonomous systems - not only drones but also other self-driving vehicles - indoors but also outdoors. LINA became possible because of the Digitization Initiative (DIZH). Its aim is to promote collaboration between Zurich's universities in the field of digitization and, together with the participating Zurich universities, it also provides funding.

Certification body planned

Different test arenas for research and development of prototypes are planned: A hall with an indoor tracking arena and a large-scale, high-precision position tracking system, as well as a wind tunnel facility. An outdoor test arena secured with a net is also to be built. Also planned is a digitally controlled outdoor test arena in controlled airspace (CTR). Here, for example, drones could be tested under the conditions of the Light Unmanned Aircraft Operator Certificate (LUC) in low airspace. "Likewise, the kilometers required for a marketable product could be flown here," emphasizes Brigitte Rohner. The long-term goal is to establish a certification body for all drones that are used commercially. LINA is designed to run for five years.

Background

The first LINA event will take place on March 30: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Hangar 9, Dübendorf Airport.

LINA

Author: Marita Fuchs, UZH Zurich
UZH News
Image source: UZH Zurich

Agtonomy has placed its trust in Fixposition: the Vision Fusion Technology created by the company from Schlieren in the canton of Zurich will be integrated in Agtonomy’s TeleFarmer solution. The startup from the San Francisco Bay Area runs a hybrid autonomy and tele-assist platform for agricultural vehicles. It includes innovative software, a suite of apps and an electric vehicle reference tractor. According to a press release from the two companies, Agtonomy is “able to achieve even more reliable and more efficient performance in how it knows the position of the agricultural vehicles it controls” by utilizing Fixposition’s solution.

As per its website, Fixposition’s product Vision-RTK2 is a lightweight solution for all types of platforms that enables precise global positioning in real time. To allow operation in a multitude of challenging environments, the company combines computer vision and satellite navigation. The technology is a key enabler for the mass-market adoption of autonomous solutions.

“Fixposition’s offering allowed us to accelerate development and extend our field of operation at a very good price-performance ratio,” explains Tim Bucher, CEO of Agtonomy. Zhenzhong Su, CEO of Fixposition, says Agtonomy is “a great partner for us” as the two can “continuously innovate from our joint learning in the field”. mm/Café Europe

Aisot has raised 1.8 million Swiss francs in capital, according to a statement published on the company blog. The seed financing round was led by Haute Capital Partners AG. In addition, the Swiss ICT Investor Club and private investors are among the backers. This brings Aisot's total funding to 2.3 million Swiss francs.

Aisot was launched in 2019 as a spin-off of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH). The spin-off specialises in the development of artificial intelligence (AI)-based solutions for equity and crypto markets. The products make it possible to use data, quantitative tools and AI in forecasts and analyses of financial products, it says.

With the investment company Haute, Aisot has found the ideal partner for the further development of AI products, CEO Stefan Klauser is quoted as saying. The capital increase will be used for important additions to the team and critical customer requirements, in the expansion of products and growth initiatives.

The quoted Thibault Leroy Bürki, president and CEO of Haute, justifies the investment for Aisot with its "innovative approach to wealth management, advanced AI engine and ability to generate alpha in real time". The AI solutions make it possible to adapt customised portfolios to market trends in real time and at the same time generate alpha, i.e. an excess return. heg/Café Europe

At the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH), an innovative robot has been built that can balance on its pivot with just a single reaction wheel, further details of which can be found in a press release. Moreover, it is also capable of compensating for external disturbances. This innovative inverted 3D pendulum dubbed the “One-Wheel Cubli” has now been presented in the most recent edition of the journal “Mechatronics”.

The One-Wheel Cubli is a further development of the Cubli robot cube, which caused a stir ten years ago because it could balance on a pivot by itself. For this, the robot required several reaction wheels in its interior. It was developed by a group of researchers headed up by ETH robotics professor Raffaello D’Andrea. The same workshop is now behind this latest development.

As ETH Zurich explains in a video, the One-Wheel Cubli has a balancing pole like a tightrope walker. The inertias of the system differ significantly in their two directions of motion. “The consequence is a time-scale separation of the underlying tilt dynamics, which renders the system controllable”, the three authors write in the abstract to their work. In this way, the innovative robot is able to stabilize both directions simultaneously, but requires just a single reaction wheel to perform this balancing act. mm/Café Europe

Synhelion, the global pioneer in the area of carbon-neutral solar fuels based in Lugano in the canton of Ticino, will now be in a position to expand the scope of its solar process heat in the United States in addition to scaling its technology: The United States Department of Energy has awarded Synhelion and its partners, the globally active Mexican construction materials firm CEMEX and Sandia National Laboratories based in New Mexico and California, financial backing to the tune of 3.2 million US dollars for their joint project entitled Solar MEAD, further details of which can be found in a press release. The project aims to decarbonize the cement production industry.

The partners intend to use Synhelion technology to produce the necessary cement clinker on a large scale without turning to fossil fuels. They already succeeded in achieving this in laboratory tests last year. Clinker is produced by fusing limestone, clay and other materials in a rotary kiln at temperatures nearing 1,500 degrees Celsius. Until now, fossil fuels have been used to heat the furnace.

Synhelion is the first company to generate sustainable process heat over 1,500 degrees Celsius by way of concentrated solar radiation. Therefore, for the first time, it is possible to operate industrial processes such as the production of fuel or cement using solar heat.

The spin-off from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH) demonstrated the feasibility of its technology in 2019 with a mini-refinery housed on the roof of ETH Zurich. Synhelion is currently building the first industrial plant for solar kerosene in Jülich, Germany. The first commercial production plant is scheduled to commence operations in Spain in 2025. The company works with international partners such as Eni, Lufthansa, Swiss International Air Lines, SMS Group, Wood, AMAG and Zurich Airport. 

It draws on an extensive literature review, two field studies in Nepal and Malawi, and the Framework for the Ethics Assessment of Humanitarian Drones (FEAHD).
This project has two objectives: (1) Develop a responsive and interactive digital tool, E-HUD, to assist international organizations in making ethically sound decisions regarding the humanitarian use of drones. (2) Use the results and expand the applications to facilitate the ethical evaluation of the civilian use of drones in the Swiss context.

In this podcast episode, Alfred Angerer gets a visit from the far north, Sweden to be exact. What are the differences and similarities between the healthcare systems in Switzerland and Sweden? What are the differences and similarities between the healthcare systems in Switzerland and Sweden? And why is Sweden leading the way in healthcare when it comes to topics such as innovation and digital transformation? What can we learn from each other? To get closer to the answers to these and other questions, Micha Kämpfer is our guest in the current episode. As a management consultant, Micha was responsible for lean management, process digitalization and change management in the Swiss healthcare sector for a long time. In 2017, he moved to Sweden as co-founder of the consulting company "Comentum". Dive into this episode and learn which factors enable a successful digital transformation of the healthcare system and what role, for example, digital health ID, e-medication or even a digital infrastructure play. But beware: Anyone who believes that digitization is the sole bringer of salvation will quickly realize that numerous other factors play a decisive role in these complex processes.

"Marketplace Healthcare" is the podcast about management and leadership in healthcare. Alfred Angerer is a professor at the ZHAW for Management in Healthcare and the founder of Marktplatz Gesundheitswesen. In the podcast he interviews exciting people with whom he discusses the current trends. In doing so, he is looking in a forward-thinking direction that does not neglect topics such as digitalization and process optimization.

In recent months, ChatGPT has caused quite a stir. Every day, dozens of articles, blog posts, tweets, etc. discuss the possibilities and limitations of the model. ChatGPT is used to write resumes, fill out exams, create reports, and even create a new operating system. The range of reactions it evokes is immense: from excitement to curiosity to fear. Can it revolutionize everyday life the way the Internet has? How will it change education? What impact will it have on workplaces, writing processes, and society in general? In light of these multifaceted issues, the Center for Artificial Intelligence (CAI) at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) decided to look at the implications of this and other powerful generative models.

To this end, the CAI has formed a new center of excellence, "GenerativeAI", which focuses on ChatGPT and generative models in general. The team is composed of experts in machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision with deep experience in generative models and their evaluation. Team members have already used GPT-3, the predecessor to ChatGPT, for a number of projects, including a natural language interface for a football database, creating images from simple keyword descriptions, and co-authoring an award-winning article on large language models. 

The CAI working group is currently conducting various experiments with ChatGPT and addressing a variety of issues related to its applications in industry, research, or personal use, as well as its potential drawbacks. Some examples of ongoing projects include:

• Internal study: how successful would a GPT model be in university exams in different disciplines (law, computer science, etc.)
• Industrial project: How to create audit reports with GPT-3?
• Scientific evaluation: comparison of ChatGPT with the most advanced automatic summary generation systems.
• Organization of open discussions between representatives from industry and academia.

The sustainability platform Pelt8 has received CHF 500,000 from investors in a pre-seed funding round. The round was led by investors from the Zurich-based Swiss ICT Investor Club (SICTIC) together with entrepreneurs Ralph Mogicato, Andreas Bezner and others, according to a media release.

According to the statement, the startup, which was founded in Zurich in 2021, automates the sustainability reporting of companies with its platform. It does this by helping them set up efficient and verifiable processes to collect the data needed to meet the growing transparency demands of new regulations and reporting requirements.

Until now, most companies have recorded their sustainability performance only once a year in an elaborate process. Sometimes hundreds of people are involved in this process, collecting data via e-mails and spreadsheets. This process is resource intensive, prone to error and prevents companies from effectively and accurately evaluating their actions, according to the media release. Therefore, Pelt8's vision is to build a cohesive sustainability technology ecosystem with data management at its core. The aim is to make sustainability reporting easier on the one hand, and to give it a higher profile within companies on the other.

"We see an urgent need for tens of thousands of companies to put their sustainability reporting on an equal footing with their financial reporting," Julian Osborne, founder and CEO, is quoted as saying in the media release. Companies should "move away from reporting for reporting's sake" and instead commit to measurable measures. ko/Café Europe

Cotecna, a global provider of testing, inspection and certification services based in Geneva, has entered into a partnership with the Zurich-based robotics start-up Tinamu. The collaboration and the use of the technologies developed by both companies will enable them to offer the next generation of intelligent warehouse inspection using drones, further details of which can be found in a press release issued by Cotecna. Their solution for intelligent digital warehouses is primarily intended for use in bulk storage facilities.

The system uses drones as flexible, flying sensors. Founded in 2018 as a spin-off from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH), the start-up Tinamu does not build drones itself, but rather uses patented software, Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to turn them into fully automated indoor sensors. The drones require around eight to ten minutes to complete a scan. Thereafter, it transfers the data collected for processing, before, finally, the data is represented in 3D, graphical and tabular format via the Cotecna Digital Twin portal.

In a year-long pilot program with selected customers, the process of data collection and volume calculation was automated. According to Cotecna, the pilot phase has demonstrated that turnaround times for warehouse inspection reports have been reduced by a factor of 50 and the accuracy of inventory data has improved by up to 99 percent. “The next strategic milestones are to roll out the system in the Benelux region and to enter into more partnerships to scale our solution globally”, explains Tobias Nägeli, CEO of Tinamu Labs, in a report published on startupticker.ch. mm/Café Europe

Switzerland and blockchain: This episode is part of a limited series produced in partnership with Switzerland Global Enterprise and Home of Blockchain.swiss , which aims to highlight the successful implementation of blockchain technology across finance, industry, and NGOs. In this episode, we talk to Sandro Knöpfel, Head of Strategic Partnerships at the Cardano Foundation, and Alvaro Cosi, Communications Manager at Switzerland for UNHCR, about how humanitarian organizations can benefit from blockchain technology. 

Do you want to know more about business opportunities in the blockchain industry and the digital ecosystem in Switzerland? Get in touch at Blockchain Hub Switzerland | S-GE and www.HomeofBlockchain.swiss.

Zurich Soft Robotics plans to use the proceeds from an early financing to launch Solskin, its multifunctional and adaptive photovoltaic (PV) façade system: it produces electricity and enables shading of indoor spaces. The €1.5 million investment comes from an undisclosed international market leader based in Switzerland.

As startupticker.ch reports, the 2022 spin-off from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH) intends to use the investment to expand its team, accelerate the development of Solskin and make the system commercially available from the third quarter of this year. According to the information, this is the world's first movable PV façade system. Thanks to a patented hybrid robot drive made of hard and soft material and artificial intelligence, it enables movable modules that follow the path of the sun.

Zurich Soft Robotics set up a fully functional demonstrator with the HiLo façade at the NEST modular research and innovation building of the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research (Empa) in Dübendorf ZH. Another demonstrator was built at the ETH Zero Carbon Buildings Systems laboratory at the end of 2022. The company is realising the first and largest pilot project with Keller Druckmesstechnik AG in Winterthur. The sensor technology company wants to complete a new main production building by 2025. With a 1300 square metre Solskin façade on its south side, Keller AG wants to keep its electricity and cooling requirements as low as possible and produce renewable electricity.

Solskin won the 2023 Watt d'Or in the Buildings and Space category. mm

Sevensense Robotics, the Zurich-based supplier of industrial-grade 3D visual SLAM solutions, will be presenting its new Alphasense Autonomy Evaluation Kit at the ProMAT trade fair in Chicago. Between March 20 and 23, manufacturers of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) and automated guided vehicles (AGVs) can experience for themselves the solution for quick and easy testing of 3D Visual Autonomy technology, further details of which can be found in a press release.

As a result, the evaluation kit, as a standardized prototyping solution, enables every technical department to operate and test Alphasense Autonomy on their own vehicles. This is intended to accelerate the development and deployment of AMRs and AGVs, while also offering improved performance and expanding their operational capabilities.

Alphasense Autonomy is an autonomous robotics system from the Zurich start-up that combines the advantages of visual SLAM positioning (VSLAM) with Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based technology for local perception and navigation. This enables the robots to navigate precisely and reliably across both indoor and outdoor environments, including on uneven floors and ramps - and all without the need for any additional infrastructure.

“We observed that many AMR manufacturers considered Alphasense Autonomy as an option to incorporate 3D Visual Autonomy capabilities into their offering but integrating, testing, and validating the fit of this navigation technology in their own vehicles and their use cases still required more expertise and time than they were able to invest”, explains Gianluca Cesari, CBDO at Sevensense Robotics, in the press release.

