Adele Fanelli, Author at Lausanne

Interview with Limula – Top Innovator series

Limula is a Life Science start-up based in Lausanne, Switzerland. The company was established with the mission to help bringing the most personalized cancer treatments to the patients in need, at reasonable cost, wherever they are. To achieve this goal, Limula’s multidisciplinary team provides a unique technology for producing CAR T-cell therapies at scale, through automation.
The start-up, founded in 2020, is successfully hitting milestones after the other, with the last one being the announcement of a € 4.7 million EIC grant to Limula and 6 European institutes and technology companies EU.

We had the chance to talk with Luc Henry, CEO of Limula who told us about the start-up, its past and future journey, and shared precious advice for young entreprenurs.

What was the inspiration behind your idea and how was Limula born?

The concept behind Limula’s technology is the brainchild of my CTO Yann Pierson. He identified the problem, invented a solution, patented it, found a name for the company and designed the cool logo. He then asked me if I would be interested to turn all of this into a company. When he showed me his first results, I did not hesitate a minute and we started looking for funding to run a proof-of-concept. I quit my job and helped him structure the project, build a team, all what was needed to take his invention to the next stage of development. We have incorporated a company in November 2020 and spent the past 18 months showing that we could indeed use our device to produce cell therapies.

What market needs are you currently addressing?

The problem we are trying to solve is the worldwide shortage of manufacturing capacity for highly personalised cancer treatments called Cell and Gene Therapies (CGT). Some are already on market, but their production is so complex and costly that only very few patients benefit from their life-saving properties. And with the number of clinical trials currently ongoing, we know that there will be many other cell therapies approved in the future. We want to provide a platform technology to support their manufacturing at scale.

Because of their costs, cell therapies, and in particular CAR T-cell products, are currently used in last resort situations, but there is a clear shift towards earlier line of treatment for indications where they have shown clear benefit. And it is only the beginning. There are 6 FDA-approved gene edited cell therapies, all for haematological cancers, but projections show there could be 100 by 2030, with a clear shift towards solid tumours. It is a very exciting time to be involved.

Can you tell us a bit more about your technology?

Our innovative solution is composed of a mechatronic device for process automation, and a single-use plastic kit containing our core bioreactor technology. We patented the design features that enable very unique functionalities, including in-situ centrifugation. This allows us to keep the precious cells sample in the same container along the entire manufacturing process. In essence, our device encapsulates the entire process, and incorporates multiple automation solutions, while removing the need for manual steps.

We want to help the CGT industry intensify the process, by making more treatment doses per square meter of cleanroom facility.

Who are your competitors and how does your technology differ from theirs (e.g. Miltenyi Prodigy®, Lonza Cocoon® etc.)?

Very early on in the project, I learnt that our biggest competitor is the status quo. The whole field of cell and gene therapy suffers from a lack of truly effective manufacturing solutions. Several actors you mentioned have invested significant resources in developing solutions, but I am more concerned about the culture and regulatory shift required to transition from manual to automated production. In a sense, I consider these solutions trailblazers that will facilitate our market entry when our product is ready. To make sure we have something valuable, we constantly seek inputs from potential users. Every conversation is an opportunity to learn more about the problems they face and the limitations of existing and competing solutions. At the moment, we see a lot of interest for our technology because it performs some process unit operations better than what’s already out there.

Considering that many startups fail, weren’t you afraid of failing (in the beginning)?

I was not afraid of failing when we started two years ago, and I am still not today.

There is no plan B.

I believe that if I looked at an exit door that is not success (selling the start-up to a company large enough to deliver your solution at scale, or going public for doing the same), I would get distracted from the objective. Of course, my co-founders and I have invested a lot into this project, both in cash and in opportunity cost, but if it all stopped tomorrow, I would still consider it a success at a personal level. I meet super interesting people every day, I learn as much as I possibly can while giving a lot to my team and others around me, and I built something that I hope one day will make a difference for patients. This is more rewarding than anything.

What are the most important lessons you learnt in the process of creating your start-up?

The most important lesson I’ve learnt so far is that it is not enough to be convinced ourselves that our solution is better, smarter, cheaper than what already exists. To convince future customers, investors and employees, you need to show them what benefits you bring to them. And that takes a lot of communication skills. Someone once told me: ‘If the story is not clear, the strategy probably isn’t clear either’ – I think it perfectly summarises the problem a lot of deep-tech founders face:

make sure you fully understand your technology and market, but make sure also you clearly express your value proposition to anyone involved.

What, in your opinion, is the most important value an entrepreneur should have to succeed?

The two first values that come to my mind when I think of an entrepreneur are dedication and humility. Dedication because as a team, you have to invest all of your time, energy and intellect to solving a problem with your solution, a job no one else will do for you. Humility because you interact with so many talented people that you have to accept that most of them know better. Actively looking for constructive criticism is the only way to leverage expertise and include all pieces you can collect to the giant puzzle that is a start-up project.

Where do you see Limula and yourself in the next 5-10 years?

Typical interview question! Of course, I want to see Limula thrive, and see our product on the market before 5 years, being used to support a broader access to cell therapies. I really want to become the CEO that makes it possible, and keep surrounding myself with women and men who bring their passion and expertise to the company. The vision is not just to build a machine, but to bring disruptive innovation to this field, and make it possible to produce cell therapies routinely, at scale. I do not want to spoil the surprise, but if everything goes according to plan, Limula will be much more than a tool provider in 10 years.

How supportive was the Swiss ecosystem to build a startup?

