Top10 IMAGINE IF! Finalists

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Author: Adele Fanelli

She is a Biomedical Engineer, she received both Bachelor and Master Degree at Polytechnic University of Turin, in 2015 and 2017, respectively. In April 2018, Adele started a PhD at the Bioengineering and Biotechnologies Doctoral School of École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). Her research is focused on the fabrication of implantable smart devices able to interact with the brain in order to improve patients' life quality. In the same direction, by joining the Innovation Forum Lausanne, Adele works to reduce the gap between research and industry.

Congratulations to our Top10 IMAGINE IF! Finalists!

Almost a month has passed since we closed the IMAGINE IF! applications. In Switzerland, we received many valuable projects that our expert mentors and judges have been scoring in the past weeks.

However, only 10 made it to the finals.

The winning teams, already announced last Wednesday during our workshop, will now start the mentorship program and will have the chance to pitch their ideas on Feb 21st at EPFL during the Lausanne Local Finals.

It is now our utmost pleasure to have them introduced to you here:

CapAgain – cleantech

After participating to the second European Congress on Coffee Capsules (Berlin, April 2018) where the pollution created by the coffee capsules waste has been analysed in detail, the EPFL-based CapAgain team decided to put and end to this problem. They developed a system, which can be integrated in a common capsule machine, that automatically separates the coffee ground from the capsule packaging. When the machine is full, the user can then dispatch the coffee ground as common organic waste, while the plastic or metallic packaging are recycled separately.

HiLyte – cleantech

More than a billion people live out of the grid and spend up to 30% of their income in light and phone charging. In addition, the kerosene used to get light, is very expensive and dangerous. And if that weren’t enough, all the kerosene lamps in the world produce as much CO2 as 6 times all the inhabitants of Switzerland! The hiLyte team solution to this problem uses an environment-friendly consumable-based iron battery. One would only need iron, paper and iron salt to generate enough power for 5 hours. Their main target is the Sub-Saharan Africa population, which is deeply affected by the phone maintenance costs and, at same time, has a huge potential benefit from this technology in terms of services (education, banking, information).

SenSwiss – biotech

In healthcare, adverse drug reactions result in a dramatic economical burden for nations. Sometimes they arise from unadapted or generic dosage. Patient-specific administration could represent an impactful solution, although many barriers still stand in the path: therapeutic drug monitoring tests require consistent amounts of blood, they are time- and man power-consuming, and thus expensive. To overcome these issues, SenSwiss is developing a point-of-care device to measure plasma drug concentrations in a single drop of patient’s blood in 3 minutes. Their detection method can be easily adapted to several drugs requiring accurate monitoring and close supervision, giving doctors the tools to optimize and identify medication for their patients in real time.

Annaida Technologies – biotech

People from all walks of life share a timeless desire of starting a family. However, due to our shifting work-life balance and aging population, more couples every year (today about 10% in western societies) are turning to In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) to fulfill their desire. Unfortunately, despite 40 years of research and high financial and emotional costs, the success rate of IVF remains frustratingly low, just 33% of women are pregnant after the first cycle. This is owed to sub-optimal solutions being used in the embryo selection process as a consequence of the stringent safety requirements for embryo analysis. Annaida Technologies developed a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR)-based system that allows detailed read-out of embryos, providing critical information on their viability and thus improving embryo selection procedures and ultimately IVF success rates.

Neurosoft – biotech

Neurosoft developed a new technology to fabricate with conventional processes soft electrical interfaces with the brain and spinal cord which has the potential of greatly improving electrical stimulation and recording therapies to treat neurological diseases. Our main technological innovation lies in the mechanical compliance of our implants, which is much closer to the one of neural tissues, compared to current clinical devices, that are much more rigid and don’t conform well to the curvature of the brain or spinal cord. This results in more stable interfaces, higher specificity of stimulation targets and higher signal quality while recording.

Aesyra – biotech

Sleep bruxism is a disorder consisting of teeth grinding and clenching during sleep, affecting 8% of the adult population. Patients can unconsciously exert over 100 kg of force for entire minutes on their teeth while sleeping. This can lead to lesser symptoms such as morning headache and facial muscle pain to severe consequences such as temporomandibular joint disorders, damages to teeth, dental restorations and prostheses. Nowadays there are no effective ways to monitor and treat bruxism. To solve this problem the team has developed AesyBite, the first medical device that allows diagnosing, monitoring and treating sleep bruxism. The device is capable of recording the user’s bruxism activity during sleep. Upon detection of bruxism events, it emits a biofeedback signal that induces jaw muscle relaxation without disturbing the sleep.