Sevensense Robotics is headquartered in the Greater Zurich Area. According to information from the Greater Zurich Area location marketing organisation, the region can be regarded as “a global leader in robotics, drone technology and computer vision”. In this context, it highlights the close ties between industry, universities and authorities, among other aspects. ko/Café Europe

After reviewing over 150 applications, a jury of investors and technology experts selected ten tech startups to join the roadshow in Silicon Valley, one of the world's most important tech hubs. The roadshow provides a unique opportunity for entrepreneurs to accelerate their startups' expansion in the US while expanding their professional network and profiting from workshops with investors and industry leaders. 

The Venture Leaders program also showcases the drive and vitality of Switzerland's tech startup ecosystem. The chosen startups work on a wide range of solutions, from machine learning and sensors to encryption and positioning technology, and serve a variety of sectors, such as agriculture, healthcare, digital marketing, and engineering.

"The startups chosen to join the Venture Leaders Technology program are working at the forefront of innovation, so the roadshow in Silicon Valley represents the natural next step in their growth," says Stefan Steiner, co-managing director of Venturelab. "By offering exposure to industry experts and investors in this nexus of innovation, the program provides the entrepreneurs with access to invaluable insights about the US market as well as industry know-how while bolstering their international network. We look forward to the exchanges and opportunities the roadshow will bring about for the Venture Leaders and their future fundraising."

This year's Venture Leaders Technology join an impressive group of alumni, including startups such as Lemoptix and Composyt Light Labs (acquired by Intel), Faceshift (acquired by Apple), HouseTrip (acquired by TripAdvisor), Kooaba (acquired by Qualcomm), Dacuda (acquired by Magic Leap), and the unicorns GetYourGuide and Scandit.

"Being challenged by US investors was very constructive in order to improve our communication and pitches," said Matteo Vanotti, CEO of xFarm and a Venture Leader Technology 2022 that raised a EUR 17 million financing round after the roadshow. "Additionally, we breathed the atmosphere of the valley populated by tech companies; we came back to Switzerland with many inspirations."

"I can confidently say that the Venture Leaders program is truly unique in many aspects," said SONIX founder and CEO Nicolas Abelé, who was a Venture Leader Technology 2022 as well and raised USD 2 million last October. "The amount of personal and professional development packed into this one week is next to none."

The Venture Leaders Technology 2023 program is organized by Venturelab and supported by ETH Zurich, EPF Lausanne, Kellerhals Carrard, Rothschild & Co, the Canton of Vaud, and the Canton of Zurich.

The entrepreneurs will meet and introduce themselves to the public at a kick-off event on February 22, 2023.

The French power grid operator RTE, headquartered in Paris, has been testing the autonomous four-legged inspection robot ANYmal developed by ANYbotics. With the inspection solution from the Zurich-based robotics firm and spin-off from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH), RTE is aiming to ascertain the extent to which it can help to avoid system failures, further details of which can be found in a press release.

The press release explains that RTE’s objective was to test the robot’s first possible use cases in typical situations and evaluate its technological maturity. As part of its digitization and automation strategy, RTE is looking at introducing robotic system monitoring for its substations. This could reduce the risks to the health and safety of employees in addition to increasing the efficiency of its facilities.

For the tests, the ANYmal was put through its paces at three replica installations housed at Campus Transfo, RTE’s technological and industrial lab based in Jonage on the outskirts of Lyon. “Full autonomy and extreme mobility allowed ANYmal to monitor and assess assets in unsuitable conditions, adverse weather conditions, and darkness, thereby preventing operators from taking additional risks”, the press release states.

In the high-voltage substations, for example, where the systems are normally switched off to allow work due to excessive electromagnetic fields, ANYmal safely carried out routine checks during operation. “For us, it was a real success”, concludes Jean-Yves Astic, R&D Program Director at RTE, in the press release.

RTE operates 105,000 kilometers of high and ultra-high-voltage lines that extend across the whole of France in addition to 50 interconnections with neighboring European countries. ko/Café Europe

Mirai Foods has succeeded in producing thick, tender fillet steaks from cultured beef, informs the young company from Wädenswil in a statement. "Other types of meat can already be produced in the lab," Christoph Mayr, CEO and co-founder of Mirai Foods, is quoted as saying there. "A tenderloin steak is the supreme discipline: it consists of different cell types, which - if combined correctly - result in a complex meat structure."

For the formation of this meat structure, Mirai Foods has developed The Rocket bioreactor. Here, long, fully mature muscle fibers are produced, joined by means of enzymes and supplemented by fat structures that have also been cultured. The company has already filed three patents on its fibration technology.

"Nutrition is a huge lever for climate action and animal welfare: meat demand is expected to double by 2050," explains Suman Das, CSO and co-founder of Mirai Foods. "Traditional methods of meat production can't meet this demand at all, and certainly not in a sustainable way."

In a seed funding, Mirai Foods had already raised over $5 million. Now, additional investors, including Zurich-based food and meat producer Angst AG, have stepped in, Mirai Foods informs. Currently, the company is focusing on beef cultivation because conventional beef has the largest footprint of all meats. In the long term, however, the aim is to cultivate a wide range of meat varieties. hs/Café Europe

Flying robots are only suitable for construction site work when they can take on a wide range of work. In our initial development phase, we focused exclusively on drilling, as this is one of the most power-intensive work steps. At the same time, the flight platform has remained modular, so that replacing the drill with an impact wrench can be done relatively easily and quickly. The rest of the process also hardly needs to be changed, as the tools are similarly heavy.

Not unlike our flying robot, our team is also trying to master various tasks - for us, this means taking exams at ETH Zurich and continuing to run a startup at the same time. Long days and efficient prioritisation are essential for us. Our first weeks at the Züri Innovationspark office have thus come to an end. We moved in quickly and received a warm welcome. The next tasks are defined and we are looking forward to making them a reality in our flexible new home!

Source: Büro Züri

Recycling disposable medical products is challenging, but pharmaceutical company Janssen found a good partner for this high-​risk project in the ETH Feasibility Lab. Thanks to their agile approach, the researchers were able to demonstrate feasibility.

Maersk has signed a contract with the Zurich-based company Verity. The world's leading provider of container shipping services will deploy Verity's electric-powered inventory drones in all of Maersk North America 's pallet warehouses. Details of contract details would not be disclosed, according to a statement from the trade magazine DC Velocity, to which Verity refers. The spin-off of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich had started developing its drones in 2014.

According to company spokesman Thomas Boyd, the Maersk project was launched six months ago and currently includes four sites. Now, the freight logistics company's deployment plan for 2023 calls for installation in all pallet warehouses. The system requires only one day of operator training, he said.

In a separate media release, Erez Agmoni, the Senior Vice President of Innovation & Strategic Growth at Maersk North America, explains the reasons behind his company's decision, "Verity's system has delivered data accuracy, security and speed. It makes our warehouse management system stronger, faster and more effective for our clientele's decision making."

It goes on to say that inventory management is one of the most important barometers of supply chain flow, financial cost risk and business decisions. At the same time, it is one of the most difficult, repetitive and tedious tasks in warehouses, he said. For all of this, Verity's inventory drones are "a safer, more accurate and data-driven inventory solution," Agmoni said. mm, Café Europe

This podcast episode is all about the topic of «Corporate Development in Hospitals». To shed some light on the subject, the head of Corporate Development at Männedorf Hospital, Luzia Bühler, is our guest.

As an expert, she provides insights into her work and highlights that good project management and firm structures are the basis for corporate development. But nothing beats the employees of a hospital who work with patients and are thus the voices that should be heard when it comes to making improvements. In corporate development, it is accordingly important to create the vessel in which innovations can be developed and implemented by motivated and committed employees. This is not always easy, but, as the example of Männedorf Hospital shows, possible!

Listen into this podcast episode to learn what's behind the term enterprise development, how to successfully transform in the complex hospital environment, and why Luzia believes it takes more than just good planning and structures to survive as a hospital in the long run.

"Marketplace Healthcare" is the podcast about management and leadership in healthcare. Alfred Angerer is a professor at the ZHAW for Management in Healthcare and the founder of Marktplatz Gesundheitswesen. In the podcast he interviews exciting people with whom he discusses the current trends. In doing so, he is looking in a forward-thinking direction that does not neglect topics such as digitalization and process optimization.

Rapid technological development in industry, business and society requires a comprehensive overview of a wide range of research and development areas. In this context, the Empa Academy serves Empa as a platform for knowledge transfer, where experts from research and industry can exchange ideas with each other, but also with the general public. One of the aims of the Empa Academy is therefore to regularly inform the public about the knowledge gained in numerous research projects, studies and investigations. It also offers its partners access to Empa's primary strengths: comprehensive, interdisciplinary know-how, scientific expertise and an extensive national and international network of contacts.

Further training offer

After a very interesting year 2022 there are a lot more activities planned in 2023.

What’s planned for the year 2023:

1.  EU project Ultimo:

SAAM is participating in one of the biggest EU-projects called Ultimo (more information here). Ultimo will focus on scaling deployments in three locations across Europe (Geneva, Munich, Olslo), with 15 vehicles per location. The aim is to operate without a safety driver on board, in fully automated mode (SAE Level 4).

2.  AV-friendly road law texts will be finalized with SAAM's support:

With the support of our president Hans Wicki and our board member Thomas Probst, we have become an important partner in the process of adapting the law. Astra recognizes SAAM as a center of excellence in the context of automated driving (more Information here).

3.  Innosuisse Flagship program:

14 organizations from SAAM are preparing a pre-proposal to be submitted by the end of January.

Stay tuned, as 2023 will reveal more exciting autonomous mobility advancements!

Executive Summary

Investors are the largest group of players, with a variety of funding options available across all startup phases. We identified 126 funding rounds (excl. grants) in Switzerland in the healthtech space in 2022, with over CHF 935 million invested in 102 reported rounds. Additionally, we found that 65 Swiss startups had an exit over the past three years. Our analysis also revealed a surprisingly strong presence of venture studios, with 26 identified in Switzerland and 16 with activities in the healthtech sector. However, only 5 would be considered a venture studio in a more traditional definition. The map illustrates that most players have a commercial interest and financial impact. Incubators and grants cover the social aspects of supporting new companies. We hope to see more operational support for founders in the future. The venture studio model is gaining popularity with more and more players, and it proves its efficacy with impressive success rates. A common believe is that this is due to the professional execution, which reduces operational risks and increase success chances. However, most venture studios remain closed communities, unlike KAPSLY Ventures and its partners, which are also on the map. We also found a large number of service providers, incubators/accelerators, and communities that are highly valuable to the sector, as well as 11 grants relevant for the health vertical. However, it's worth noting that our research only included providers that have a direct affiliation with the healthtech sector or provide additional value for startups, and we didn't include general options and state-funded possibilities.

Investors and Acquirers

Investors are by far the largest group of players in Switzerland. A positive sign is that we identified investors across all startup phases, from early-stage, over growth funding to private equity and buyout funds. We found that most Investors specialise on financing only, whereas we found 22 to be fit the category of acquirers. In 2022 Crunchbase recorded 199 funding rounds in Switzerland in the healthtech space (incl. Pre-Seed to Series E, Grants, Convertible Loans, Venture Debt). In 161 reported funding rounds over CHF 980 million has been invested. In the pre-seed and seed phase only 53 funding rounds have been recorded. Over the past three years (2020-2022), we identified 65 Swiss startups that had an exit. Out of these, 14 acquisitions happened within Switzerland, 9 startups have been sold to German companies and 23 have been sold to U.S.-based companies. Swiss companies acquired 84 healthtech companies (incl. pharma, 56 without pharmaceuticals), which is a large amount compared to 378 total acquisitions by Swiss companies. This could imply that Switzerland is an attractive exit market and has room for more healthtech acquisitions within the country. Swiss companies acquired 9 German companies and 37 U.S.-based companies. Hence there seems to be an equilibrium between bought and sold companies to other countries.

Venture Studios

We encountered 16 venture studios in Switzerland, of which we identified 16 to fit the category healthtech Venture Studio. We further came to understand this category as the most fluent of all in a business sense, as their focus, services and expertise vary greatly, creating various overlaps into other fields.

Service Providers

Out of the hundreds of specialists in the health tech sector, we found 26 to have a special knack for startups in particular. Generally, the healthtech sector, specialists up to large corporations, are openminded towards assisting healthtech innovation, even if they do not specifically specialise in supporting startups. We found this to be a very positive sentiment in the market overall.

Incubators/Accelerators

Out of the growing incubator and accelerator ecosystem in Switzerland that are predominantly agnostic regarding their vertical, we found 14 to offer specific knowledge in the health tech sector. Therefore, general options as well as state funded possibilities such as Innosuisse were not included.

Communities

Among the many founder-focused networks, we identified 15 communities that are highly valuable to the sector, with several groups and platforms offering a variety of services. We did not include Newsletter / Telegram / Facebook / Twitter groups, and also excluded University affiliated groups such as alumni chapters and science related interest groups.

Grants

We found 11 grants that we considered worth mentioning for the health vertical so far. There are a variety of vertical agnostic grants, which are open for innovation in health as well. However, having no in depth knowledge about medical technologies and industry processes, we excluded the majority of founder oriented grants.

Download the map here.

The Basel-based Bell Food Group has invested an undisclosed amount in Yasai's convertible bond through its subsidiary Eisberg. Eisberg is already its nationwide distributor, according to a media release from Yasai . The capital is intended to support the Zurich-based start-up, which was founded in 2020, in its growth goals.

Yasai also announced that the food company's CEO, Lorenz Wyss, has joined its board of directors as part of this investment. "With Mr. Wyss as an industry expert and Bell Food Group as a new investor, YASAI's position in the market will be further strengthened," the statement said.

The second new member of the Board of Directors, Theo Stolze, brings specialist expertise in new agricultural technologies. Stolze has also reportedly invested in the spin-off from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. He was a shareholder of the Dutch Stolze Group for 30 years and led the company, which specializes in technical solutions for greenhouse systems, to success as export director.

In the coming years, Yasai reportedly plans to increase its production capacity tenfold. The construction of two more industrial farms is already planned, he said. In addition, one of the largest vertical farming projects in Switzerland is to be built in the new Lymhof development in Schlieren ZH from 2026. Then Yasai wants to supply the local population not only with herbs grown without pesticides, but also, together with its partners, with leaf lettuce and other fresh vegetables. mm, Café Europe

The two Zurich-based companies Zurich Resilience Solutions (ZRS) and South Pole will collaborate in the future to support companies in climate protection measures. According to a media release, the core of the cooperation is a holistic climate strategy in the transition to net-zero emissions and climate resilience. The offer is to be launched in Germany and Switzerland after the USA.

