Startup Champions Seed Night

EPFL Alumni, EPFL Vice Presidency for Innovation and Venturelab are thrilled to welcome you to the 10th edition of the Startup Champions Seed Night 2021 online. Designed to make you discover the most promising entrepreneurs from EPFL and beyond this event will feature a live pitch competition of 20 startups: in 90 seconds, they will show you how their technology is going to change the world! As usual you will get the opportunity to vote live for your favorite project.

You can also follow the event live from 5pm here below!

Keynote Speakers

Kamila Markram, PhD
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Kamila Markram is the CEO and Co-founder of Frontiers, one of the largest and most impactful Open Science platforms in the world. Frontiers is on a mission to make research openly and widely available for the benefit of humanity.

Kamila obtained a MSc in Psychology from the Technical University Berlin and completed her Masters thesis at the Max-Planck Institute for Brain Research, Germany in 2003. She obtained an award-winning PhD degree in Neuroscience at the EPFL, Switzerland. During her postdoctoral studies at the EPFL she co-developed the “Intense World Theory of Autism,” which proposes that autism results from a “super-”brain that perceives, absorbs and feels too much – causing autistic people to withdraw from an overly intense world. The theory resonated beyond the research community, featuring in popular science magazines and documentaries and published as a book in 2018.

Kamila frequently speaks on topics related to Open Science, including at the National Academy of Sciences, Science Foo Camp, TEDx and Web Summit. She was named a L’HEBDO Forum 100 personality and was a finalist for the 2016 Ernst and Young Entrepreneur Award and the 2017 EU Prize for Women Innovators.

 

Alexandre Gonthier
Trustly, Inc.
Founder & CEO

Alex spent 20+ years in Silicon Valley building tech companies from scratch, including PayWithMyBank (now Trustly), Trinity Mobile (now Eventbrite, NYSE: EB), Paymo (now Boku, LON: BOKU), and iPIN (now Intel, NASDAQ: INTC). Alex has also been advising private equity firms for years, including Crane, Wellington Partners and 3i in London. Alex graduated from EPFL in 1994.

 

The event is kindly supported by:

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

The 20 startups that will take part in the pitch competition are:

 

 

 

 

 

Daniel Alpern, CTO & Co-Founder
We provide innovative genome-wide gene analysis solutions for the research and pharmaceutical industry focused at biomarkers and drug discovery.
alitheagenomics.com

 

 

 

Bernard Revaz, CEO
AMIQUAM integrates quality monitoring systems in metal additive manufacturing machines that provide in situ, real time, and compliant information about the quality of the manufactured part. Our machine agnostic electromagnetic sensors have the unique property to probe the sub-surface region of the part, where the critical defects are located.
www.amiquam.ch

 

 

 

Maximilien Murone, CEO
Avrion Therapeutics is a new spin-off from EPFL, based on more than 10 years of research at the Brain Mind Institute & Campus Biotech Gene Therapy Platform (groups of Dr. Bernard Schneider/Prof. Patrick Aebischer and Prof. Brian McCabe). Avrion has developed new AAV (Adeno-Associated Virus)-based precision gene therapy solutions to tackle neurodegenerative diseases, with a primary focus on Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). Our vision is to bring precision gene therapies solutions to patients suffering from genetically defined neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS and others.
www.avriontx.com

 

 

 

 

Frank Bonnet, CEO & Co-Founder
We provide solutions to automatize the screening, sorting and pipetting of miniature biological models for a more rapid and ethical research.
bionomous.ch

 

 

 

 

 

 

Juliane Dervaux, Project Lead
Oncologists currently lack a simple non-invasive test to evaluate the risk of disease progression and metastasis in the therapeutic management of cancer.
Biopsomic’s innovative and patented liquid biopsy based on blood-sampled exosomes aims to revolutionize the life of millions of patients every year.
www.linkedin.com/company/biopsomic/

 

 

 

 

David Compain, Co-Founder & CEO
Helping hospitals and clinics to visualize and optimize devices management through our Internet of Things Technology and Artificial Intelligence Platform.
biot.webflow.io

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alex Horvath, CEO
Open a cleaner world with CleanMotion! We improve public health with our innovative self-disinfecting door handle which kills 99.9% of viruses and bacteria immediately after each use.
www.cleanmotion.ch