ALAnostics – biotech

Worldwide there are 1.7 million new cases of breast cancer diagnosed per year, representing 25% of all cancers in women. Breast conserving surgery (BCS; also known as lumpectomy in the U.S.) is the standard of care for early stage invasive breast cancer involving a surgical procedure to remove the tumour, leaving as much healthy breast tissue as possible. Although the five-year survival rate for early stage breast cancer is good, there is still 1 mortality for every four patients with ipsilateral breast tumour recurrence (IBTR), where the tumour re-grows in one or both breasts, within 15 years. This is usually owed to parts of the tumors being still present after the surgery. ALAnostics develop an injectable fluoresecent tumour paint which is made inside all cancer cells. It’s administered 45 minutes prior to surgery to label the cancer, and in combination with a fluorescent imaging device ( a special type of torch) is used as a real-time guide by surgeons to visualise and cut out all of the cancer, preventing unnecessary re-operations.

Endotelix – biotech

Antiphospholipid syndrome (APS) is described as a common risk factor for recurrent thromboembolic events and/or pregnancy complications resulting from circulating antiphospholipid antibodies (aPL). While largely under-diagnosed, it is estimated that 1-5% of the whole population presents this disorder. Early diagnosis of APS is thus crucial, particularly in pregnant women. Endotelix discovered the exact molecular motif with the strongest link for aPL, allowing them the possibility to develop a fast, accurate and quantitative point-of-care assay to test patients for aPL. Moreover, this knowledge opened the possibility to a peptide-based treatment to inhibit circulating pathogenic antibody.

Vesta Biosciences – biotech

Vesta Biosciences is an early-stage biotech start-up spun out of MIT and based in Geneva, Switzerland, that is dedicated to developing the next generation of synbiotic (i.e. prebiotic + probiotic combination) therapeutics to treat and prevent obesity, metabolic disorders, anxiety and depression. Vesta Biosciences uses DNA sequencing, analytical chemistry and artificial intelligence approaches to create a diagnostic kit that identifies a customer’s microbial metabolic profile and returns detailed characterisation of their gut microbiome and the specific fruits and vegetables that are most conducive to their health as a function of this composition. In-so-doing, it builds a large database of responses of different people’s microbiomes to the same prebiotic inputs, which allows for rapid identification of bacterial strains responsible for extreme metabolic properties observable in specific people, and powers the efficient development of novel synbiotic therapeutics.

Swoxid – cleantech

Swoxid is an innovative air/water purifier that filters and sterilizes air/water with natural sunlight or a UV lamp (possibly UV LEDs activated by a solar panel). It does not require electricity or chemical agents to provide the sterilization effect. The key component of the purifier is the nanoporous SWOXID filter membrane. Developed at EPFL, it is easy and cost-competitive to produce. Potential market and partners are producers of air/water filters, transport industry, hospitals, construction sector, water and waste water plants, treatment of drinking water, swimming pools, aquaria, NGOs and GOs.

Innovator of the Month Interview by Adele Fanelli and Caterina Bigoni

The Swiss start-up Picterra, based in Lausanne recently released the beta version of their software for Earth observation. This AI based tool not only makes it easier to analyse drone or satellite images, it is also a platform for peer cooperation, moving the technology forward.

Picterra was born in 2016 from the minds of Frank de Morsier, Chief Technology Officer, with an electrical engineering background, and Pierrick Poulenas, Chief Executive Officer. Today the company is situated at the EPFL Innovation Park in Lausanne. Recently, the company released the beta version of their tool for Earth Observation.

This tool is a customizable system that allows users to analyse drone or satellite images. At the same time, it puts them in touch with a global community that collaborates to develop such technology further. Thanks to the pre-trained machine-learning algorithms, users can personalise their aerial data analysis to perfectly match their own applications.

This August, Innovation Forum had the pleasure of meeting the Picterra team and discovering what’s behind their success and what’s next for this fast-growing start-up.

Hi guys! Can you briefly describe how Picterra got to where it is today?

Frank (de Morsier): Picterra started 2 years ago, when Pierrick and I realized that we wanted to do our own thing instead of working as consultants, as we were doing in our previous roles. Then, for about a year, we worked on different projects and services, warming up our ideas with the aim of creating a unique tool directly usable by our customers. To do this, we needed financing and last Autumn, when we found an investor, the team started to grow: Julien, Roger and Leo joined shortly after. Throughout, this journey I’ve learnt how important it is to find the right partner who can bridge your gaps, for example the commercial experience provided by Pierrick, as a Business Developer.