Switzerland has an incredibly dynamic and supportive ecosystem, and at the same time is a very comfortable place. Having spent over 10 years abroad during my education and my research career, I feel privileged here and I hugely benefit from being Swiss-born, and I want to be very critical. I am always amazed when I look at the start-up founders in the ecosystem because it seems to me that large majority are foreigners (I could not find any data), and it is much riskier and more complicated for them to launch a company in Switzerland than it is for me.

Apart from that, it is absolutely clear that the geographical situation, the quality of the workforce, the multilingual and multicultural environment, the non-dilutive funding provided by the government for innovative projects, the density of research institutions and the infrastructure in general together make Switzerland one of the best places to launch a fintech, deep-tech or life science start-up.

Can you tell us more about your team?

We are 3 co-founders, and a team of 7 in total. The intrinsic multidisciplinary nature of our project means that we need skills in engineering and biology. That is what I find most interesting in this project: we build a machine that needs to perform highly complex biological processes. So complementary expertise is key. Yann is the inventor. He has a maker attitude and nothing is impossible. Tom brings 10 years of consulting and corporate experience, and has the financial, legal and administrative aspects under control. I spend most of my time discussing with potential partners and customers, and with investors and key opinion leaders. My communication skills are my biggest asset, but my science background is central to my understanding of how we can develop something that is useful at the end.

What do you look for in future members?

Building the team with the right people is clearly one of our biggest challenges. It is not just the skills, but also the right mindset, the willingness to learn and be flexible in a highly uncertain environment. With my co-founders, we are working really hard to give everyone the space to grow with the company, and a chance to contribute to a very exciting project with the necessary resources. It is our responsibility to bear the risk and provide the best possible work environment to our colleagues.

What would be your advice for the wanna-be entrepreneurs out there/people who are thinking to make the step to start a startup company?

Patience is key. As my co-founder Tom always says,

to be successful, a start-up needs 3 things: a great team, a great product and a market opportunity. If you feel like one of these 3 aspects is missing, it may not be worth the risk.

You may learn a lot, but will probably fail. I have been looking for a project like Limula for over 5 years. I had several opportunities, but each time something was missing. If you do not have all 3 aspects at hand, work for someone else, learn as much as you can from other entrepreneurs, about the market, the technologies out there, figure out the gaps and keep an eye out, build your network. When the time is right, do not think twice, jump and invest everything you have into the launch phase. It takes a lot of time, a lot of work and a lot of sacrifice. But it never feels like ‘work’.

SHORT BIO

Luc earned a DPhil (PhD) from the University of Oxford, UK. Before co-founding Limula with Yann Pierson and Tom Eaton, he spent 4 years as a personal advisor to the President of EPFL, Prof. Martin Vetterli. He is a skilled scientist, with 10 years of research experience in chemistry, biotechnology and immunology. He has lived in Sweden, Germany and the UK before he returned to Switzerland in 2012 to launch several entrepreneurial projects at the interface between life science and innovation. In 2014, he co-founded Hackuarium, a community laboratory providing infrastructure and mentorship to over 50 entrepreneurs, artists and curious minds interested in experimenting with technology and biology. In 2015-2016, he was the managing director of European science magazine Technonologist. Luc is also the co-founder of the Science Booster, a crowdfunding platform dedicated to science projects. Over the past 5 years, the Science Booster helped more than 100 projects collect over EUR 1.8M from the crowd.

Interview with 3Brain – Top Innovators Series

Interview by Franklin Leong

3Brain is a Swiss startup focused on producing state-of-the-art CMOS-based live-cell analysis systems for drug discovery. Their success had led them to improve their technology for over 15 years and they are now in their third generation of device. They aim to change the standard way cell data acquisition is conducted by improving the resolution and the amount of collected data, essentially transforming a standard plastic dish for cells into an intelligent device integrating multiple processing cores. We will understand more about the company from the CEO, Mauro Gandolfo himself.

What is the origin of the name of the company?

This is what we get asked often. In the beginning, there were three founders and we were focusing on brain applications. Additionally, the arborizations of the neurons forming the brain resemble a tree, which rhymes with ‘three’, and as you might realize, our logo also incorporates the design of a “neuronal tree”. This was the main reason why we went for ‘3Brain’.

Could you tell us more about the core technology used by the company?

Of course, as you already know, we are working with CMOS-based microarrays. Our company is the first in the world to use microchips in direct contact with cells to acquire data from biological samples. What we did was to use a microchip, the same technology that powers our computers, mobile phones and cameras, and modify it in such a way that it could sense and measure cells. The microchip is therefore integrated inside a culture well. Currently, we are taking the technology a step further: our chips are now also able to perform data pre-processing. We call this the BioSignal Processing Unit (BioSPU).

What are the advantages of having the processing unit within the well where cells are cultured?

To give you an idea, I will compare it with the standard technologies. Typically when you have the cells inside a well and you extract data (via microscopes or electrodes), the information from the cells travels along cables until it reaches a processor on a workstation. This is where the data gets processed, an essential step to obtain results. There are a series of bottlenecks in data acquisition and data transmission that limit the amount of data that can be eventually processed.

In our case, by essentially taking the processing unit and placing it in direct contact with the cells, we can utilize the full power of the microchip technology to process much more data compared to other technologies. And data is the key nowadays.

For instance, more data means better artificial intelligence since AI needs to crunch big data in order to become “smart”, i.e. more effective.

Now, think about drug screening where multiwell plates are used to measure cellular activity. When you use a microscope to scan a 96-well plate, it is done sequentially. You read information from one well and then you move on to the next. If you have 96 wells to scan, this can take tens of minutes. In our case, we read out in parallel all the wells at the same time. So it takes 100 times less time than what the standard technology requires.

What were the challenges associated with a technology-centered startup?