The environmental consulting services of South Pole, a spin-off from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, and the expertise of ZRS, which is part of Zurich, will result in a holistic climate strategy for companies and create the basis for effective climate protection and adaptation measures. In implementing their shared environmental ambitions, the focus is on measuring physical climate risks and emissions and a strategy for minimizing factors that harm the climate.

According to the two partners, climate protection measures are having an increasing impact on economic success, and not only within operational business activities. Target groups also demanded transparent presentation of solutions with which companies actively address the minimization of their environmental risks, including along the value chain.

The release quotes the Climate Disclosure Project as saying that the financial benefits of climate action are at least 15 times higher than the costs of the corresponding risks. South Pole CEO Renat Heuberger agrees: "Companies that fail to demonstrate their progress in building resilience and reducing emissions are likely to pay dearly in terms of their reputation as well as financially." heg, Café Europe

In addition to Vista, existing investors and two new investors also participated in the financing round. Vista's investment and extensive experience in the aviation industry will provide valuable support in developing the potential of Dufour's innovative tilt-wing technology. This technology will be used in the Aero2 unmanned aerial vehicle and the Aero3 manned passenger aircraft.

"We are honored that this financing round was led by Vista, such a respected leader in private aviation," said Thomas Pfammatter, CEO of Dufour Aerospace. "Vista's investment is an important milestone in our journey. They have recognized how important it is today to develop successful products and solutions for the future of hybrid-electric tilt-wing aircraft."

Thomas Flohr, Founder and Chairman of Vista, highlights, "We are pleased to support Dufour's team as they continue to develop their sustainable solutions - an exciting time for all. Dufour's products have the potential to complement our global service network in the future. This investment fits into our strategy for promoting green mobility solutions in aviation and underscores our commitment to a greener future for our industry."

Scientists have developed a special drone that can autonomously collect samples on tree branches. The team included researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH) and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) in Birmensdorf, as well as the French-Canadian company Spygen , based in Le Bourget du Lac Cedex and Montreal in the Canadian province of Quebec, according to a media release.

The collected samples contain so-called environmental DNA. Laboratory analysis can then be used to determine which species are present in a given area. This helps ecologists to gain knowledge about biodiversity in areas that are otherwise difficult to access. The particular challenge for the roboticists was reportedly to program the flying device so that it could land on branches with varying degrees of vibration and remain there for a certain amount of time.

The new drone is being trained in the Masoala rainforest at Zurich Zoo. "This has the advantage of knowing which species are present," explains Stefano Mintchev. He is co-author of the study, which has just been published in the journal Science Robotics. "This will help us better assess how completely we are collecting environmental DNA traces with this technique or if we are missing something."

Now the drone is being prepared and further improved for its use in a competition in a 100-hectare rainforest area in Singapore. There, it must be able to fly to and collect samples from ten times as many trees in just 24 hours as it has been able to do in three days. mm

The new Institute of Product Development and Production Technologies (IPP) at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) is positioned in the field of circular economy, digitalization and additive manufacturing. According to a media release, the UAS Board approved the creation of IPP from the School of Engineering's former Center for Product and Process Development (ZPP) in December.

According to the ZHAW, the IPP team imparts its expertise in the mechanical engineering, industrial engineering and transportation systems degree programs, as well as in the master's program and in various continuing education courses. The institute also co-initiated the new Master in Circular Economy Management at the ZHAW. It will be offered for the first time in the fall of 2023.

With its strategic focus on the circular economy, digitalization and additive manufacturing, the institute aims to contribute to the transformation from a linear to a circular society and economy. Regarding the topics, the university's statement says that in order to survive in the market in the future, product ideas must be designed in such a way that a closed material cycle is possible. The institute, which has been the leading house of the Innovation Booster Applied Circular Sustainability funded by Innosuisse since 2020, contributes its expertise to these interdisciplinary issues.

Other focal points are digitization as an overall concept and expertise in additive manufacturing. This involves metal printing and also research projects on printing ceramics, sustainable materials and multi-material printing. gba

As part of the "Food 4.0" funding program, the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW) is supporting six projects with CHF 25,000 each. Funding is primarily being provided for projects that are looking for ways to increasingly replace animal proteins with plant proteins, as SATW writes in a statement. Fourteen projects were submitted, and a team of experts made the selection.

The aim of the "Food 4.0" program is to strengthen the Swiss food system and equip it for the future by promoting transdisciplinary and innovative projects. The lively scene of start-ups and spin-offs and competitive research would contribute to the fact that Switzerland is on its way to becoming a leading foodtech location.

The projects supported:

Dairy utilization

The BFH Bioconversion and Protective Cultures team led by Daniel Heine and Lisamaria Bircher is working with Agroscope Liebefeld and Doris Erne's start-up company Lokal-Genuss AG to investigate how whey from Swiss cheese production can be fully utilized for human nutrition thanks to lactic acid fermentation.

Peas without bean flavor

The team led by Christoph Denkel (Food Process Technology) and Christian Trindler (Flavor Analytics) is investigating how the concentration of unwanted flavor molecules can be controlled during protein extraction from peas without compromising the protein properties.

Structures for the steak from the laboratory

Simona Fehlmann and her team at ETH Zurich want to further develop a scaffold, an edible foam, on which the cells of cultured meat can grow into a thick piece of meat. The scaffold is based on an open pore system so that nutrients and muscle cells can be distributed homogeneously as the muscle tissue grows.

Shrimp without hook

The start-up Catchfree, led by Lukas Böcker and Severin Eder at ETH Zurich, is developing a process to mold a mass of vegetable protein into shrimp. It should also be possible to produce other vegetable seafood in this way one day.

Vegan glaze sticks

Stephan Bolliger and his team from ice cream manufacturer Cuckoo Produktions AG want to produce vegan ice cream that not only tastes the same as ice cream made from animal proteins, but that can also be shaped as desired - for example into coated ice cream sticks or into ice cream cakes.

Reduce mold in grain

Susanne Miescher Schwenninger and her team at ZHAW are working on microorganisms that naturally reduce a cereal-typical mycotoxin. They would like to explore how exactly this happens, thereby estimating the potential for application to cereals.

The two Swiss companies ANYbotics from Zurich and Leica Geosystems from the St.GallenBodenseeArea are working together, according to a statement on LinkedIn. This cooperation has resulted in an innovation in ANYbotics' ANYmal inspection robot. It consists of the integration of Leica Geosystems' BLK ARC technology into the autonomous four-legged robot ANYmal. This software ecosystem from Leica automates its high-precision 3D environment capture.

ANYbotics, a spin-off from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich(ETH), informs about this in a message on LinkedIn. In addition, ANYbotics points to a recorded webinar where Product Manager Sten-Ove Tullbeg and UX Design Lead Florent Mennechet explain about the product update.

The ANYmal thus improved provides operators with 3D models on demand. So while the robot performs its autonomous inspection task, accurate digital twins of the inspected asset can be created via the ANYmal user interface. According to ANYbotics, this is done through a single interface and is more accurate, faster, and about seven times more cost-effective than external scanning.

According to ANYbotics, the ANYmal is the world's only legged robot certified for hazardous areas. This makes it suitable for use in the oil, gas and chemical industries. It enables the complete digitization of monitoring processes and thus also unmanned installations. Its locomotion, navigation and inspection expertise is based on artificial intelligence. According to a media release from September 2022, delivery of the ANYMAL X is planned from mid-2023. mm

The financing round includes participation from new investors as well as existing investors who continue to believe in the success and growth of the company. "The financing is a clear indication of TONI's continued growth and the attractiveness of its business model. The demand for digital and integrated insurance solutions will continue to grow in order to meet customers' expectations and requirements," says Philippe Regazzoni, Chairman of the Board of Directors.

"We would like to thank our investors for their continued support and confidence in our team and vision. We plan to use the proceeds from this financing round to expand our technology platform and launch several new insurance programs and products, as well as to enter new European markets. We will expand our team in sales, underwriting/actuarial and technology," said Bernard El Hage, CEO of TONI Digital.

"In parallel with our business growth, we will continue to expand our scaling capabilities on the technology side by abstracting complexity into configurable no-code/low-code solutions. This allows us to meet the need for customization while using the same technology modules for all products and partners, as well as for all regions and time zones," said Alexander Sanders, CTO at TONI.

The revised Federal Law on the Promotion of Research and Innovation (FIFG) will enter into force at the beginning of January 2023. The revision affects various funding offers from Innosuisse. In an interview, Annalise Eggimann, Director of Innosuisse, explains the changes for funding clients.

Why did it take a revision of the law?

The FIFG revision increases Innosuisse's room for maneuver and flexibility. This is important for our funding activities. For example, national and international innovation projects become even more attractive. Swiss SMEs in particular benefit from this. The revision also provides a basis for targeted new funding opportunities.

What specifically will change in Innosuisse's funding offers from 2023?

There are changes in various offers. Firstly, in innovation projects, the core of our funding, the division between the participating companies' own contribution and Innosuisse's funding contribution will become more flexible. Second, the funding conditions for international innovation projects are changing. Third, we slightly customize the process in start-up coaching. And last but not least, there is a new funding offer for start-ups: the start-up innovation projects.

Let's take all the points in order. How will contributions be divided for innovation projects from 2023?

Let me briefly elaborate: Innovative companies - such as SMEs, large corporations, start-ups - or other private or public organizations develop novel services and products together with Swiss universities and research institutions within the framework of innovation projects . Today, participating companies as implementation partners must bear 50 percent of the direct project costs themselves. Innosuisse covers the other half, thereby covering the costs of the Swiss research institutes. From January 2023, this own contribution by companies for new innovation projects can be between 40 and 60 percent. The project partners will jointly determine the distribution of contributions. Innosuisse will continue to cover only the direct project costs incurred by Swiss research institutions.

In addition, Innosuisse simplifies the calculation of the various contributions in the project budget. The overhead contribution of the research partner is now assessed as a percentage of the total project contribution of Innosuisse and no longer only on the contribution to the personnel costs of the research partner. We will publish an aid to apportionment and calculation in the project application in late fall.

Are the thematic areas for innovation projects restricted?

No, Innosuisse supports projects in all subject areas. This is already the case today. However, the new contribution regulation explicitly mentions both technical and social innovations. This is an important signal of the importance of non-technical innovations. The revised Contribution Ordinance also strengthens the issue of sustainability in Innosuisse's funding.

The funding conditions for international innovation projects will also change from 2023: What can funding customers expect here?

From 2023, Swiss implementation partners, for example SMEs or start-ups, will be able to receive direct funding in the context of international innovation projects, even if the international project cooperation does not take place within the framework of Eurostars or the thematic EU partnerships .

This is common practice abroad. Without this possibility of direct financial support, Swiss companies have so far been at a slight disadvantage compared to their foreign project partners. The innovation means that Innosuisse can also enter into bilateral collaborations with partner organizations in countries such as the USA, Brazil, South Korea, Israel or Sweden and make contributions to direct project costs of Swiss companies in jointly funded projects from 2023. We will communicate more information on contributions in late fall and list them in more detail in the 2023 calls.

What are the innovations in start-up coaching from 2023?

In order to simplify the process and further increase the quality of coaching, from 2023 startups will have to apply to participate in the Core Coaching apply first for Initial Coaching . Only after successful completion of this first phase can start-ups apply for Core Coaching . In the latter, the start-up companies receive support from coaches for a maximum of three years, on the one hand in general terms, and on the other hand with specialist questions in important areas such as intellectual property, financial planning, legal aspects or capital procurement, in order to develop the company further. Now, not only founders as individuals, but also start-up companies as organizations may submit an application. Thus, the coaching services are available for the whole team.

Support for start-ups is being further expanded: Why is the new funding instrument "Start-up Innovation Projects" needed?

Until now, startups that want to develop science-based innovations and bring their innovations to market have not been eligible for direct financial support. However, the revised FIFG will allow Innosuisse to directly fund science-based innovation projects by start-ups from 2023. Such projects with significant innovation potential must prepare the first market entry of the young companies. Projects do not require a research partner. Innosuisse covers a maximum of 70 percent of the start-ups' eligible project costs. The aim is to support start-ups in the difficult phase leading up to market entry and to accelerate this process.

The start-up innovation projects are not covered by the budget for usual innovation projects, but an additional funding budget is available. We will communicate more information about the funding instrument in late autumn, and details about the start-up innovation projects will be published in January 2023.

How do the new start-up innovation projects differ from the Swiss Accelerator projects?

The Swiss Accelerator for Swiss SMEs and startups, which we were already able to launch in spring 2022, is a transitional measure for Horizon Europe. This measure is based on an emergency clause in the revised FIFG. In this context, Innosuisse promotes very innovative projects with direct contributions to Swiss start-ups and SMEs.

From 2023, the Swiss Accelerator will only be open to companies that are already established in the market. Before entering the market, young companies can submit a start-up innovation project. Innosuisse is likely to issue calls for projects for the Swiss Accelerator until Switzerland is again associated with the European Union's Framework Research Program. As soon as Swiss SMEs and start-ups can apply for the EU's EIC grants again, the Swiss Accelerator will be discontinued.

Agile Wind Power has developed a vertical wind turbine that allows individual positioning of each rotor blade. This allows the individual blades to be automatically adjusted to the wind direction. This results in high performance even at low rotation speeds, while the load on the plant structure remains low. At the same time, noise emissions are reduced to around one third.

According to a company statement, initial measurements have now shown that the efficiency of the uncontrolled wind turbine is also at least as high as calculated, and possibly higher. The efficiency of the turbine with controlled rotor blades is likely to be significantly higher again.

Agile Wind Power's wind turbines are suitable for distributed generation of electricity, especially in industrial and commercial areas where large wind turbines are not acceptable. "Vertical Sky for on-site wind power generation offers a unique solution to a large need," Patrick Richter, founder and CEO of Agile Wind Power, is quoted as saying in the release. "Dramatically shortening project timelines through the benefits of a low-speed wind turbine, such as near-silent motion and protection for birds, opens up a huge unsaturated market."

Agile Wind Power's first products, the A32 and A42 turbines, have rated outputs of 750 and 1500 kilowatts, respectively. The A42 turbine reaches a height of 99 meters. The rotor has a diameter of 42 meters, and the three rotor blades each have a length of 50 meters. The plant is designed for wind speeds between 2.5 and 24 meters per second. stk

Spin-offs from UZH are looking back on a successful 2022, according to a university news release. Three founding teams with roots at UZH ventured into self-employment based on their research results. For example, the spin-off Navignostics is developing novel methods to analyze tumor samples. They are designed to help clinical specialists define individualized cancer therapies. In a seed financing round, Navignostics has already received 7.5 million Swiss francs.