Can you give us examples of applications for which Picterra can be used?

Frank: Picterra can help anyone who wants to analyse earth observation data, either privately acquired with drones or from available satellite data. For instance, we have worked on a project to automatically detect vegetation growing dangerously close to electric powerlines. Other customers were interested in analysing a time series of images to track down illegal deforestation in national parks in South America and Asia. Thanks to satellite images, which are acquired nearly every day, our tool has accelerated research, which otherwise would have taken months in such wide and wild regions. In general, our goal is to provide a semi-automatic tool for a wide spectrum of clients.

How important was it for you to be integrated in the EPFL and Lausanne start-up ecosystem in the initial stages?

Frank: The beginning of Picterra started out in our flats, but we soon realized that moving to an actual start-up environment could be beneficial. We took a base at the Innovation Park in 2016, where we encountered many useful opportunities. We attended the CTI courses at the Innovation Park, which were valuable, and we also benefited from the mentoring offered, especially for the financing stage.

We saw that your beta version has just been released. How does it feel and how did the community react?

Frank: We released Picterra Beta in April and, considering that most of the team joined at the beginning of the year, it was a super-fast achievement! It was really gratifying to read enthusiastic users saying they had been waiting a long time for something like this. Rapidly, we saw more people joining the platform and we are basing our further developments on their feedback. We are aware that this tool is far from being our final product, but with the beta version we were also looking for validation from the community: we wanted to be sure that they would appreciate

a tool which allows them to “learn” about their data, but one that also provides fully customisable software by enabling a “hands-on” state available.

Are these users your previous clients? Or did you have to work a lot on promotion?

Frank: We already had a base, some companies with drones for example, but we have done quite a lot of advertising too, especially via social media and the media. The recent article on the EPFL website also helped people to find out about our platform and in the end we were contacted directly by many new users. Although we tried to push the local network first, both small and larger companies from Europe, and some from the US and middle Asia showed interests in our product. This is probably not so surprising because our tool is really for those who are anticipating the evolution of AI in this field.

We get the impression that many recent start-ups are involved with imaging and drones: how does Picterra distinguish itself from other local competitors?

Frank: On our side, we basically provide an earth observation and remote sensing tool: once the user loads the image on the AI platform, a library of possible elements that our tool is able to recognise becomes available and the users can ultimately extract the information they are looking for. This library then enriches in time and thanks to the users themselves, because if some elements are not already available in the library, they can be created manually by them. In this way, we offer a tool that is customisable and reusable thanks to our pre-trained algorithms.

Drones and image processing are indeed a very popular topic right now and other start-ups on the EPFL Campus are also working in this field. Gamaya, for example, helps farming businesses by providing hyperspectral analysis of terrains for clients with specific types of crops, while we try to equip our users with an interactive tool instead of simply delivering a result. Another close reality is Pix4D, whose 3D images of reconstructions and orthomosaics can then be used for element recognition in our platform, showing a nice way of complementing one another.

Roger: An important aspect on our side is that

our platform is not just a tool but also a community

gathering a lot of users, who create machine learning models and share them with each other. We wish to start a snowball effect: as there are more users, there will be more models, more data and eventually a gigantic library of connected models and data, so that everyone can get what they want very fast.

Have you heard of MapSwipe? It is a mobile app developed for the Missing Maps Project to enable fast satellite image classification on mobile devices. Users can detect small villages or roads directly on their phones by tapping and swiping on satellite images. Through MapSwipe, they can also join emergency response efforts led by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) when an active crisis arises.

Frank: We have often seen this crowdsourcing approach, and, in a certain way, it is similar to what people do on our platform by outlining specific elements. Picterra could certainly help this humanitarian project and deliver results very quickly. We are actually discussing with several NGOs in this field to equip them with this.

Julien: We could imagine introducing the “swiping” option to make the validation stage faster: once the model is trained, users could swipe to check whether the learning algorithm is correct or if some elements need to be re-added. However, to crowdsource, we must have the right to show the images and this might be challenging for most of our clients, whose images are confidential.

And finally: what are your next steps?

Frank: At the moment, we have a lot of subscribed users using our beta version for free and our goal is to provide a paying-mode option. Regarding the tool itself we are working towards a full customization of the algorithms. Last, but not least, we are already looking ahead to the next financing round, planning to enlarge the group next year.

[Cover photo taken here.]

Author: Adele Fanelli

Congratulations to our Top10 IMAGINE IF! Finalists!

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