In fact, the founders also have, in addition to their business background, bio-engineering expertise that enables them to tackle the challenges inevitably associated with a deeptech. To answer your question, one of the main difficulties during the development of these chips that need to stay in contact with cells, themselves submerged in liquid, was to accomodate both the chip and the cells. Imagine submerging the CPU of your computer in saline solution, it will stop working in the blink of an eye. On the other side, the cells need a proper environment (e.g., right temperature) to stay alive and we also need to take this into consideration.

Could you tell us more about how you improve your devices from one generation to another?

There are two main paths that we follow. The first is for sure talking with our customers, and understanding their needs. Their needs are concrete and based on their experiences. Over here, it is basically a data-driven analysis of what to develop next, when, and where to go. The second path is more about looking for trends. For these, we don’t ask the customers directly, we do some analysis and we also have to use a bit of intuition. It is about understanding what will be the trend in three or four years from now. For instance, a few years ago, we realized that in the future there will be more and more people working on organoids, small 3D cell ensambles that hold much hope to help finding new medicines. Thus, we started the development of a technology that can address this market. In fact, this technology will be officially in the market this year. It is a 3D microchip array that helps to penetrate inside the 3D structure of the organoid and read out information from the inside. We have started the development of this technology more than four years ago, and we think that it was the right decision.

What’s the biggest difference between when you first started in a small team and now?

We did not change much as we are still 23 at the moment. Of course, you will start spending more time doing meetings and managing other people as you progress, to keep everyone on the same page and to push in the same direction. In the past, when we were only the co-founders, we sometimes didn’t even need to communicate because we knew each other well and we knew what had to be done. With a bigger team, there is a need for more communication and coordination.

Would you like to say something to your team?

Of course, thanks for the opportunity. I would like to thank the great team that, with a bit of luck and a bit of wisdom, we have managed to put together. I think it is really the “super-intellect” of the company that is making this adventure and our success unfolding.

So yes, I think that the most important thing is the value of our team, even more than the value of our technology.

Advice in general for someone wanting to do a startup. Whether is it in technology or not?

As I also mentioned previously, it is important to be perseverant and also be motivated in the things that you are doing. You have to really have a passion for it or feel that it can really solve something that you felt needed to be solved. Then, you deliver something which hopefully will help others and not only you.

Do you have any advice for any, like a new engineer, that would like to come up with a startup?

I am not sure if I can give any advice. The one thing I would tell them is to get into something that they are passionate about. You have to really have a passion for it or feel that it can really solve something that you felt needed to be solved. This is because they will need to put all of themselves into this startup and they’ll really need to strive to achieve their goals.

There is no such thing as an easy startup, all the startups are complex.

So the fact that you like what you do can really help to boost and motivate you, and that is something that can solve an issue more efficiently. It is also important to have perseverance because sometimes, there are cases in which everything simply does not seem to be working, but then light can be seen again and everything goes on.

On the technological side, the one thing that I learned is that you need to go out as soon as you have something. It is important to collect feedback from others, from partners, and future customer. Personally, I was not like this when I was younger as in my mind everything had to be really perfect before having others to try it. But that is not the case, you should go out as soon as you can because there are things that you just cannot plan or predict. I still love precision and accuracy, which can be achieved at the next iteration of the development. And that is why I love working at 3Brain where our great team strive for perfection.

And here we come to another important thing of course, the team. Everything is made by the people you join hands with. It is first about having the right co-founders, with the right fit with your personality, as you will need them beside you on this long adventure. Then when you start to have more companions, you will need to pay attention to that. Sometimes the people you hire might not fit perfectly but it is okay because people come and leave. But you do need to find a strong team that buys into your vision and what you believe in and that constitutes your stronghold. You need that to go to the next level.

The Lausanne finalists of IMAGINE IF! 2022

Article written by Anna Lena May.

Congratulations to our selected startups for IMAGINE IF! 2022!

We are thrilled to announce the cohort of startups participating in our accelerator program IMAGINE IF!.

This year, we have selected six visionary startups in the fields of life sciences and cleantech which convinced us with their innovative business ideas and disruptive technologies (no ranking order):

1 – SeaStem is a startup developing a solar seaweed dryer to meet the growing demands for seaweed with clean, bio-inspired technology.

2 – Simulatory wants to realize the world’s first virtual endoscopic spine surgery simulator to train surgeons in ultra-minimally invasive endoscopic techniques for spinal surgery.

3 – Bearmind aims to analyze and reduce long-term brain damage related to head hits in contact-sports such as Ice Hockey. In order to do so, they want to provide real-time concussion risk assessment with the help of sensors integrated in the player’s helmets and whose signals are then evaluated by advanced algorithms.

4 – Autonomyo is targeting improved rehabilitation of neurological patients with the help of an exoskeleton and a digital training app, allowing the patient to train autonomously.

5 – NanoDecoder plans to utilize nanopore sensing as a data storage system by decoding digital information that was previously encoded in DNA or synthetic polymers. Additionally, nanopore sensing in combination with machine learning could be applied to detect molecules from early stage neurodegenerative diseases in human biological fluids.

6 – aiEndoscopic is using AI to train robotic endoscopes, such as those for tracheal intubation, to assist physicians during procedures. This could optimize such medical maneuvers, making the outcome less dependent on the operator’s individual skills.

The startups will now start the 1-1 mentoring phase and participate in exclusive workshops and networking events, so that they can make significant progress during the next 12 weeks. We’re looking forward to the outcome of the program and are excited to have you on board!

Curious about the finalists of the previous edition? Check them out here.

IMAGINE IF! Swiss Finalists Announcement

Article written by Hugo Cui & Adele Fanelli

Congratulations to our

IMAGINE IF! Local Finalists!