Prometheus Life Technologies wants to grow three-dimensional human tissue, so-called organoids, from patient stem cells in space for the therapy of damaged organs. This is not possible under the conditions of gravity on Earth. The technology is based on a joint project between UZH and Airbus. For the entire development from the idea to the commercialization the UZH Space Hub responsible. Apricot Therapeutics is reportedly the world's first pharmaceutical company to investigate the interconnectedness of single cells in the context of drug action.

Molecular Partners, an established biotech company based in Schlierem, Switzerland, has signed a license agreement with Novartis for the COVID-19 drug Ensovibep. In return, Molecular Partners received 150 million Swiss francs and a 12 percent share of sales. Neuroimmune will develop and commercialize its heart drug NI006 with AstraZeneca subsidiary Alexion. The company, also based in Schlieren, will receive $30 million in return with the prospect of further payments of up to $730 million.

Medtech companies Clemedi, CUTISS and Oncobit launched new products in 2022. New capital was generated by Kuros Biosciences, Invasight, KOVE Medical and OxyPrem. ImmunOS Therapeutics received by far the largest financing with 72 million Swiss francs. mm

The financial sector, which includes banks, insurance companies and other financial services, is one of the most important industry aggregates in the Zurich region. One in ten jobs and one in six value-added francs would be attributable to the financial sector in 2021. The real gross value added of the financial sector developed more dynamically overall than that of the economy as a whole between 2011 and 2021, especially also in the pandemic years 2020 and 2021. This is shown in the new study "Financial Center Zurich 2023/2024" by the Division of Business and Economic Development of the Canton Zurich and the Urban Development Department of the City of Zurich. Despite the currently very challenging geopolitical and economic environment, the overall growth outlook for the financial sector is positive.

Key role for the Zurich financial center

Sustainable management is increasingly becoming the focus of companies. Drivers of this development include the Paris climate targets, the UN sustainability goals, legal framework conditions, but also changing customer needs. Sustainable financial products and services are increasingly in demand. The Federal Council has recognized the importance and potential of sustainable finance and in December defined several measures with the aim of further expanding the position of the Swiss financial center as one of the world's leading locations for sustainable financial services. The Zurich financial center plays a key role due to its importance for the Swiss financial center. This study examined how progressive the Zurich financial center is in terms of sustainability. The results of the survey show that numerous companies already offer products and services with innovative sustainable approaches. These include investment products with specific sustainability objectives, ESG-compliant activities, sustainable bonds or sustainable loans, insurance or services.

However, companies also face challenges, according to the survey. This includes the increasingly complex political and regulatory framework imposed by the federal government and the EU. The increasingly required transparency of climate risks and sustainability measures is also seen as challenging by 40 percent of companies. The survey participants see the greatest potential for improvement in networking with science and other companies, as well as in legal and regulatory issues.

Consistently pursuing the topic of sustainability

The consistent focus on sustainability is an opportunity for the Zurich financial center and the entire Zurich business location. This is also in the interest of the companies surveyed: Every second company sees sustainable finance as an opportunity to strengthen its reputation and win and retain customers. However, the great development potential of sustainable finance must be exploited to an even greater extent. This includes, for example, the systematic disclosure of relevant and comparable climate information from companies and for investments in such companies.

The Canton and City of Zurich are committed to promoting Sustainable Finance in the Zurich financial center, anchoring it more firmly and enabling an attractive environment. The Canton of Zurich and the City of Zurich will continue to pursue this topic with the aim of deepening the dialog between the financial industry, business and academia. This is done, for example, by networking and making visible the players from the financial industry and the cleantech industry on the Innovation Zurich platform of the cantonal location promotion, but also through a regular exchange within the framework of workshops and conferences as well as further data collection.

Link to the study

Over the past year, ETH has seen the creation of 26 new spin-​offs. These newly founded spin-​offs cover a wide variety of fields and reflect the entire range of topics at ETH Zurich. The largest group (10) of the 2022 spin-​offs are again focused on the IT and communications technology sector – a trend that has continued for several years. However, the problems these companies address are very different: while Calvin Risk AG offers a kind of artificial intelligence insurance, Cerrion AG uses AI and sensors to monitor and improve entire production processes. The ETH spin-​off Transcality AG creates complex models, or digital twins, of traffic systems that make it possible to analyse a city’s traffic flows and simulate future scenarios.

Working to enhance mental and physical health

A striking number of the new ETH spin-​offs develop solutions for the healthcare sector. Three young companies are working on novel cancer drugs or on improving existing therapeutics, while two others offer apps that help to reduce stress and increase mental and physical well-​being. Another one is Kairos Medical AG, which develops biodegradable bone implants. These are able to stabilise bones during healing, but – unlike conventional metal screws – they then dissolve in the body over time.

Spark the entrepreneurial spirit before graduation

No fewer than four of the new spin-​offs came to life in the Student Project House – ETH’s ideas workshop for its students. One such spin-​off is Bottleplus, which produces a sustainable water bottle that can be used to make carbonated water on the go. Another is AtlasVR AG, which provides virtual reality technology for professional training programmes. “We want society to benefit from our research findings and innovations as quickly as possible. I’m enormously pleased that the Student Project House is succeeding in encouraging students to pursue their ideas and bring them to market,” says Vanessa Wood, Vice President for Knowledge Transfer and Corporate Relations at ETH Zurich. To further promote entrepreneurship among students and get schoolchildren excited about STEM subjects, ETH also entered into a strategic partnership with UBS in summer 2022.

Three new unicorns and numerous acquisitions

Investment in ETH spin-​offs also saw positive development last year. The companies raised around 1.2 billion Swiss francs – more than ever before. Three ETH spin-​offs also attained unicorn status in 2022: the term refers to start-​ups that are so promising that their market value exceeds one billion dollars even before they go public. These three companies are Scandit, which enables fast scanning even under difficult conditions, as well as Southpole and Climeworks, both of which are dedicated to the fight against climate change.

There were also a number of successful acquisitions: for example, the spin-​off Adresta was bought by Bucherer, Animatico was acquired by Nvidia, and FGen was taken over by Ginko Bioworks. Vertical farming herbs from ETH spin-​off Yasai also found their way onto Coop shelves in 2022, and Synhelion announced a strategic collaboration with Swiss International Air Lines. “It’s important for ETH that good technologies and ideas give rise to companies with growth potential and thus create new jobs. In this way, the success of our spin-​offs becomes the success of Switzerland,” says Vice President Vanessa Wood.

Author: ETH-News

Image source: ETH Zurich

The Relio AG has raised a total of 3 million Swiss francs from several investors in a financing round, informs the TX Group in a Communication. Your venture capital company, TX Ventures, acted as lead investor in the financing round. In addition to the TX subsidiary, which specialises in investments in fintechs, the financing round included. SIX FinTech Ventures and the High-Tech Gründerfonds involved.

Relio AG intends to use the funds to introduce a digital payment account for corporate customers. The Zurich-based fintech has developed an algorithm that performs compliance checks "quickly, accurately and automatically," even for large companies, according to the statement. This should help digital banks reduce the time required for due diligence when opening accounts for corporate customers.

Krzysztof Bialkowski, Managing Partner at TX Ventures, is excited about his company's entry into Relio. He firmly believes "Relio's experienced team is capable of shaping the future of SMB banking by automating and improving what is central to all banks: compliance," Bialkowski is quoted as saying in the release. "This will enable the startup to bring real innovation to the market by improving administrative processes and supporting even the most complex SME customers in Switzerland and abroad." hs

Author: hs, Café Europe
Image Source: Relio AG

The Private Banking & Wealth Management Switzerland Awards recognise outstanding achievement in the fields of Private Banking and Wealth Management in the Swiss market since 2018. The Excellence in Customer Experience award honours software and technology solution providers that enable private banks and wealth managers to offer a first-class customer experience to their clients.

The laudation stated: “With Finfox, advisers provide their clients with an extensive and high-end spectrum of user journeys ranging from adviser-led solutions to easy-to-use guided self-services, thus always keeping abreast with the clients’ situation within the overall client lifecycle.”

Dr. Christian Dicke, CEO at Finfox: «We are proud to have been able to demonstrate how Finfox improves our clients’ wealth management experience. For us, excellence in customer experience means creating memorable moments with a visible added value for the client. That is at the heart of what we strive for every day.”

«Being recognised in this way proves that with FinfoxTouch, our tablet-based advisory tool, and FinfoxAdvice, our tool for guided self-services, we extended our product proposition effectively. It shows that we are successful in providing our clients an experience that exceeds expectations in terms of ease of use and functionality,” he continued.

“I want to congratulate everyone at Finfox for this outstanding team effort and thank our clients for choosing Finfox on their digital transformation journey,” Christian Dicke concluded.

The new year is only a few days old and already the first podcast episode follows, focusing on the topic of "Robotics in Healthcare". The guest will be the managing director of F&P Robotics AG, Michael Früh. With the development of the mobile assistance robot "LIO", Mr. Früh and his team are doing real pioneering work in the field of personalized robotics. So who better to provide insight into this future-relevant topic. Listen in to the latest episode to learn what differentiates a traditional robot from a personalized robot, the challenges of robot-human interaction, and how robots can help address current and future healthcare challenges, using "LIO" as an example.

"Marketplace Healthcare" is the podcast on healthcare management and leadership. Alfred Angerer is a professor at the ZHAW for Management in Healthcare and the founder of Marktplatz Gesundheitswesen. In the podcast he interviews exciting people with whom he discusses the current trends. In doing so, he is looking in a forward-thinking direction that does not neglect topics such as digitalization and process optimization.

Where is the greatest potential for stopping climate change? This was the question on Patrik Deuss' mind when he was looking for a topic for his bachelor's thesis in energy and environmental engineering. In heating? In mobility? In the lighting? "In the ZHAW buildings, I noticed that the lights in the corridors were always on," says the energy and environmental engineer. "The janitor explained to me that lighting control is a complex issue." Conventional systems have a single motion detector per room and can only light it completely or not at all. "It should be possible to do this more in line with demand," thought Deuss - and he had found the topic for his bachelor's thesis.

The ZHAW student began developing the prototype of an intelligent light source. His idea was to switch from a centralized to a decentralized system: each illuminant should have its own "brain". The sensor in the new LED tube measures not only movement, but also temperature, humidity, and the incidence of light from natural sources such as windows. All the hardware that is otherwise distributed in the room is integrated into each individual lamp: sensor, lamp, cable. "Together, the light sources function like a swarm," Deuss explains. "It produces as much light as is needed at any given time." This could save 90 percent electricity in lighting.

Subsidiaries in Germany and Spain

Patrik Deuss quickly noticed that his idea met with interest. Since he was reaching his limits with the development of the software, he brought in Florian Gärtner, an electrical engineer and friend from the time when he raced downhill competitively. The two founded the startup LEDCity and benefited from the ZHAW's "Startup Challenge" program. For six months, they were able to use office space free of charge, received coaching and training on topics such as patent registration, business plans and the search for investors.

The young founders began to have the lights mass-produced - in Asia. "Most of the electronic components in the LED market are manufactured in China," explains Patrik Deuss. "A train eventually brings our material to Switzerland."

In 2017, Deuss and Gärtner sold the first illuminant, and the company has been growing ever since. LEDCity currently employs 42 people and recently opened offices in Germany and Spain. The startup specializes in commercial buildings and has customers such as Zurich Airport, the ZHAW and the Dolder Grand Hotel. Due to the current tense situation on the energy market, interest in smart lighting has once again risen sharply, says Deuss. In commercial buildings, lighting accounts for up to 30 percent of electricity costs.

Global electricity savings as a target

Patrik Deuss and Florian Gärtner have big goals: By 2030, they want to convert 12 million light bulbs and thus save the electricity production of a nuclear power plant. That sounds unrealistic at first, but Deuss does the math: In 2022 alone, LEDCity will convert 55,000 lamps. So far, he said, the startup's production has grown at an average annual rate of more than 100 percent - but the target would be reached at a growth rate of 77 percent.

LEDCity's vision goes even further: by 2040, efficient LED lighting systems are expected to reduce global electricity consumption in the lighting sector by 80 percent. "Of course, we can't do it alone," says Deuss. "But we are cranking up the market." For example, the developers are in the process of creating a small sensor that incorporates all the technology of the LEDCity tubes so that other companies can integrate this sensor into their own luminaires. Patrik Deuss assumes that a lot will happen in the energy sector in the next few years. "It is always easier and cheaper to save electricity than to produce it sustainably," emphasizes the startup founder.

From top athlete to CEO

At 30, Patrik Deuss is CEO of a fast-growing SME. Is the great responsibility a burden? "I find my work very meaningful," he replies. They are a very good team that supports each other, he said. They are constantly looking for new employees and it is important for them to select them well. His experience in top-level sport had also prepared him well for this task. "In both sports and business, you have to break goals down into milestones. You need discipline, training - and the will to persevere," says Deuss. "I think as an elite athlete, you have a different sense of pain."

Author: Seraina Sattler / ZHAW Impact

In the coming months, the young people will work in small teams to develop and elaborate their very own AI project. They will be supported and mentored by doctoral students from the ETH AI Center, the competence center for artificial intelligence at ETH Zurich. Interested students can still register until mid-​December.

Generous support by the Cantons of Zurich and Schwyz

The project is generously supported by the Office of Economic Affairs and Labor of the Canton of Zurich and Office of Economic Affairs of the Canton of Schwyz, and led by the ETH AI Center.

The competition aims at introducing girls and boys to artificial intelligence (AI), a key technology of our time that is set to shape the future of many businesses and profesions. The students are provided with extensive online learning materials, that can be accessed free of charge. The course materials have been developed for the German forerunner of the AI Competition for teenagers. Anyone with an inquisitive mind can use the course material to learn about the origins of artificial intelligence, take the first steps with the programming language Python up to the implementation of a fully working AI project. Prior knowledge in the domains of programming and artificial intelligence are explicitly not necessary.

"We want to introduce the next generations to the topic of AI with a hands-​on mentality", emphasizes PD Dr. Alexander Ilic, Executive Director and Co-​Founder of the ETH AI Center: "Implementing a project, in the form of their own programmed AI, from idea to product, offers the best learning for young people: it means solving a problem through trial-​and-error until you reach the desired goal." Furthermore, the participants will learn the basics of product development and project management - valuable skills for any career they may choose in the future.

It's all about bringing your own ideas to life

Intelligent algorithms are already an integral part of our everyday lives. Whether it's communicating with Siri and Alexa on a daily basis, autonomous driving, or using a SnapChat filter - there's always an AI inside. We all use artificial intelligence several times a day without even thinking about it. In the future, AI will change many more professional fields and permeate numerous aspects of our lives.