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Diarmuid Daltún, CEO
csquare is the most efficient collaborative MLOps Platform built from the ground up on HPC principles ensuring Data Scientists focus on training models and getting the best results while csquare looks after the rest. AND, all of this sustainably!
csquare.ai

 

 

 

 

 

Margaux Peltier, CEO

Enerdrape develops a panel-like cleantech that allows to turn any kind of new and existing underground infrastructures into renewable heat sources for the heating and cooling needs of buildings, unlocking the untapped potential of clean energy supply that lies underneath our cities.
www.enerdrape.com

 

 

 

Alberto Mian, CEO
ExerGo proposes the most compact, efficient and cost-effective district heating and cooling network infrastructure, the CO2 network. Utility companies and Municipalities can effectively implement the energy transition and supply 100% renewable energy services in difficult to reach dense urban areas. ExerGo targets the Swiss and EU market, which is worth more than 200 BEUR and is expected to grow at 10.8% CAGR for the next 30 years.
www.exergo.ch

 

 

 

 

Patrick Biro, COO
We provide clean, lightweight and efficient power sources to off-grid industries (environmental, surveillance, telecom), for mobile (drones,etc) applications and backup and auxiliary with a total SAM of 4B CHF. Our patented technology allows solid oxide fuel cells miniaturization. Our compact design and the use of high energy density fuels allow us to be up to 80% lighter, with 20x more energy density than Li-batteries.
https://inergio.ch/

 

 

 

 

 

Jerome Thevenot, CEO
The Inmodi platform is a completely novel way of assessing joints during motion at any Point of Care, providing an estimation of joint integrity based on quantitative biomarkers linked to knee function. Our sensor system uses extracted objective data to help creating patient-specific treatment plan.
www.inmodi.com

 

 

 

 

 

Vito Cacucciolo, CEO
Omnigrasp is an electrical soft gripper that grasps an enormous range of objects. Silicone fingers conforms to the shape of the object and electroadhesion glues the fingers to the object when voltage is on. Omnigrasp makes pick-and-place automation approachable even with delicate and uneven objects.
omnigrasp.com

 

 

 

 

 

Pierre-Yves Bridel, Managing Director
OriginFood enables transparency & collaboration across supply chains, with a focus on product traceability, quality and compliance. Our blockchain based solution enables higher operational performance and better sustainability.
originfood.io

 

 

 

 

 

Thibault Asselborn, CEO
Exploiting recent advances in machine learning, we help children improve their skills by delivering digital tools. Our patented method extracts rapidly and accurately dynamic features of handwriting that cannot be detected by human eyes allowing an objective, accurate deep and fast detection of handwriting difficulties. According to this handwriting profile, adapted activities are recommended to the child to practice handwriting on the skills he/she needs. Dynamico’s software is meant to be used at home, at school and by therapists.
dynamico.ch

 

 

 

 

Maël Fabien, CEO
40 million people in the world are blind, 3 million in Europe. Avoiding obstacles, finding objects, and navigating in new environments are often cited among the largest pains. SoundMap is a smart device that captures, maps and filters the environment in real-time to guide users in their environment.
soundmap.io

 

 

 

 

Nina Walker, Head of Operations
Space4Impact wants to maximize the positive impact of Space technologies on Earth by linking New Space companies to non-space markets. The goal is to internationally boost the growing New Space Economy in line with the UN SDGs through our online marketplace platform.
https://space4impact.org/

 

 

 

 

Jean-Philippe Torgue, CEO

 

 

 

 

Juan Ramon Troncoso Pastoriza, CEO
Tune Insight B2B software enables organizations to make better decisions by extracting collective insights from confidential data collaborations, while they remain in full control of their own data. Our federated confidential computing powers collaborative analytics and ML in a data-driven world.
tuneinsight.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

Romain Kirchhoff, CEO
To maximize project approval rates and ensure the population has access to valuable information, Uzufly delivers ultra-photorealistic 3D digital models generated from aerial methods (such as drones) and integrates the designs of future constructions within their designated area. Those 3D models provide a realistic understanding of the volume and architecture of planned projects, with a project scope ranging from a single building to an entire city or canton. Furthermore, those highly detailed 3D models can be converted to technical drawings and topographic surveys to support architects and construction engineers in their work.
www.uzufly.com