IMAGINE IF! Applications were closed on December 15th 2020 and after careful considerations of the many valuable projects, we introduce here in this article the selected start-ups. These winning teams will soon start the mentorship program and will have the chance to pitch their ideas to a professional and expert panel of judges during the IMAGINE IF! Swiss Finals.

It is now our utmost pleasure to present here the IMAGINE IF! Local Finalists (alphabetical order).

1H2O3

The water resource is becoming scarce. Recycling is now a necessity. 1H2O3 is developing a kit to help small & mid-size customers to save water while complying with increasingly complex regulations. The 1H2O3 Packaged System is a compact and modular wastewater treatment plant, combining about 10 different technologies. Today, it is the only compact and modular solution that offers high-quality water treatment, and, at the same time, is only made from renewable materials and can be solar powered.

Blue Energy Leap

The increasing demand in electrical energy can only be addressed through a renewable energy mix. Salinity gradient energy harvesting constitutes a promising, 24/7 available, source of energy. Blue Energy Leap’s atomically thin, highly-efficient ion-selective membranes allow to increase significantly the output of Reversed Electrodialysis (RED) clean energy harvesting, up to 1 million times better than currently available membrane solutions. Its patented technology can also be employed for water treatment and desalination.

ExoSort

The survival rate of cancer patients drastically increases with detection at an earlier disease stage. Nevertheless, current detection methods for e.g. prostate (prostate screening) and breast cancer (mammography) only detect it in more advanced stages. ExoSort’s small footprint microfluidic chips allows to filter out high purity exosomes samples from bodily fluids. These highly purified biological components can be then used by diagnostic companies for cancer biomarkers detection.

FILI PARI

Everyday thousands of tons of marble waste are put in landfills, with high cost of disposal and the necessity to find a solution. At the same time, textile sector is one of the most polluting sector in the world, with high use of chemicals harmful to the ecosystem. FILI PARI’s patented MARM \ MORE marble-based microfilm that can be employed in textile production. It is waterproof, breathable and wind-proof, and can be layered onto any type of fabrics. The marble improves the abrasion resistant performance, gives to the coating the natural colour and a soft tactile effect created by the presence of calcium carbonate.

Flowbone

Every year, more than 2 million osteoporotic hip fractures occur worldwide. Today, the prevention thereof is limited to anti-osteoporotic drugs, drugs that are less efficient for the hips than for any other part of the skeleton and take at least one year to show an effect. Flowbone develops an injectable gel that strengthens the bone through a unique “local bone seeding” process, triggered by a smart combination of a hydrogel matrix and hydroxyapatite nanoparticles. It allows for at least 3 times more bone in 3 times less time than the most potent drug, without the negative impact of a surgical intervention.

Frater GmbH

First responders in Emergency Medicine use an external heating device to prevent infusion lines from further cooling the patient or even freezing at low temperatures. Currently available heating solutions come with a significant price tag, complicated handling and risks threatening patient’s health or even leading to death. To provide a better solution, frater.swiss, has developed a light-weight, ready-to-use coating for infusion lines. The frater I.V.Varm infusion line heats the infusions directly to the desired temperature. The coating is based on a chemical exothermic reaction which is triggered by an activation at the drip chamber.

Limula Biotech

The number of approved cell-based personalised therapies will explode in the coming years, with the potential to treat over 3 million cancer patients annually, but are currently difficult and expensive to produce. Limula develops a ‘GMP-in-a-box’ platform for automated, rapid and safe manufacturing of CGT from patients’ own cells, directly at the bedside. By carrying out all steps of CGT production in a single device, Limula’s technology removes the need for large sterile facilities and superfluous manual interventions, saves time, cuts costs, simplifies logistics and increases the safety and accessibility of these personalised treatments.

MyLeg

Lower limb amputees use prostheses that do not restore sensory feedback during walking. Because of this, they risk falls, thus losing confidence in the prosthesis and overusing the healthy leg, which causes increased fatigue, and reduced mobility. MYLEG is a unique add-on to commercially available prostheses that restores sensory feedback to amputees by gently stimulating with pulses of current the skin of their remaining leg. The optimal placement of the electrodes on the skin and the algorithms that control the stimulation make the elicited sensations very clear for the amputee, and thus the overall system easy to use.

Qaptis

The 350 millions trucks and the 95K ships worldwide account respectively for 8% and 3% of the global CO2 emissions. Qaptis is a patented plug-in technology that can capture 90% of the emitted CO2 from Internal Combustion (IC) engines and potentially also other pollutants such as PM2.5 or NOx without any energy penalty. The CO2 is converted into liquid and stored directly on board the vehicle. The captured CO2 is then valorised on the CO2 market for the production of green fuels, building materials, polycarbonates. . . with the final objective to create a circular economy and close the carbon loop.

ShadeMe

Existing automated shades cannot reduce glare properly and are difficult to install as a centralized system in existing buildings, since extra sensors and wires have to be installed on ceilings or rooftop. ShadeMe is a novel decentralized shading device to automatically adjust shading to the optimal position offering comfortable daylight according to dynamic sky conditions. With a specially made, easy-to-install camera embedded into the shading device that monitors the real-time sky condition, the system precisely calculates the daylight amount reaching occupants’ eyes and on their work-plane.

TheranOptics

Point-of-care testing (POCT) devices for rapid on-site diagnosis are a key component of personalized healthcare when costs, equipment, or time limitations preclude the use of conventional laboratory analysis. TheranOptics proposes its lab-in-fiber devices as a new type of disposable and miniaturized platform for multianalyte POCT. Fluid samples are collected non-invasively by simple capillarity, triggering a visual response that can be investigated immediately using a dedicated reader. Important information on the health status of patients is obtained within a few minutes, which facilitates decisions on further diagnostic and therapeutic actions.