But what is artificial intelligence, actually? Anyone who wants to know can find out as part of the online course, and create novel tools from their own imagination using code.

"The current skilled labor situation cannot be solved overnight, but must be thought of in the long term", says Fabian Streiff, Head of Location Promotion for the Canton of Zurich. "The situation is particularly tense in the ICT sector. That's why we have to find ways and design initiatives to ensure that Zurich, as a center of innovation, will have enough skilled workers in the future. The ETH AI Center's AI competition is one of these initiatives." 

When it comes to choosing and designing their own projects, the participating students are free to follow their interests: whether they prefer to work on a chatbot, a robot or on computer vision - the projects can be based on everyday problems, relate to the students' hobbies or simply arise from a fascination for a particular topic. Attractive prizes await the finalists.

Do you also want to change the world with artificial intelligence?

Join us and register right now:

www.ki-​wettbewerb.ch

Fiat24 from Zurich is a winner of the Banking Innovation Award 2022. This is awarded annually by Qorus, the international association established by banks and financial institutes, and the consultancy firm Accenture with the aim of honoring innovations in banking. According to a press release, there were 680 applications this year from 57 countries across the eight award categories. Fiat24 won in the Neobanks & Specialized Players category.

Fiat24 has developed a platform based on Web3 that can be used to process payment transactions via blockchain. Customers use a non-fungible token (NFT) for this instead of a password and with this, they can access all of Fiat24’s services. The bank then forwards payments on to recipients, or rather registers payment receipts for clients. These incoming payments can also be made in various currencies and from a variety of sources. Furthermore, Fiat24 is also already represented in the metaverse, where it provides its clients a presence, by acquiring a plot of virtual land.

Fiat24 is a brand of the fintech company SR Saphirstein AG, which was established in Zurich in 2018.

Switzerland's first vertical farm integrated into a residential neighborhood is to be built in Schlierem's Lymhof. According to a media release, the agreement signed by site owner Geistlich Immobilia in Schlieren and Zurich-based start-up Yasai for this purpose envisages commissioning of the vertical farm by 2026. In the approximately 8 meters high hall then herbs, leaf lettuces and much more are to be cultivated resource-conserving and pesticide-free and also sold directly on site, it is said further. Yasai is a spin-off of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich(ETH).

The farm will be integrated into the residential neighborhood at Rietpark. Directly above the hall will be built duplex apartments with roof garden, according to the statement. There will be various neighborhood amenities such as a bistro, hotel rooms, flexible, small-scale commercial space, and space for neighborhood life, he said.

"With our farm in Schlieren, we will bring food production directly to the people," Mark E. Zahran, co-founder and CEO of Yasai, is quoted as saying. Glass facades will make the hall visible, and there will be peepholes to the "grow chamber" in the heart of the hall, where the herbs grow under protection. The yield per square meter in such a vertical farm is several times higher than in conventional agriculture.

With Yasai, "an innovative and sustainable use has been found for the hall building in the Lymhof," Martin Geistlich, managing director of the site owner Geistlich Immobilia, is quoted as saying. "I envision a colorful, lively piece of the neighborhood," Ladina Esslinger, head of development at Geistlich Immobilia, is quoted as saying. "We want to create an urban place, but not an offshoot of Zurich, but a neighborhood piece that takes existing needs and fits Schlieren." gba 

Participants from Switzerland and Kenya have shown at an online conference held by S-GE how the Swiss cleantech industry can help the East African country with Vision 2030. This government plan envisages Kenya’s complete implementation of the energy revolution by this time, among other things. The circular economy is also included in this.

As Valentin Zellweger, Ambassador of Switzerland to Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda, Somalia, and Uganda, stated in his introduction, this is an opportunity for innovative solutions from the Swiss cleantech sector. More than 70 Swiss companies are already active in Kenya, which is considered to be the gateway to the rest of Africa.

Representatives from S-GE, KEPSA (the Kenya Private Sector Alliance umbrella organization), and Swiss Business Hub Southern Africa took part in the discussion. Additionally, a few companies based in Kenya presented their efforts and needs with regard to sustainability: Mr. Green Africa collects plastic waste from private individuals and sells it back to industry as a raw product. Olivado produces avocado oil in the central highlands and has developed and built its own biomass plant to reduce waste and generate energy. OFGEN provides innovative solar solutions.

OFGEN’s CEO, Geoffrey Ronoh, noted how desirable the engagement of Swiss investors was for building production facilities, which would do away with costly imports of components and products. Furthermore, he added that Kenya needs software to minimize energy loss and save money and stated that direct trade between Switzerland and Kenya must be ensured. To this end, Ambassador Zellweger has promised a trade drive between the two countries. It is expected to start as early as Q1 2023. Ronoh and other participants additionally expressed the importance of direct contact with local agents.

Marcel Bruhwiler has been the Infrastructure Manager for Southern and East Africa at the International Finance Corporation (IFC) since 2012 and previously was active within the Bühler Group in Johannesburg for eight years. He identified three key areas of activity for Kenya’s infrastructural growth above all else: It requires “a tech hub and tech jobs for faster internet connections” as well as public-private partnerships for solutions regarding urbanization, clean water, waste management, and urban mobility. Moreover, Kenya’s progress in renewable energy and with a decentralized energy supply could also have a positive impact on the development of other African countries. He believes that affordability is a key topic: anyone dedicated to cleantech in Africa may have to consider limited financial opportunities.

S-GE is organizing a trip to Kenya in February for company representatives. This may be held in parallel with an official visit to the East African country from State Secretary Helene Budliger Artieda, Director of the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO).

As the independent and financial return driven venture arm of TX Group, TX Ventures has built a strong investment track record with investments such as the challenger bank neon, the alternative investment platform Stableton, the real estate price intelligence software Pricehubble, and exits such as the mortgage platform Moneypark.

 During recent years, TX Ventures has transformed into a leading FinTech investor in Switzerland and is launching today its first dedicated CHF 100 Million fund. The fund is structured as a single Limited Partnership, and its sole investor is TX Group.

 TX Ventures has set the base to launch its new FinTech fund by disposing of non-core assets (such as the sale of Olmero to Sterling Square / TA Associates), implementing a professional investment committee, and clearly defining its financial return oriented investment mandate.

TX Ventures’ mandate, to invest in financial technology start-ups (FinTech, InsurTech, Crypto) in Europe with preference for the DACH region, has its focus on early stage investments (Seed to Series A) with initial tickets ranging from CHF0.5m to CHF5m.

 The team, consisting of Krzysztof Bialkowski, Jens Schleuniger, David Schnider and Markus Rommel, has already built a strong portfolio of Swiss based FinTechs, while being supported by experts in the areas of marketing, cyber security, tech, communication, legal and finance. TX Ventures believes that - despite the current economic headwinds - the current market environment offers great investment opportunities. The team has a clear long term ambition to become one of the leading early stage FinTech investors in Europe, a growing and sizable market for FinTech.

 The TX Ventures investment committee is chaired by Romy Schnelle, Partner at Hightech Gründerfonds (HTGF) and complemented by well known Fintech Founder Miriam Wohlfarth, Sandro Macchiacchini (COO of TX Group), Daniel Mönch (CSO of TX Group) and Olivier Rihs (Board Member SMG and JobCloud).

 Are you a FinTech looking for an experienced FinTech investor? Get in touch!

In order to develop solutions to major food challenges the world is facing, the World Food System Center of ETH Zurich launches a new research program, supported by Bayer, focusing on improving sustainability of agricultural and food systems across key environmental metrics. The goal is to understand the benefits and tradeoffs of various measures in agricultural systems and production practices while maintaining the production potential and strengthening overall resilience of the agricultural system towards climate impacts and biodiversity.

Research for the future of agriculture

Around the globe, agricultural and food systems are facing major challenges. Future agri-​food systems must provide enough healthy and affordable food for a growing world population as well as deliver a sufficient economic benefit for farmers. At the same time, climate change, increasing scarcity of natural resources, and deteriorating soil health and biodiversity all pose major stress on the entire food system.

Food production, therefore, needs sufficient yields of good quality while substantially reducing the environmental risks and footprints. Such production requires promotion of solutions that are tailored to the local conditions, cropping systems, and farmers’ needs. Balancing these trade-​offs is necessary to secure the production potential of agriculture and farming systems in the long term.

Natasha Santos, Head of Global Stakeholder Affairs & Strategic Partnerships at Bayer Crop Science comments: “According to the UN, the world population will grow to around 10 billion people in the next 30 years. Supplying these 2 billion more people than today’s population with food represents a huge global challenge. At the same time, climate change is reducing agricultural production. If farmers are to "produce more with less" now and in the future, innovative technologies that deliver greater resource efficiency are essential. We as Bayer are happy that we can support the World Food System Center providing scientific guidance on solutions to transform agriculture toward a more resilient, sustainable and food secure future”.

Detlef Günther, Vice President Research at ETH Zurich, comments: "In contrast to progressing towards eradicating hunger, the number of undernourished people in the world is on the rise. New solutions are needed to produce sufficient food of good quality, making it accessible for all while greatly reducing environmental risks. This new partnership supports interdisciplinary research to identify solutions that consider relevant tradeoffs for farmers, industry, and consumers.”

Special focus on environmental footprint

The partnership enables new interdisciplinary research projects that will specifically aim to identify sustainable production practices and agricultural systems covering all sustainability dimensions, explore them along key metrics, and further improve their sustainability by minimizing tradeoffs with special focus on the environmental footprint and risks of production. A key component of the partnership is on collaboration and knowledge-​sharing between research and practice as well as interdisciplinary, solution-​oriented research approaches for major crops grown in Europe.

Starting in 2023, the World Food System Center will identify the first research projects through a call for proposals. The funded interdisciplinary projects are expected to yield insights on pathways to reduce the environmental impact of food systems using a holistic perspective. The World Food System Center and Bayer look forward to sharing the results with the agriculture sector, other research institutions, companies, and the public. In the future, other industry partners may also participate in the research activities.

Author: Jeanne Tomaszewski/WFSC, ETH Zurich

ETH News

Image source: ETH Zurich

They convinced the jury with their pitches and will be allowed to move into the Züri Innovationspark office next year.

In Switzerland, the proportion of sustainability start-ups in all technology and science-based start-ups increased from 4% to almost 10% in just two years (2019 - 2021). In parallel, the total volume of venture capital investment in this sector grew from CHF 200 million to CHF 600 million. As of 2022, Switzerland has the highest density per capita of sustainability start-ups.

Two sectors deserve special mention: mechanical engineering and the food industry. Switzerland has mature innovation ecosystems in both sectors: founders have the opportunity to collaborate with leading international universities and market-leading companies at all stages of the value chain.

Meat substitute products and AI-based platforms for resource-saving agriculture represent these strengths, as do natural fibre-based composite materials that reduce the ecological footprint of mobility.

You can download the Swiss Startup Radar in German, French and English here: Swiss Startup Radar 2022 / 2023

The new endowed professorship will be established at the Center for Artificial Intelligence (CAI) of the ZHAW in Winterthur. In particular, it will be dedicated to the application of machine learning methods and knowledge-based systems in the context of processes in production and service. "The use of artificial intelligence in industry is becoming increasingly important, especially when it comes to the potential of data for evaluating and controlling complex processes. With the support of the Johann Jacob Rieter Foundation and the Rieter Group, we can further expand AI research in the field of industrial applications," explains Prof. Dr. Dirk Wilhelm, Director of the ZHAW School of Engineering.

For Rieter, the commitment is related to the implementation of its technology leadership strategy. "The use of artificial intelligence will make a significant contribution to automation, process optimization and thus to improving sustainability in the textile industry. It is thus an important element of the leading technology that Rieter offers," emphasizes Dr. Norbert Klapper, CEO Rieter.

The contribution of the Johann Jacob Rieter Foundation to the financing of the professorship is in line with the Winterthur Cluster Initiative. The increasing digitalization of production processes opens up new perspectives for Winterthur as a business location. "The Smart Machines cluster is gaining in importance," says Thomas Anwander, member of the Foundation Board, and adds: "The Endowed Chair for Industrial AI at the ZHAW aims to promote Winterthur as a technology location by pooling locally available strengths in mechanical engineering and Industry 4.0."

Competence development in the field of Industrial AI

The endowed professorship will serve to build expertise in the field of Industrial AI and will preside over a group dedicated to teaching and research around trust-based machine learning. This involves, for example, the use of artificial intelligence with the aim of optimizing production processes in terms of the use of raw materials and energy and making expert knowledge more readily available. In addition to research, the new professorship will also be active in teaching, in the Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Data Science, in the Master of Science in Engineering, and in continuing education, in the spirit of knowledge transfer.

The annual contribution of 300 000 CHF over a period of six years is financed in equal parts by the Rieter Group and the Johann Jacob Rieter Foundation.

Media release as PDF(PDF 118,4 KB)

The new drone strategy 2.0, shows how Europe can pursue large-scale commercial drone operations while opening up new opportunities for the sector.

From workplaces to new mobility solutions

Thanks to the comprehensive EU regulatory framework, hundreds of thousands of flight hours have already been safely performed with drones in the airspace over Europe, e.g. for infrastructure surveying, oil spill monitoring or ground sampling. Projects using drones for medical deliveries, i.e., transporting medical specimens between healthcare providers, are also progressing well. The realization of "U-Space" in January 2023, a European system unique in the world for the safe management of drone traffic, will lay the foundation for increased flight operations.

Before moving forward with these innovative technologies, the commission wants to ensure that society supports drones. Therefore, the strategy calls on national, regional, and local communities to ensure that drone services are responsive to the needs of citizens and address noise, safety, and privacy concerns. Further information is available in the media release.

Alfred and Stefan dedicate themselves to the extremely relevant topic of "IT and security", which keeps the Swiss healthcare system on its toes. And who would be better suited as a guest than Sven Fassbender, who has become famous in the IT scene for exposing the security vulnerabilities of the platform "meineimpfungen.ch".
Sven is managing director and co-founder of ZFT.COMPANY and has worked in numerous German and Swiss companies in the field of IT and security. In the press, moreover, he would be described as an ethical hacker ("white-hat hacker") who always acts in the spirit of his overriding goal - the protection of the data of the Swiss population!
The information security consultant reports on his daily work with hospitals and start-ups, among others, as well as on his successes with "meineimpfungen.ch" and "Swisstransplant".
Listen into this podcast episode to learn more about Sven Fassbender's exciting tips and recommendations and why backups, two-factor authentication and password managers should be daily tools for all of us.