Innovation Forum Lausanne is Recruiting

Are you a PhD student or Postdoc interested in Innovation, Business and Networking?

Do you want to meet new people, expand your professional network and obtain useful skills?

Then we are looking for someone like you!

The Innovation Forum is an international grassroots network of scientific entrepreneurs aiming to build a global innovation community to connect academics, industry professionals and policy makers. We accelerate the translation of cutting-edge science into innovative start-up ideas by fostering collaboration and connecting early stage ideas with the support they need.

IMAGINE IF! is our leading global competition and pre-acceleration program for science-based ventures providing start-ups with extensive opportunities to take their venture to the next level: tailored mentorship, the potential to secure non-dilutive capital, free advice from leading professional service companies and rapid networking.

We already have branches in the UK, Hong Kong, Serbia, Barcelona, New York, Lausanne and even more.

Right now we have 10 members from EPFL and UNIL and we are looking for new creative, disciplined and strongly motivated people to join our Business Development and Events team – organising conferences, workshops, seminars, panel discussions, formal and informal networking events. Check out our previous activities on our website.

Currently we are looking for volunteer Business Development Associates and Event Managers. All our positions are voluntary and you can expect to gain exceptional networking opportunities and fundraising and organisational skills.

Please, email us directly at [email protected] if you are interested in joining our team or for some information.

First interviews will be held in October 2020.

Innovator of the Month Interview with Emovo Care

Emovo Care is an innovative Swiss startup developing robotic hand orthosis for people with hand motor impairments, aiming to bring motor rehabilitation directly to users’ home. Founded in 2019, by two scientists from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), the company is currently led by Dr. Luca Randazzo, CEO. The idea at the core of Emovo Care is to create an innovative wearable robotic hand orthosis free of external hard structure on the user’s limb, making it much lighter, flexible and comfortable. This innovation can increase not only the wearability of the device and the independence of the user, but also the everyday usability during daily activities.

Tell us more about your product.

At Emovo Care, we are developing a robotic hand orthosis (wearable medical device to support weak or damaged parts of the forearm, wrist and hand, ndr) to bring intensive movement at home for people who suffered from stroke.

What did you patent in your system?

The product is based on patent-protected artificial tendons developed during my Ph.D. research at EPFL. This technology is based on an intuition I heard during a robotics conference some years ago, that went more or less like this: “In developing assistive systems we typically tend to replicate (exo)skeletons, while sometimes what we need is just actuation and control”.

Starting from this, I drew inspiration from research in soft and flexible robotics to develop the core concept behind our system. Our technology exploits the already existing biomechanical structure of the wearer’s hand, enabling to get rid of any external hard structure on the hand itself and to “simply” add a soft actuation layer on top. The soft tendons can open and close the fingers using motors placed in a remote control box worn at the waist, to the benefit of an extremely lightweight device, easy wearability and usability in typical activities of daily living.

One of the key advantages of our system is that it can assist fingers’ motion from the dorsal side of the hand, making it extremely easy to be autonomously worn by stroke users – who typically struggle even in wearing simple winter gloves due to their typical clenched-fist.

What did you leverage from your time as a PhD student at the EPFL in order to become the entrepreneur you are today?

The greatest learnings that I had from my Ph.D. came from designing these devices with real users in the loop. My former supervisor Prof. J.d.R. Millan is an expert in human-machine interfaces based on decoding EEG brain signals, and has always put a strong emphasis on working together with patients with motor disabilities as they are the ultimate users of these technologies. This enabled me to test the device at clinics and users’ homes very early in my developments, gathering real-users’ needs that were of key importance towards shaping our current product.

What was the inspiration behind your idea?

The main inspiration behind my developments and my drive is my sister Chiara. She was born at 7 months, leading to a cerebral palsy with motor and cognitive impairments. I decided to become an engineer to learn as much as I could, and to put my skills at her use.

When I was a teenager, I fell in love with the idea of using technology to compensate for motor and cognitive impairments – and I always deeply believed in science and engineering as means to re-set our limits and live with a purpose.

My first big passion was computer science as I loved the idea of developing intelligent houses and robotic assistants to adapt and intelligently respond to users’ needs. However, as time passed, I realized that putting autonomy exclusively in agents “outside” of our bodies was to some extent equivalent to relying on somebody else for your own independence. This is what brought me to work in the field of wearable robotics, and specifically on the hand, as Henri Focillon once said: “Ce couple [les mains] a non seulement servi les desseins de l’être humain, il les a aidés à naître, il les a précisés, il leur a donné forme et figure. L’homme a fait la main, je veux dire qu’il l’a dégagée peu à peu du monde animal, qu’il l’a libérée d’une antique et naturelle servitude, mais la main a fait l’homme.” (“This couple [the hands] not only served the purposes of the human being, it helped them to be born, it specified them, it gave them shape and figure. Human made the hand, I mean he gradually freed it from the animal world, freed it from an ancient and natural bondage, but the hand made the human.”, ndr) [Henri Focillon – Éloge de la Main (1934)].

What support did you receive from EPFL and other institutions to achieve this?

The Emovo project received financial support from EPFL Innogrant, EPFL TTO enable, SNSF Bridge PoC, Gebert Ruf Stiftung Innobooster, EPFL Catalyze4Life, Venture Kick (Stages I, II, III), and Vaud SPEI. Further coaching support comes from Innosuisse.

The great ecosystem and support around EPFL and, in general, in Switzerland, enabled us to slowly mature within the complex world of medical devices.

Are you still planning to use your device on cerebral palsy patients or now your main focus is Stroke recovery?

My long term goal is definitely to work with kids, because if you can have a positive impact at their age you can definitely change the course of an entire life.

Our robotic orthosis today needs some degree of autonomy to be worn, and this might not be necessarily the case in cerebral palsy, where you typically see bimanual impairments. Our device has a great value for stroke patients as they typically have hemiparetic impairments (loss of functionality on the right or left upper limb or half of the body, ndr) and can wear the system by themselves.

Meanwhile, I keep playing with many other ideas and geeking together with Chiara to develop solutions that can improve her daily living, such as an Android app that enables her to play independently and I co-founded the Hackahealth association where we aim at fighting disability through inclusion – not only function, but also creating a community where we cultivate play, sharing, openness for and with people with special needs.

Who are the heads and tails of Emovo right now?

My co-founder Iselin Frøybu and myself have been devoting our energies to the project since the beginning of 2019 and we have always been supported by a cool bunch of geeks and interns at EPFL. A fundamental person is definitely Prof. Auke Ijspeert, who hosts us at the EPFL, who provides us – together with the whole Biorobotics team – with world-renowned expertise in robotics.

We will expand our core team very soon to have someone on board who can drive our sales/marketing and tech developments.

How would you intend to sell/classify your device? Do you have it CE¹ marked?

As of today, we have several proof of concepts but the system is not CE-marked yet. Being a medical device, we will need to receive clearance from SwissMedics² prior to market entry. The latter is our priority for next year, and we’re working full-time towards that.

What is your short term goal for the upcoming 2-3 years and how do you see yourself and your company in a longer term?

We intend to keep an intensive focus on Research and Development. We consider ourselves as a tech company, but we have a very strong emphasis on keeping our users in-the-loop . In the long term, I’d love to see our company as a living lab where patients with special needs can come and play with our engineers. By being together, we can learn from each other, developing better products and creating a strong community that gives back a sense of normality to users typically excluded from their social circles.

Regarding the development of further technologies, for the moment it is a bit too early to know, but we would like to target partnerships with similar startups and companies to explore co-development and joint projects.

Any personal advice from your experience on future entrepreneurs doing a PhD right now?

What helped me the most is definitely to develop something I deeply care about and relate to. This helps you overcome all the inevitable obstacles along the way that nobody can teach you or foresee.

In doing this you must be humble, listen and learn from users and from who has been there before if you want to transform a piece of technology into a real product.

This is what keeps me going everyday – if you set as an objective something you’re passionate about, all the rest will kind of align with it and feel naturally right.

¹CE: certification mark that indicates conformity with health, safety, and environmental protection standards for products sold within the European Economic Area (EEA).

²Swiss Agency for Therapeutic Products (Swissmedic) is the Swiss surveillance authority for medicines and medical devices, registered in Bern. Any medical products for humans or animals need approval from Swissmedic to be brought on the Swiss market. Moreover, Swissmedic must be notified of all clinical studies conducted in Switzerland.

The Sound of Science – Afterwards Summary

Event review by Michele Bevilacqua

How do we perceive music? How are sounds decoded and processed in the path from the ear to the human brain? What have the artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms brought to music industry? Those were only few of the many thrilling questions addressed during “The Sound of Science”: the last event organized by Innovation Forum Lausanne. On October 2^nd 2019. More than 100 people between professors, scientists, musicians and students filled SV1717 auditorium of EPFL in order to capture the real sound of science. The aim of “The Sound of Science” was to gather next generation scientists, physicians and entrepreneurs with a different perspective on music to provide a general overview about the relationship between music, science, technology and innovation.

During the “Brain Stage”, Dr. Daniel Keppeler, COO and Founder of OptoGenTech and Dr. Steffen Herff, scientist at Digital and Cognitive Musicology Laboratory at EPFL, provided precious insights about how the human brain perceive music. Dr. Daniel Keppeler presented the vision of OptoGenTech, a newborn ambitious startup that aims at exploiting optogenetic technology to create an innovative cochlear neuroprosthesis. On the other hand, Dr. Steffen Herff described how music can help to understand memory formation and recall in human brain.

Between the two main stages, “Brain” and “Tech”, a real live concert delighted the attendants. First, Mathieu Johann Clavel exposed his Master Project performed in the Laboratory for Experimental Musicology of EPFL. His work was based on the use of Data Science techniques to build an augmented Afghan music archive and design specific user experience, also with the help of Virtual Reality. Afterwards, together with Shahab Eghbali, doctoral assistant at Laboratory of Fluid Mechanics and Instabilities of EPFL, Mathieu performed live some pieces of traditional Afghan music, using two original Afghan instruments.

At the “Tech Stage”, Florian Colombo, doctoral assistant at Laboratory of Computational Neuroscience of EPFL, Martin Weill, Product Manager at SONY, and Dr. Cédric Duchêne, Head of Electronics & Systems Engineering at EPFL and ECAL Lab, with Dr. Alain Dufaux, Operations & Development Director of Metamedia Center at EPFL, presented the latest technologies and algorithms in music. Florian Colombo introduced BachProp: an algorithm trained to listen to notes and to predict the next ones, just like a real composer. It also takes into account repetitions to sound more natural. Then, Martin Weill talked about the latest technologies and the future of headphones. Finally, Cédric Duchêne and Alain Dufaux gave an overview of the last incredible projects and challenges of Montreux Digitalization Project.

The event concluded with the most awaited contest: guess the sound of EPFL! The time to answer the question “Which is the sound of science?” came! We asked several labs of the university to send us a short clip recorded by them that can answer our question “What is the sound of science”. Each clip reproduced the sound of a scientific tool or device used by the labs for their research. We built a 13-question quiz in which participants had to guess for each clip what generated the sound. After a very hard fight, the winner received a pair of Sony noise-cancelling headphones! The night was closed by a rich networking apéro.