The podcast "Marketplace Healthcare" is the podcast on healthcare management and leadership. Alfred Angerer is a professor at the ZHAW for Management in Healthcare and the founder of Marktplatz Gesundheitswesen. In the podcast he interviews exciting people with whom he discusses the current trends. In doing so, he is looking in a forward-thinking direction that does not neglect topics such as digitalization and process optimization.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has already become indispensable in many areas of industry, but does it also have the potential to revolutionize the healthcare industry? To get a little closer to the answer to this question, Sina Berger is a guest on the current edition of "Marktplatz Gesundheitswesen". Sina is a research associate at the Winterthur Institute of Health Economics in the Healthcare Management team and works on topics such as digital health, process optimization and patient satisfaction. As part of her master's thesis, she explored the question of the extent to which patients' treatment pathways can be optimized through the targeted use of IoT. But what is actually behind the much-vaunted "buzzword" and to what extent is IoT already being used in healthcare today? This much can already be revealed: Just because a device has a sensor doesn't mean it's IoT. Listen in to this podcast episode to learn more about what IoT applications should be used in the future to optimize the patient pathway and create value for patients and staff.

The podcast "Marketplace Healthcare" is the podcast on healthcare management and leadership. Alfred Angerer is a professor at the ZHAW for Management in Healthcare and the founder of Marktplatz Gesundheitswesen. In the podcast he interviews exciting people with whom he discusses the current trends. In doing so, he is looking in a forward-thinking direction that does not neglect topics such as digitalization and process optimization.

This episode was recorded directly and live during a panel discussion at the ZHAW Digital Health Lab Day. In this, three innovation experts from the healthcare sector answered the question of how new, innovative and implementable digital health ideas could be systematically provoked in organizations.
After all, every good healthcare organization wants innovative employees who can drive the business forward with new Digital Health ideas. But this development cannot be left to chance. Accordingly, the introduction of systematic and strategic innovation management sounds promising. Accordingly, this round's guests are the three experts in the field, Niowi Näf (Chief Strategy Officer at Hirslanden), Matthias Hermann (Head of Innovation Management at the University Hospital Zurich) and Tobias Gantner (Founder and Head of Healthcare Futurists), who will provide insights into their daily innovation work.
Listen into this podcast episode to learn more about what smart innovation management entails, how it works, and what it brings in very real terms.

The podcast "Marketplace Healthcare" is the podcast on healthcare management and leadership. Alfred Angerer is a professor at the ZHAW for Management in Healthcare and the founder of Marktplatz Gesundheitswesen. In the podcast he interviews exciting people with whom he discusses the current trends. In doing so, he is looking in a forward-thinking direction that does not neglect topics such as digitalization and process optimization.

The ZHAW Digital Health Lab brings together experts from the fields of biomedicine, health, technology and business, who together create innovations for digitization in healthcare. Alfred and his guest Prof. Dr. Sven Hirsch sit on the board here and launched this ZHAW (Zurich University of Applied Sciences) led platform in 2018. And so it is fitting that Alfred and Sven, heads of the "Center for Computational Health" in Wädenswil, take an inward look in this episode and highlight the added value of such a virtual, interdepartmental organization at the ZHAW.
Both ZHAW colleagues have very different backgrounds. Sven's background is in laser physics, as well as media art, and he is currently primarily involved in biomedical simulations and modeling. Alfred, on the other hand, comes from the field of health economics and, in his daily work, looks at the influence of new technologies on the players in the healthcare system.
In addition to the specialties the two represent, the Digital Health Lab brings together many other competencies to focus digital health activities and create innovation.
Listen into this podcast episode to learn more about Sven Hirsch's research focus on biomedical simulation and how the Digital Health Lab works. In addition, Sven and Alfred provide insights into the two large multi-million projects (funded by the Innosuisse Flagship and the Zurich Universities Digitization Initiative) that the Lab has won as well as about the ZHAW Digital Health Lab Day.

The podcast "Marketplace Healthcare" is the podcast on healthcare management and leadership. Alfred Angerer is a professor at the ZHAW for Management in Healthcare and the founder of Marktplatz Gesundheitswesen. In the podcast he interviews exciting people with whom he discusses the current trends. In doing so, he is looking in a forward-thinking direction that does not neglect topics such as digitalization and process optimization.

On 1 November 2022 , a new structural vessel «The BRIDGE Lab» was launched at the Digital Society Initiative (DSI), University of Zurich (UZH). As the key drivers of the initiative, Dr. Ning Wang, Prof. Davide Scaramuzza and Prof. Francis Cheneval aim to, through this collaborative platform, connect science with industry, government, regulatory authority, and civil society around conditions of successful implementation of digital innovations in Switzerland.

The ethos of the lab is to «Bridge The Wisdom Gap» – the gap between the increasingly interconnected complexity of global challenges, which interlocks existing problems and supercharges power dynamics, and our inability of making sense of as well as coping with them. «The BRIDGE Lab» seeks to offer an exploratory space for addressing one such challenges – the introduction and integration of high-impact technology in society, such as drones used as urban air mobility solutions in Switzerland.

The lab is funded by the Digitalization Initiative of the Zurich Higher Education Institutions (DIZH) for two years. Project partners include leading industry members and key societal actors, such as Canton of Zurich, Federal Office of Civil Aviation, IEEE Switzerland, and University of Geneva, among others. More info about the project can be found here. Stay tuned on the upcoming activities!

The ZHdK-Startup-Finder is a new online database launched under the label of the Zurich Centre for Creative Economies (ZCCE) at Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). It offers an overview of the various startups, spin-offs and non-profit organisations that have emerged in the ZHdK ecosystem in recent years. The Startup Finder also showcases the innovative potential and diversity of founders from the ZHdK who generate cultural, social, ecological, and economic impact.

Everyone who is interested in certain aspects such as disciplines, legal form or field can set and filter corresponding criteria in the database or enter certain keywords. An overview of the content:

• 54 companies and organisations founded since 2011
• 4.5 incorporations per year
• 46% female (co-)founders (vs. Swiss average of 20%, according to the Female Founders Initiative)
• 44% interdisciplinary founding teams

When assessing the quantitative output one has to take into account the university's size - while ZHdK is one of the largest arts universities in Europe with around 2,100 Bachelor and Master students, it is one of the smaller players in Zurich's university landscape.

The Network Food Canton Zurich invited people from the Zurich food ecosystem to a first major event in Wädenswil. Two virtual roundtables had taken place in 2021. Now, the Division of Business and Economic Development of the Canton of Zurich and the Food Visionaries think tank took the network to the next level to further strengthen regional innovation in the food sector. The network came together at the Wädenswil site of the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), where a center for the so-called agro-food business is united under one roof. More events are to follow, said Anne Schmidt, project manager food of the Division of Business and Economic Development of the Office of Economic Affairs. According to Food Visionaries co-founder Bettina Brinkmanns, the platform aims to bring together the entire value chain.  

In order to create a basis for effective networking, the innovation network SwissFoodResearch has analyzed the needs of the food ecosystem on behalf of the location promotion. Lucas Grob and SwissFoodResearch CEO Peter Braun presented the results at the event. Among other things, the study identifies the lack of production sites, regulatory hurdles or the low rate of those who make use of subsidies as starting points for assistance. Peter Braun said, "A cluster approach to innovation systems already exists in the Zurich economic area - not many regions have that."

The sticking point of regulatory hurdles was addressed by Bettina Brinkmann in her capacity as President of the Swiss Food-Agro-Tech Association (SFATA). SFATA supports the development and approval of innovations. Brinkmann referred to the experimentation article from the health sector. According to the Federal Health Insurance Act, this is intended to create the legal basis for innovative pilot trials for cantons, among others." Investor Daniel M. Böhi of Alphorn Ventures presented the project The Forge in Thayngen SH. In cooperation with Unilever Switzerland, an innovation center specializing in nutrition is planned here on 40,000 square meters. The center will offer expert support as well as access to machinery.

In the panel, five experts ended up discussing what could spur food innovation. Christina Senn-Jakobsen of the Swiss Food Nutrition Valley association looked at the strong innovation support of other countries. "That's what we're missing," she emphasized. Money is available, said Marina Helm Romaneschi - director of the innovation cooperative dieCuisine, among others. But it is not always clear where and how to obtain it, he said. The canton could play an important role here as a guide.

Martijn Sonneveldt, as director of the ETH Zurich World Food System Center, advocated, among other things, institutional dialogue in the ecosystem and overcoming cantonal thinking. Michel Roux, co-president of the Zurich Nutrition Forum, focused on an intensive examination of eating habits. Fundamentally, the managing director of the Zurich Farmers' Association, Ferdi Hodel, affirmed: "We have to give food a value, at the moment we define it by price." Then it could become clearer which innovation is future-oriented. Fabian Streiff, as Head of the Division of Business and Economic Development, concluded with the quote: "Those who want to go fast must go alone. Those who want to go far must go together with others."

Under the bilateral air transport agreement, Switzerland and the European Union (EU) regulate the internationally oriented aviation sector uniformly and through a joint committee. The Joint Aviation Committee has decided that the regulatory framework for unmanned aerial vehicles (drones, model aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles of other categories) already in force in the EU will also come into force in Switzerland from January 1,   2023.

European regulation sets safety standards for the manufacture, certification and operation of drones. A new distinction is made between the three categories "open", "special" and "subject to approval", depending on the operating risk. All remote pilots who wish to operate a drone in the open category must have a certificate obtained after training with a final examination. The adopted regulation provides for mutual recognition of the respective certificates in the EU and Switzerland.

Improved protection

New maximum flight altitudes, weight limits as well as area restrictions apply. To address the concerns of the population, regulations were introduced in the areas of environmental protection, privacy and security.

Switzerland will also apply the European regulation on "U-Space". This is a set of digital and automated functions and processes deployed in a defined airspace. U-Space aims to safely integrate the increasing number of civil drone flight movements into the airspace to ensure the conflict-free coexistence of manned and unmanned aviation systems. From now on, pilots have a better overview of the traffic situation.

The Joint Committee also updated several existing provisions. Adjustments to the regulation of slots at airports clarify airlines' entitlement to slots in the upcoming scheduling period in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. For fuel planning, existing requirements will be adjusted to account for new fuel or energy sources as well. In addition, administrative facilitations allow several air carriers of the same group of companies to jointly apply for a permit to perform aircraft maintenance operations (CAMO).

For Switzerland, the Director of the FOCA, Christian Hegner, signed the decision of the Joint Aviation Committee. The Federal Council approved the adoption of these provisions at its meeting on November 9,   2022. The new provisions of the agreement will enter into force on January 1,   2023.

In doing so, they are helping to mitigate the environmental impacts and social problems associated with gold mining.

Author: Tünde Kirstein, ETH Zurich
ETH News
Image source: ETH Zurich / ETH transfer

An international research team from the Swiss Federal Materials Testing and Research Institute (Empa) has developed a swarm of cooperative drones for use in construction. The model is the cooperation of bees and wasps. How the Empa reports, the flying robots print out 3D materials in the air under human control and place them in the designated locations. The performance of these BuilDrones is recorded and monitored by a second fleet, the ScanDrones. They also specify the upcoming manufacturing steps.

Empa also demonstrates in a video that this is the first time such detailed 3D printing has been performed by a free-flying robot. The scientific journal "Nature published the study of the team of Professor Mirko Kovac of the Materials and Technology Centre of Robotics on Sept. 21 online and made them available in its most recent issue of the September 22 to the Cover Story.

Called aerial additive manufacturing, the drones are designed to adapt their activity to the different geometries of the structure as the building process progresses. They act autonomously during their deployment. A human controller observes the process and makes adjustments as necessary based on information provided by the drones.

"We have demonstrated that the drones can operate autonomously to construct and repair buildings, at least in the lab," Kovac is quoted as saying. This could facilitate work in hard-to-reach areas such as high-rise buildings. Now, according to Empa, the experts want to work with construction companies to validate the developed solutions in practice and develop new repair and manufacturing options. mm/Café Europe

As LatticeFlow co-founder and CEO Petar Tsankov told me, the company currently has more than 10 customers in both Europe and the U.S., including a number of large enterprises like Siemens and organizations like the Swiss Federal Railways, and is currently running pilots with quite a few more. It’s this customer demand that led LatticeFlow to raise at this point.

“I was in the States and I met with some investors in Palo Alto, Tsankov explained. “They saw the bottleneck that we have with onboarding customers. We literally had machine learning engineers supporting customers and that’s not how you should run the company. And they said: ‘OK, take $12 million, bring these people in and expand.’ That was great timing for sure because when we talked to other investors, we did see that the market has changed.”

As Tsankov and his co-founder CTO Pavol Bielik noted, most enterprises today have a hard time bringing their models into production and then, when they do, they often realize that they don’t perform as well as they expected. The promise of LatticeFlow is that it can auto-diagnose the data and models to find potential blind spots. In its work with a major medical company, its tools to analyze their datasets and models quickly found more than half a dozen critical blind spots in their state-of-the-art production models, for example.

The team noted that it’s not enough to only look at the training data and ensure that there is a diverse set of images — in the case of the vision models that LatticeFlow specializes in — but also examine the models.

“Ifyouonlylookatthedata — and this isafundamentaldifferentiatorfor LatticeFlowbecause we not only find the standarddataissueslikelabelingissuesor poor-qualitysamples,butalsomodelblindspots,whicharethescenarios where themodelsarefailing,” Tsankov explained. “Once the model is ready, we can take it, find various data model issues and help companies fix it.”

He noted, for example, that models will often find hidden correlations that may confuse the model and skew the results. In working with an insurance customer, for example, who used an ML model to automatically detect dents, scratches and other damage in images of cars, the model would often label an image with a finger in it as a scratch. Why? Because in the training set, customers would often take a close-up picture with a scratch and point at it with their finger. Unsurprisingly, the model would then correlate “finger” with “scratch,” even when there was no scratch on the car. Those are issues, the LatticeFlow teams argues, that go beyond creating better labels and need a service that can look at both the model and the training data.

LatticeFlow itself, it is worth noting, isn’t in the training business. The service works with pre-trained models. For now, it also focuses on offering its service as an on-prem tool, though it may offer a fully managed service in the future, too, as it uses the new funding to hire aggressively, both to better service its existing customers and to build out its product portfolio.

“The painful truth is that today, most large-scale AI model deployments simply are not functioning reliably in the real world,” said Sunir Kapoor, operating partner at Atlantic Bridge. “This is largely due to the absence of tools that help engineers efficiently resolve critical AI data and model errors. But, this is also why the Atlantic Bridge team so unambiguously reached the decision to invest in LatticeFlow. We believe that the company is poised for tremendous growth, since it is currently the only company that auto-diagnoses and fixes AI data and model defects at scale.”

Author: Frederic Lardinois, TechCrunch
Image source: LatticeFlow

How do you identify and empower innovators in your company?

Collectively, we have spent over 40 years researching this question. Our research on innovation styles identifies and examines the different preferences and roles people take on when pursuing innovation. By understanding this concept, organizations can better identify where specific people are needed and who should work together to generate new breakthrough ideas.

Our latest study relies on data collected between October 2006 and January 2021, across as many people in as many organizations as possible. Over 100,000 people — 112,497 to be precise, with nearly equal parts men and women — responded to the call, and we continue to collect data every day. Respondents came from 84 countries and work in a wide variety of companies and industries, including Microsoft, ArcelorMittal, Boston Symphony Orchestra, NASA, United Way, and Harvard University (and Harvard Business Review!).

Each respondent told us about what they like to do and what they do well when they solve problems (and what they do not like or do not do well). These answers revealed an individual’s preference for one of four unique innovation styles, each of which maps onto a distinct phase of a four-stage innovation process. Each style has a role to play in your organization, starting with finding new problems (generators), thoroughly defining problems (conceptualizers), evaluating ideas and selecting solutions (optimizers), and implementing selected solutions (implementers).

All four styles are necessary for innovation. Understanding which employees fall into which style enables an organization to manage their innovation efforts more effectively. However, in our experience, most organizations are lacking in some innovation styles — particularly generators — and we will be providing steps to help overcome this deficiency.

The Four Innovation Styles, Defined

Generators.

Generators find new problems and ideate based on their own direct experience. For them, physical contact with, and involvement in, the real-world alerts them to unresolved gaps and inconsistencies — problems that might be worth addressing as opportunities and possibilities. However, generators only find these problems at a high level; they do not necessarily gravitate towards articulating a clear understanding of a problem’s specifics or its potential solutions.

Across all organizational levels, generators are rare. Overall, just 17% of our sample were generators: 19% of executive managers, 18% of middle managers, 15% of supervisors, and 16% of non-managers. This means that, unless leaders are deliberate about including generators on teams, they may not be represented at all. Generators are perceptive of the world around them, and initiate and proliferate opportunities. So, a lack of generators makes it more likely that an organization will miss opportunities for valuable change. Given the importance of cognitive diversity in groups, this is a potential detriment to innovation performance.

That said, there are some occupations where generators are more common than others. School teachers (56%), academics (38%), and artists (34%) are the occupations with the greatest proportion of generators; engineering (8%), strategic planning (9%), and manufacturing (9%) have the lowest proportion. This means a lack of generators may be acutely felt on certain teams in certain fields. For instance, there is a 71% chance a four-person team from a strategic planning department has no generators at all.

Conceptualizers.

Conceptualizers define the problem and prefer to understand it through abstract analysis rather than through direct experience. Like generators, they like to ideate; but in contrast they prefer to model the problem clearly — integrating the various parts, relationships, and insights together — which can then be used as the basis for one or more solutions.

Conceptualizers are the second rarest innovation style, making up only 19% of the sample. They are relatively evenly represented across most occupational levels, with 17%, 18%, and 17% of non-managers, supervisors, and middle managers as conceptualizers, respectively. But more executives — 25% percent — are conceptualizers. This likely reflects the specific cognitive demands for that role: executive managers must strategically plan for more distant goals, rather than execute more tactical tasks.

Conceptualizers are most common in jobs where understanding the definition of the problem is vital, such as organization development (61%), strategic planning (57%), and market research (52%). Conversely, conceptualizers are rarest in operations (7%), technical support (11%), and project management (13%).

Optimizers.

Optimizers evaluate ideas and suggest solutions. They prefer to systematically examine all possible alternatives in order to implement the best solution among the known options.

Optimizers are most common among lower occupational levels (27% of non-managers) and decrease with a rise in occupational levels (23% of supervisors, 22% of middle managers, and 20% of executives). Because most solutions are implemented at lower levels of hierarchy, it makes sense that occupations at these levels are more likely to engage in optimization.

Optimizers are also most common in positions where practical, precise, and detailed plans, processes, and solutions are sought. Engineering (43%), manufacturing (38%), and finance (36%) had the highest proportion of optimizers. Product developer (9%), academic (10%), and school teacher (11%) had the lowest proportion.

Implementers.

Implementers put solutions to work. They enthusiastically (and sometimes impatiently) take action, experimenting with new solutions before mentally testing them and then make adjustments based on the outcome of these experiments.

Implementers are the most common innovation style, representing 41% of our survey respondents. Thirty six percent of executive managers are implementers, but are about as common among non-managers (41%), supervisors (44%), and middle managers (43%).

Individuals working in positions that require achievement of short-term results, such as IT operations (64%), customer relations (51%), and administration (50%) favor the implementer style. Artists (6%), strategic planners (7%), and designers (10%) are least likely to be implementers.

Challenges for Organizations

Two findings should stand out to managers. First, innovation styles are, generally, not evenly distributed. It is striking that only about 17% of individuals in our study were found to be generators while 41% were implementers. Second, people tend to sort into different occupational roles and levels of management based on their innovation style. For instance, generators are predominantly found in non-industrial occupations and conceptualizers are most common in strategic planning and organizational development.

These two findings contribute to the same problem: the organizations and teams you are working with are likely to lack the right balance of styles and be insufficiently cognitively diverse. If cognitive differences are unevenly distributed (e.g., there are more implementers and fewer generators) — and if people will choose roles and organizations based on their innovative style preference (e.g., generators are more likely to become artists and teachers, not executives and engineers) — we would expect most organizations and teams to lack the ideal cognitive diversity for innovation.

SMRT Innovation Framework

To innovate more effectively, organizations need to do two things: specifically, cultivate more generators who can find problems; and more generally, ensure skillful representation of all four innovation styles. To do both, we propose a four-step method for innovation that we refer to as the “SMRT” framework:

1. Structure: Achieving the right ratio of innovation styles.
2. Model: Demonstrating importance of an innovation style top-down.
3. Reward: Creating incentives for problem-finding.
4. Train: Creating opportunities to learn about all styles.

The best-in-class organizations we identified exemplify these tactics. While it was rare that any one company in our research deployed more than one of these four, we argue that these tactics are complementary and that using all four will supercharging innovation at your firm.

Structure.

Managers and their teams tend to get stuck when attempting to solve complex, ill-defined problems because there is a wide divergence in potential solutions. If managers can identify and isolate the exact stage of the innovation process where they are facing this divergence, they might have some sense of the talent they need to converge towards a solution. But since they are rarely able to do this, it means that managers do not have the right team structure for these situations in the first place.

To improve innovation, managers will first want to ask: During which stage of the innovation process do our teams get stuck? Next, managers will need to identify and amplify the missing innovation style that’s needed at that stage. For instance, during a field experiment in a Google hackathon, we found that agile practices stymied innovation because they focused teams on the implementation phase of the innovation process, rather than the idea generation phase. In this type of situation, an organization might benefit from intentionally identifying generators and deliberately amplifying their contributions. If no generators are available, other team members may be asked to role-play as generators instead.

Even if your team struggles with optimization or implementation, this doesn’t have to prevent you from innovating. Take the experiences of a strategy development team for a large American health insurance company. Tasked with recommending a new corporate strategy to senior management, the team was unable to agree on a final recommendation and was struggling with paralysis by analysis. Each time they thought they had a recommendation to forward, someone insisted on revisions to take new information into account or to make the strategy more comprehensive. When we analyzed their innovation profile, we found the team to be composed entirely of conceptualizers, except for one implementer — the administrative assistant. Rather than try to reach a perfect understanding, the team diversified its membership by including people with an affinity for optimization and implementation to help them reach a strategy acceptable to management.

Model.

Our research finds that because organizations tend to incentivize and select people with specific innovation styles. For example, organizations that need to get to market hire implementers and incentivize implementation behaviors; organizations that need product improvements hire optimizers and incentivize optimization behaviors; and so on. Yet, the innovation process requires all four innovation styles, or organizations risk succeeding in one area of innovation while failing on another.

Senior leaders, therefore, have a challenge (and an opportunity) to demonstrate the importance of the needed-at-the moment style — top down — to their entire organization. This is possible because an innovation style is a cognitive state and not a fixed personality trait and can be learned from training. In fact, a leader’s specific style is less important than their ability to shift, as needed, during the flow of the innovation process.

Consider Elon Musk and the role he plays at SpaceX and Tesla. At SpaceX, Elon Musk has largely exhibited a generator style: he is well known for blowing up rockets in order to find out how they work (and why they do not). He has even normalized the activity by referring to rocket explosions as “rapid unscheduled disassembles” (RUDs). By modeling the importance of generator behavior, he encourages and allows his SpaceX team to do the same. Yet, which innovation style is mission critical can change over time. At his other company Tesla, the challenge today has become innovating on how to manufacture at volume. This innovation requires an optimization mindset. Thus, Musk demonstrates the optimizer style at Tesla: when Model 3 production was drastically behind schedule, Musk was public about sleeping on the factory floor and handling direct oversight over Model 3 production.

Some leaders in our sample demonstrated an exceptional capacity to shift during the innovation process, resulting in substantial organizational performance improvements. For example, like air traffic controllers, many firefighters intensely err towards implementation. In their daily problem-solving activities, they confront situations that need their immediate action towards saving lives or resolving dangerous situations.

But in one department we studied, the new fire chief and his lieutenants felt they had antiquated views and lacked a vision or strategy for the future. As mostly implementers, the team was struggling to create a new strategy — a task that tends to be conceptualizer work. Through modeling behavior by the new fire chief, however, the team established its vision of becoming an elite department. This started by the new fire chief developing a survey questionnaire to distribute to department members as a fact-finding tool (modeling generator behavior). Leading a two-day workshop, the new fire chief and his lieutenants worked with department members to develop a long-term vision supported by six action pillars (modeling conceptualization and optimization). Committees were then created to drive each action forward (modeling implementation).

Cycling through these behaviors allowed the new fire chief to work methodically through the process with his employees to create a strategy they all bought into. As a result, the department aligned funding to increase their staffing and implemented a dual career system to reward/support individuals wanting to specialize in core competencies like hazmat emergencies, medical response, and other core specialties. This allowed them to build higher mastery level versus other departments and gain such recognition from peers.

Reward.

Because employees are rewarded for doing their job well, they tend to go out of their way to avoid problems which are outside of their job description. This also means they go out of their way to avoid finding new problems, particularly problems that are more complex, require them to do more work, or require them to work with different departments. This behavior is so prevalent that some researchers have deemed the activity of problem-finding “extra-role behavior” — one that requires individuals to go beyond the boundaries of their jobs.

Our field studies suggest that there is a clear solution to this limitation: companies should make problem-finding attractive for employees by offering rewards for this activity, beyond and in addition to just providing them with the freedom to do it. In 2020, The Wall Street Journal called 3M’s 15% rule, which invited employees to spend 15% of their time working on pet projects, as “Corporate America’s Most Underrated Innovation Strategy.” In addition, 3M makes problem-finding a component of every employee’s job description by delegating responsibility, encouraging considerable tolerance of mistakes, and ensuring that at least 30% of each division’s revenues comes from products introduced from the last four years.

Having given employees that level of freedom, 3M can then explicitly reward problem-finding in a number of ways. Their “Duel Ladder System” of advancement allows employees to choose one of two parallel ladders on which to progress their careers — both with equal pay and benefits — one side of which is responsible for advancing science and products and the other side for managing people. This incentivizes employees to direct their talent where they can do the most good and removes disincentives bright researchers may have about stepping away from science (and it avoids bright researchers from turning into bad managers). 3M’s prestigious “Carlton Society” honors, often called the “3M Nobel Prize,” also recognizes those who have radically reshaped an industry. Importantly, nominations come from co-workers, and not from company management as would be typical in most firms. Problem finding is so rare in our study, that we suggest all companies create incentives that encourage employees to take part in problem finding.

Another example, from our research, involved a large engineering company serving the airline industry that was having difficulty finding new products and markets to grow. During training sessions to familiarize employees with the innovation process, we determined that the majority of employees were implementers — and not a single person was a generator. This was reflected in the corporate motto “We’re on It,” which rewarded taking action to fix short term problems. To rectify the situation, the company instituted a brand-new reward system that encouraged employees to create new product or market ideas. In this system, 100% of all projects that fell under these categories were funded by the head office; prior to this, business units had to use their own budgets.

Train.

Most business (and business school) training steers future corporate leaders towards a preference for optimization and implementation. Why? Because they tend to present future leaders with problems that we’ve already solved (the frameworks are retroactively fitted to problem-solution combinations). Dating back to 1973, management thought leader Henry Mintzberg showed that managers spend most of their time doing short-term tasks. In other words, and as our own research found, most managers are implementers. But that can change.

For instance, one way to train people is by exposing them to problem-dense environments. In a study of Japanese companies, we found that in the best performing organizations engineers and scientists hired into the R&D department began their careers in sales, not the R&D department. When we asked why, they said, “We don’t want them to think that we are going to give them problems to solve. We want them to learn the problems of the customer.” These companies also developed effective employee suggestion systems by training their employees “to be dissatisfied” with their workflow and the current way of doing this. The problems they identified in these areas were then termed “golden eggs” — opportunities for innovation and improvement — for teams to solve. The results were tracked and celebrated on a regular basis.

Another group of participants in our study benefited from an unusual type of on-the-job training. A team of managers at a fast food chain included 17 implementers, four optimizers, two conceptualizers, and two generators. Once they realized they were trying solutions without slowing down to find and define the right problem, the team changed their behavior. They relaxed their deadline for solutions and spent more time on finding facts and forming a big picture—conceptualizer and generator behaviors. While there was a number of ways to shift the team mindset from implementation to conceptualization and generation, in this case managers did this by taking shifts serving customers. Solutions were found after previously unknown problems were discovered and defined, resulting in implementation in less time than provided by the original deadline. In effect, the team created conditions — serving customers — that enabled them to think more like hands-on generators and insightful conceptualizers.

Finding Innovation

Many organizations seek innovation, but very few know how to find it. We have proposed a blueprint that leaders can follow by implementing structures, rewards, and training, as well as modeling the power of the different styles of the innovation process.