Innovator of the Month Interview with Neurosoft

Innovator of the Month Interview by Eleonora Borda and Claudia Bigoni

Last month, Innovation Forum Lausanne had the chance to sit and have a chat with Nicolas Vachicouras and Ludovic Serex, founder and co-founder of Neurosoft, winners of last edition’s IMAGINE IF! Accelerator and receiver of the Audience Prize along with Swoxid. Neurosoft develops soft electrode arrays for treating neurological diseases by recording or stimulating the brain, spinal cord or peripheral nerves. The combination of soft materials and stretchable electronics allows higher conformability, contrary to the rigid systems currently used in clinics, and provide better biointegration for long-term applications.

Hello Nicolas, you just finished your PhD, but already last year you pitched your technology at the European Venture Program Pitch Battle; when did you start thinking that you could be a scientist entrepreneur? Was it just an opportunity or a dream?

Nicolas: Since high school, I have always liked the idea of interfacing the human body with technologies, but it was upon my arrival at EPFL ten years ago that everything really started. I began by joining the microengineering program and then pursued various projects in the laboratories of the Center of Neuroprostethics during my Master’s. A key step in my path was a summer internship at Aleva Neurotherapeutics, a startup developing implantable microelectrodes for deep brain stimulation. There, I understood how medical devices are developed at the industry level and I was lucky to get some advice to address my future PhD with a rather entrepreneurship-based vision from the start. Certainly, joining Prof. Lacour’s laboratory, doing pioneering work in the field of neural implants, helped me a lot on the scientific side. Overall, everything I did was part of a strategy to prepare the pathway towards building a startup while learning as much as I could.

How did you build your team? What kind of people are necessary to bring forward such a translational technology?

Nicolas: You need someone you already know you can work with, someone you can trust and that has both the capabilities and the motivation. I met Ludovic during my Bachelor’s and we have worked together on various projects ever since. Florian Fallegger, third co-founder, also joined us early on, as I also had the chance to experiment working together while being involved in the same project during our PhDs in Prof. Lacour’s group. The evolution from colleagues to forming a team was smooth and natural: we did an initial contest together and then the current team was formed.

Neurosoft took part in the IMAGINE IF! Competition, what did this experience mean for you and how does it feel to be chosen as the best startup not only by the jury but also by the audience?

Nicolas: Taking part in IMAGINE IF! gave us the chance to practice explaining our idea in a simple manner even if our topic is extremely specific. Finding an effective way to explain your idea quickly and simply to reach people with different backgrounds is an extremely important exercise.

Ludovic: Winning the first prize as well as the audience prize was motivating: we could see that our project is not only for the niche of our scientific community, but it is also interesting for people in other fields.

What are you expecting from the experience of participating at the global finals of IMAGINE IF!?

Nicolas: Having the possibility to showcase our project in an international conference and competition is a great opportunity. Indeed, we have been in the comfort zone of EPFL for almost ten years now and thus, we have had little exposure to the outside environment. With the global mentorship program and the following pitching competition, we want to gather more feedback from people who base their opinions only on the project, with no strings attached.

In what aspects does your solution distinguish itself from other products on the market?

Nicolas: The key aspect regards the mechanical properties of our implant: softness, conformability and stretchability. Moreover, having all these properties on a micrometer scale electrode is an important added value, thanks to which we can have a better biointegration and access to anatomical regions that could not be reached with a stiff implant. From a technical point of view, the shift from rigid to soft is not trivial and we already have patents protecting our technology. Another critical point lies in the fabrication process: we mainly use techniques from the semiconductor industry and only few manual steps. In this way, batch processes can be exploited to produce many implants for cheaper and more reliably.

How difficult is to go through the regulatory aspects for an implantable device?

Nicolas: It is really challenging, yet a necessary step for our product. Right now, we are putting most of our effort into the translation from research grade to medical grade materials, which are approved for human implantation. Because the required knowledge on regulatory affairs is so large, the best approach is to ask for help to experienced people and consultants. On the side, I also suggest taking some related courses and trainings (EPFL offers many good options).

During the Startup Champions Seed Night at EPFL in April, the secret questions asked to the finalists of the competition was ‘What keeps you awake at night?’ so we are curious to know what your answer would be!

Ludovic: He [Nicolas, ed] is capable of texting me late at night to inform me about any new possible opportunity for the startup. More generally, I think it’s the timeline for production: it can take up to 7 months to have a well-working setup with machines and materials – if something fails along the way, you have to rethink everything.

Nicolas: I would say various worries about the project: building a startup is like a roller-coaster: it is a sequence of ups and downs. It is actually quite similar to a PhD; but in this case, whether you will be able to continue working on the project is defined by your own capabilities and success to bring your product on the market. Moreover, being on time on the different schedules is critical, especially now that the competition in the field of neural implants is growing so fast. My state of mind is to be a ‘realistic optimistic’, but not naive.

Where do you see Neurosoft in 10 years?

Nicolas: At the moment, we are leaving various options open. Certainly, the critical point will be the decision between trying to keep growing to eventually be self-sustainable or making a partnership with other companies. From an optimistic point of view, in ten years we would like to be in the former case. However, growing a big company in Switzerland is quite hard: at the moment you don’t see many huge investments like in the USA, since investors here are generally more conservative. Our plan A is to try to grow while staying local, but we are open to any possibilities that the future might hold. We will do whatever is best for the company.

What is a piece of advice you would like to give to a ‘wanna-be’ entrepreneur?

Ludovic: There are a lot of opportunities in terms of funding, coaching and programs like IMAGINE IF! at EPFL and in Switzerland to grow your idea and develop a business. My advice is: leverage what EPFL (or ETHZ) and the Swiss government provides and look for people who are willing to help.