While each innovation style is critical, it is important for leaders to recognize, protect, encourage, and reward employees who are generators. But perhaps the most important factor in finding innovation is a change in mindset. Rather than viewing problems as negative obstacles, leaders can help employees see problems as opportunities for innovation — and see themselves as possessing four key behaviors that can lead to success.

Authors: Andy Wu, Goran Calic, and Min Basadur, Harvard Business Review
Image source: Michael Blann/Getty Images

Around 110 participants from business, science, non-profit organizations and administration took part in this year's Climathon, which was organized by the Impact Hub at Kraftwerk Zürich. Over the course of 24 hours, they worked together in teams to develop ideas to help the city of Zurich achieve its net-zero 2040 climate goal. The city provided the tasks, called climate challenges, and assisted the teams with expertise. The solutions were diverse, ranging from repair platforms to sustainable shipping boxes to educational quiz apps. The event was opened by City Councillor Simone Brander, Head of the Department of Civil Engineering and Waste Management, who in her speech pointed out the power of the Climathon: "The Climathon conveys hope and motivation and is an incentive to change something, to move something together with others."

6 innovative ideas have convinced

The result was 21 project ideas, of which the 6 most convincing were awarded by the jury. "Innovation and drive are needed on the road to net zero," says jury member René Estermann, Director of Environmental and Health Protection Zurich. "With the Climathon we support promising projects, new start-ups and valuable collaborations are created." Following the hackathon, all teams have the opportunity to revise their projects, present them online on the Climathon platform and further develop them in dialog with others.

The following projects were awarded a total of 40,000 Swiss francs in prize money:

Fountain: Beverage stations enable consumption of healthy, flavored beverages on the go and reduce PET bottle consumption.

MiniMenu: As a digital assistant, MiniMenu makes cooking easier for single-person households thanks to climate-friendly recipe suggestions.

SugarCup: SugarCup makes it easier to repair clothes by connecting neighbors and nearby repair services through an app.

Klimit: The reward and information system motivates companies and end customers to eat more sustainably.

Blocsy: Blocsy offers a furniture system made of reclaimed wood that can be reassembled again and again depending on the needs and space.

Cyclix: Cyclix connects customers and bike stores and helps to find the right store for repairs.

The Climathon was initiated by EIT Climate-KIC. Climathons are held in over 200 cities worldwide. In Zurich, the event is organized by Impact Hub. The main local partner and sponsor is the city of Zurich. Lara Mogge, Project Manager at Impact Hub Zurich, says: "The Climathon brings together people from different backgrounds and shows how each of us can actively and collaboratively develop local climate solutions. The Climathon connects and inspires people to contribute and implement their own ideas."

Source: City of Zurich

Regions and Availability Zones

AWS has the concept of a Region. Each Region is fully isolated from all other Regions. Within each Region, they have built Availability Zones. These Availability Zones are fully isolated partitions of their infrastructure that contain a cluster of data centers. Availability Zones are typically separated by multiple kilometers to mitigate the impact of disasters that could affect data centers. The distance between Availability Zones varies between Regions. The distance is large enough to avoid having data centers impacted by the same event at the same time but close enough to allow workloads with synchronous data replication. Availability Zones are linked by redundant, high-bandwidth, and low-latency network connections. Regions are linked by our custom-built, global, low-latency, private network with exabits per second of capacity in Europe.

Unlike other cloud providers, who often define a region as a single data center, the multiple Availability Zone design of every AWS Region offers advantages such as security, availability, performance, and scalability.

Continuous Investments in Switzerland

AWS has a long history of presence in Switzerland. They have worked with Swiss customers and partners since the launch of AWS 16 years ago. The first Swiss office was opened in Zurich in April 2016 to host the growing local team of technical and business professionals dedicated to supporting Swiss customers. In 2017, the AWS network was expanded into Switzerland with the launch of an Amazon CloudFront edge location and an AWS Direct Connect location. To support this growth, a second AWS office was opened in Geneva.

AWS plans to invest up to 5.9 billion Swiss francs in the Europe (Zurich) Region from 2022–2036 as they build, maintain, operate, and develop data centers to support the projected growth in demand for AWS technologies by our customers.

According to an AWS Economic Impact Study (EIS), this investment will contribute 16.3 billion Swiss francs to the GDP of Switzerland during the same period. This includes the value added by AWS services to the IT sector in Switzerland, as well as the direct, indirect, and induced effects of AWS purchases from the Swiss data center supply chain. The study estimates that this investment will support an average of 2,500 full-time jobs annually at external businesses in the Swiss data supply chain from 2022–2036.

Available Today

The new Region is available today on the AWS Management Console and for API calls.

Image source: AWS Economic Impact Study

What do you want to protect?

You can register technical inventions (patent), product names (trademark) or the shape of an object (design) for protection at the IPI. Artistic works and software (copyright) are protected from creation without

Registration protected.

When do you need to protect?

Patents and designs have priority, you can still apply for a trademark later.

Where would you like to apply for protection?

Patents, trademarks and designs are protected only in countries where they are registered (except copyright). Think carefully about where you want to register your intellectual property. One clue, for example, is the current sales market.

Save time and money with searches

Use trademark searches and accompanied patent searches. Sometimes it is easier to pick up patent knowledge or acquire a license than to develop yourself what is already known. Searches also prevent you from infringing on the property rights of third parties.

Define responsibility

Define who is responsible for the management of intellectual property in the company. This also includes the analysis of which property rights are needed, the application, contracts and enforcement.

Punish violations consistently

With your resources and strategy in mind, watch the markets. Consistently admonish violations by third parties.

Intellectual property in contracts

Include an intellectual property clause in contracts with employees and third parties.

Information protection

Ensure in-house protection of confidential information. Divide sensitive technological know-how among several employees so that you can limit cluster risk if someone moves to the competition.

The checklist as PDF and further information can be found on the website.

What can I license?

For example, patent, trademark, design or copyright. Depending on the subject matter, license agreements must necessarily be adapted to the specific needs. For example, is the license right exclusive, so you want to grant it to only one licensee? In addition, there is the simple license (several licensees and yourself as licensor) and the sole license (only one licensee and yourself as licensor). Take your time and don't just adopt ready-made contract templates. The law does not prescribe anything, but it is recommended in any case to conclude the contract in writing.

Use against fee

Describe exactly which property right you are granting to whom for use, to what extent (in which countries), for what remuneration and under what other conditions (with or without obligation to use). Clearly record the beginning, duration and termination of the contractual relationship. In return for the use, the licensee has to pay a fee (flat rate, percentage of sales or profit, or mixed form).

Warranty

As the licensor, you are liable if the licensee is allowed to dispose of the right and this infringes the rights of third parties. Limit liability if necessary.

Secrecy

This is important at all times: secrecy must be agreed on confidential matters for the time before the contract is concluded, during its validity and after its termination. The right to use shall remain under the control of the licensor. Signing a non-disclosure agreement (often referred to as NDA) prior to license negotiations reduces the risk for both parties of valuable information leaking to third parties.

Defend property right

Require the licensee to defend the IP right used. After all, he benefits from your innovation. Therefore, also place the order for market surveillance.

The checklist as PDF and further information can be found on the
Website
.

Cancer remains one of the leading killers, with about 10 million deaths worldwide attributed to the disease in 2020. While personalised medicine is gaining traction in other medical fields, only 5%–10% of cancer patients currently benefit from customised treatment plans matching their unique genetic profile. 

PreComb’s groundbreaking technology generates 3D tumour twins that mimic the behaviour and characteristics of the original tumour. The 3DTwins® then undergo AI-supported testing using a broad range of cancer drugs to determine which treatments will be most effective for an individual cancer patient. In the future, physicians will be able to use PreComb to conduct fully automated tests directly in their clinics for rapid results and direct treatment planning.

“Cancer is an incredibly individualised disease,” said Jens M. Kelm, CEO and co-founder of PreComb. “Success of treatment depends largely on the unique tumour profile as well as the patient's biology. PreComb removes the guesswork from treatment protocols to ensure patients receive therapies tailored to their unique needs. We look forward to working with our new investors to advance our technology’s capabilities and reach.”

LongeVC Managing Partner and co-founder Sergey Jakimov said, “Personalised medicine is the future of healthcare. PreComb is using this technology to transform the narrative on cancer treatment and help individuals live longer and healthier lives post-diagnosis. We are proud to back their industry-defining work in oncology.”

Chairman of Kinled Patrick Aisher said, “PreComb will not only help patients receive the best treatments available but also serve as an invaluable resource for physicians and drug developers. By investing in their technology, we aim to unlock a greater understanding of cancer medicine for all.”

"It was pure coincidence that an email from the university alerted me to the Digital Entrepreneur Fellowship call," recalls Merens Derungs, who was the first Fellowship grantee in 2021. At the time, he was writing his dissertation on digital equities and thought his project could fit well into the program. "With a digital share, a digital token is issued rather than a physical security. Switzerland is one of the first countries to allow this," he explains.Derungs had acquired the detailed knowledge of capital markets and their legislation, among other things, during the internship year for his bar exam in Zurich. At the time, however, he said he was not yet a fan of the crypto world and digital assets. That changed when Professor Caspar von der Crone, with whom he planned to write his dissertation, asked him to write an article on digital assets. Derungs then decided to found a startup based on the digitization of shares. With this idea, he won the first Digital Entrepreneur Fellowship 2021.

From the idea to the business concept

Derungs was able to profit above all from coaching. "The fellowship program provided me with a coach. He guided me through the various steps of building a startup," Derungs recounts in retrospect. He had helped him to develop the idea into a solid business concept. Based on this, Derungs founded the company Arcton a few months ago. The startup aims to build a marketplace for funding startups based on the blockchain. Through this platform, start-up companies could find investors from around the world faster and cheaper by offering digitized shares of their company. In return, investors could invest very diversified and already with small amounts in interesting startups and would also not have to wait ten years until they can sell their shares again.

In addition to coaching, Derungs was able to benefit from the Fellowship's reputation. It gave his crypto project the credibility it needed, which opened numerous doors for him, he said. The young lawyer used the start-up funding of 100,000 francs to buy licenses and software and to pay himself and his team a small salary. In addition to his co-founder Thomas Charrière, three developers in Georgia are currently working on the Arcton platform, which is scheduled to go live at the end of this year.

Mental Well-Being App for Women

In December 2022, Marta Marciniak, one of this year's two Fellows, will start her program. A native of Poland, she studied psychology and is developing a mental wellness app for women. As a postdoc, she wanted to apply her psychological research in a practical way to help people. In Zurich, she worked for the research project DynaMORE - Dynamic Modeling of Resilience. There, she developed app-based interventions that improve mental health. She now plans to use the fellowship to further develop an app intervention to market readiness.

Most of the apps that already exist are not based on scientifically tested interventions and do not specifically address the needs of women. This is despite the fact that women suffer from stress-related psychological disorders twice as often as men and are additionally burdened by the hormonal fluctuations of the monthly cycle. "Thanks to the fellowship, I can fully focus on developing a mental wellness app for the market after finishing my dissertation. I will use the funds mainly to finance a team," says Marciniak. A portion would also be used for focus groups. The app is developed in close cooperation with the end users.

Marciniak and Derungs are among the winners of the fellowships and thus benefit from the financial grant and coaching. But Merens Derungs thinks applying for a fellowship is worth it even if you don't win in the end. "It helped me conceptualize my own application idea. Also, it's good practice for pitching and you get valuable feedback on the business concept."

Markus Hagmann, President of the Board of Trustees of the Hans Eggenberger Foundation, which makes the program financially possible, is also enthusiastic about the Digital Entrepreneur Fellowships. "Hans Eggenberger was a pioneer who brought radio to Switzerland. When he first demonstrated this new type of device in Zurich in 1922, which could receive music from the air, people were amazed," says Hagmann with a smile. Hans Eggenberger founded a successful company that imported electronic equipment such as radios and televisions into Switzerland, and made plenty of money from it. Since he had no children, the assets were transferred to a foundation with his name.

Back then, technology brought about major social upheavals, just as it is doing today with digitization. Especially the foundation of a startup in the field of blockchain like Merens Derungs' is highly interesting, says Hagmann. In addition, Hans Eggenberger has always been keen to support young entrepreneurs. The original mission of the foundation to promote electronics and electrical engineering has now been extended to include IT. That's why the Digital Entrepreneur Fellowship is an exciting project that fits the foundation's purpose, Hagmann said.

UZH Foundation enables Fellowships

The Digital Entrepreneur Fellowship is an example of the new programs at UZH that specifically support innovative research. Already in 2017, the UZH Innovation Hub created a UZH Entrepreneur Fellowship in the field of biotech. The fellowship was so successful that a MedTech track was also introduced just one year later. Now this promising funding instrument has been extended to digital innovation, says Maria Olivares, head of the Innovation Hub at UZH.

However: The UZH Innovation Hub does not have its own funds for the implementation of such a project. "For funding instruments like the fellowship, we therefore rely heavily on third-party funding, i.e., donations and foundation money," Olivares says. "The UZH Foundation can provide us with professional support here. It knows the market and has a good overview of which topics can be used to approach potential target groups. With the Hans Eggenberger Foundation, it has found the perfect partner for funding the fellowship."

Bullinger and Corona

The UZH Foundation builds bridges between foundations, companies, private donors and patrons and university research projects that enable groundbreaking developments for society and advance the careers of young talents. "Such projects often cannot be funded with public money," says Annelise Alig Anderhalden, CEO of the UZH Foundation. The private funds raised by the Foundation enable or accelerate additional innovative research at UZH.

Numerous examples, such as research into sickle cell anemia, show that the projects supported ultimately benefit society. Until now, the severe genetic disease could only be treated with expensive gene therapy, until a team from the University of Zurich was able to prove that an already known Alzheimer's drug protects against the deadly sickling of blood cells.

The research studies on the coronavirus made possible by the UZH Foundation are a current example that clearly shows the relevance of the funded projects for our society. During the 2020 lockdown, the UZH Foundation, together with UZH, launched its first crowdfunding for a pandemic fund to finance research on the coronavirus. "Thanks to the results of these studies, schools have been able to reopen earlier," Alig says. Funds from the UZH Foundation also made possible the digitization of the letters of the Zurich reformer Heinrich Bullinger, which were thus made accessible to the public.

The launch of new funding instruments such as the Digital Entrepreneur Fellowship is intended to drive forward further innovative research projects in the digital field and encourage young researchers to develop their projects into market-ready products and applications.

Author: Jeannine Hegelbach,
UZH News

Image source:
Stefan Walter

Prof. Rafael Polania and Caroline Lustenberger are developing convenient home monitoring solutions to detect Alzheimer's early and intervene in time.