Nicolas: I have two pieces of advice: a rather cliché one is not to get demotivated from other people’s opinions. For me, my number one rule is that “if you really want to do something, you will find a way to make it work”. My second piece of advice is rather personal because this is what I did, although it differs from what people usually tell you: if you are lucky enough to know what you want to do early on, focus all your actions towards that goal from the beginning. In my opinion, this will allow you to grasp many more opportunities; this is how one can make his own luck.

Pint of Science in Lausanne

This year edition of Pint of Science, the unique festival that brings free science in local pubs all over the world, involved Switzerland for the first time and Innovation Forum Lausanne joined its team for one night!

Last week, researchers from the area pitched their research topics in front of people from Lausanne and surroundings in their favourite pubs: Le Lab du Dr. Gab’s, Sidewalk Cafè and A La Bossette. Every night different talks animated the bars and every night was a success: from Monday 20th to Wednesday 22nd May 2019, people crowded the three pubs to discover new things and enjoy informal science while drinking good beers.

During the last day, Innovation Forum Lausanne, who partnered-up with Pint of Science for the first year, hosted an evening at the Lab du Dr. Gab’s. Accompanied by great artisan beer, the audience listened to an inspirational talk by Dr. Luca Randazzo and a fun introduction to the combination of satire and machine learning with Prof. Bob West.

Luca, a freshly graduated PhD from the laboratory of Prof. Millan (EPFL) and now in the BioRob laboratory of Prof. Ijspeert, presented his dream of using the engineering skills he learned to make real and usable solutions to help disabled people. Starting from his personal story, he pursued his doctoral thesis on brain-computer interface combined with an agile exoskeleton. Now, he is translating it into a viable start-up: Yago.

The next talk delighted us with some laugh while Bob showed us which elements make a headline satire and which ones make it more serious, instead. A machine is now learning to detect this discrimination automatically and transform a serious sentence into a satirical one. We suggest you to check out more about his unfun.me project.

The evening concluded with the ultimate Pictionary battle between the audience and a trained machine. Maybe the technology for drawing was not the greatest, maybe our drawers were not the best artists, or maybe the audience got too excited for the prizes at stake (the famous Dr. Gabs beers)… but the machine always won. Do you accept the challenge? Test it here!

IMAGINE IF! Swiss Finals 2018 – All the winners!

On February 21st, 2019 the IMAGINE IF! Swiss Finals have been held at EPFL in the CO2 auditorium hosting more than 70 people coming from EPFL, start-ups and companies.

After a brief Innovation Forum Lausanne introduction by the association President Claudia Bigoni, Marc Gruber, Vice President for Innovation at EPFL, warmed the audience with a great talk about Lausanne start-up ecosystem and how to identify and exploit opportunities for entrepreneurs.

Afterwards, Diego Dupouy, co-founder and CTO of Lunaphore, was invited to describe his startup and the journey that brought it where it is today. At Lunaphore they are creating an automated technology for tissue diagnostics with microfluidic immonochemestry techniques. Earlier this year they released their first product LabSatTM.

Concluding the talks sessions, Serge Gander, CEO of CombaGroup SA, introduced his company, which has developed an aeroponic system to grow soilels vegetables. The beneifts of this agricolture method, especially in the view of sustainability, have been highlighted.

The long-awaited moment arrived later in the evening: the IMAGINE IF! Global Start-up Accelerator Swiss Finals for 2018 edition. The Top 10 start-ups pitched in front of a jury committee of experts and proved themselves defending their projects during the discussion with them. All startups pitched brilliantly:

I was impressed by the startup pitching at the IMAGINE IF!, the teams were highly committed to their projects and the presentations were mostly of the highest standard – Nicolas Charton, E-CUBE Strategy Consultants

Many prizes have been awarded after the competition:

Audience Prize: thanks to a hot-tie the audience at the event elected our next 2 Innovators of the Month: Swoxid and Neurosoft!
1-month desk-space at Swissnex in San Francisco, CA to the first place-winner in the cleantech field: hiLyte!
3-month lab space at Startlab, Biopole chosen by Olivier Philippe, ruolo at Biopole: SenSwiss!
First place-winner in the healthcare stream & 3’500.-CHF non-dilutive cash prize as first-place in the overall competition: Neurosoft!

Neurosoft presented a novel device for treating neurological diseases: a soft interface that allows conformity to the curvature of the brain or spinal cord, contrary to the rigid systems currently used in clinics, providing better performances. Improving such technology represents an important step forward in the medtech field. We are honored to support it.

The IMAGINE IF! contest provided us with great mentoring that enabled us to increase the impact of our pitch, which is of major importance when looking for investment. Moreover, it allowed us to compete against top tier startups from the Lemanic Arc area. We learned a lot on the entrepreneurship landscape and also made friends that are pursuing dreams similar to ours. – Neurosoft Team

hiLyte introduced an environment-friendly consumable-based iron battery for a very specific tagret: helping people living out of the grid, as the Sub-Saharan Africa population, that currently uses expensive and polluting kerosene to get light and phone charging. Their idea only only needs iron, paper and iron salt to generate enough power for 5 hours. The impact is uncountable.

Innovation Forum Lausanne works for supporting such impactful ideas and promoting their success since their very first steps! That’s what IMAGINE IF! Accelerator is really about.

IMAGINE IF! is always a great opportunity to see some early stage but very promising projects from the universities of Romandie! It’s also very important to raise awareness toward entrepreneurship among other students and academic members. – Patrick Biro, Venture Kick

To know more about our Top10 start-ups, read here.

Congratulations to the winners and the best wishes to all our applicants! We can’t wait to see your next brilliant achievements.

Author: Adele Fanelli