Liste des Innogrants

Principalement financés par l’EPFL, les Innogrants sont ou ont été également soutenus par les sponsors suivants

13 Innogrants have been approved. 

Project Laboratory Fields Project leader(s)
Myriad Optics SB/GR-GA FoodTech Marwan El Chazli
Protonica SB/LUMES Engineering Veronica Leccese, Benoît Truc
Dexterous Catheters STI/LIS MedTech Yegor Piskarev
PitchMe STI/UNFOLD CleanTech Sebastien Lefouest and Daniel Fernex
Biomatics SV/PTPSP Biotech Chloe Albietz and Francois Carruzzo
SafeShore ENAC/PL-LCH CleanTech Tara Habibi
Circelec STI/LMTS CleanTech James Bourely and Nicolas Fumeaux
ZigZag STI/LAPD ICT Niyazi Dinc and Mustafa Yildirim
Qanova Tech SB/HQC Quantum Simone Frasca
Lemna Bio SV/UPDALPE Biotech Moustafa Houmani, Lucien Krapp
Helix Robotics STI/CREATE-LAB Engineering Kai Junge, Francesco Stella
MyJoint STI/BIOROB MedTech Mina Baniasad, Soroush Bagheri Koudakani
Neurovia STI/LSBI MedTech William Esposito

13 Innogrants have been approved. 

Project Laboratory Fields Project leader(s)
REMA (Jaria) STI/LO CleanTech Steven Schenk, Ioakeim Sioutis
Dewi SV/UPSCHRIMPF1 MedTech Marliawaty I Gusti Bagus
Mechagel STI/LBO MedTech Peyman Karami
Inkocell Therapeutics (Anake Therapeutics) SV/UPHUELSKEN Biotech Angela Madurgaalons, Mathieu Girardin
MIROS technology STI/RRL Engineering Fabian Zuliani, Neil Chennoufi
AirCurve IC/CVLAB MedTech André Mercanzini
Navintis (MagFlow) STI/MICROBS MedTech Lucio Pancaldi-Giubbini, Ece Ozelci
naialabs SV/PTBET Biotech Grégoire Michielin, Hon Ming Yip, Evan Olson
Novoviz STI/AQUA Engineering Andrada Muntean, Andrei Ardelean
Hepavue STI/LTS2 MedTech Gaby El Alam, Maxime Nachit
Maven Health SB/LIFMET BioTech Christopher Wall
NeoSens STI/BIOS and IC/MLBIO MedTech Marco Fumagalli, Karim Zahra
BCellOne STI/LBMM BioTech Miguel Solsana

10 Innogrants have been approved. 

Project Laboratory Fields Project leader(s)
Consulto SV / UPSALATHE1 Medtech Baher Higazy, Basem Higazy
Beyond Scroll STI / LAMD Cleantech Luis Medonza, Marianna Fighera
Nanodecoder SV / CAO IT & Communication Sailan Shui, Zhidian Zhang, Nathan Sierro
DemoSquare IC / INDY IT & Communication Victor Kristof
Elythor STI/LIS Engineering Harry Vourtsis; Nathan Müller
AeroSpec ENAC/LAPI Cleantech Dudani Nikunj; Satoshi Takahama
Swistor STI/NANOLAB Cleantech Clara Moldovan
IsoSpec Analytics SB/LCPM biotech Stephan Warnke, Ahmed Benfaleh
Emissium STI/IPESE Cleantech Alessio Santecchia, Luise Middelhauve
Clearsky STI/LTS5 IT & Communication Hugo Flayac

13 Innogrants have been approved. 

Project Laboratory Unit Project leader(s)
AdaMu Laboratory of Computational Neuroscience IC/LCN1 Florian Colombo
Arkaiya Environmental Engineering Institute / Ludwig Group ENAC/GR-LUD Duncan-Bruce Sutherland
Parithera Microsystems Laboratory 4 STI/LMIS4 Antoine Herzog;  Weida Chen
ArcoScreen Microsystems Laboratory 4 STI/LMIS4 Margaux Duchamp
Qaptis Industrial Process and Energy Systems Engineering STI/IPESE Yves Loerincik; Masoud Talebi Amiri; Théodore Caby
Adaptyv Biosystems Laboratory of Biological Network Characterization STI / LBNC Julian Englert; Daniel Nakhaee-Zadeh Gutierrez; Moustafa Houmani; Amir Shahein 
BearMind Laboratory of Movement Analysis and Measurement STI / LMAM Mathieu Falbriard, Tom Bertrand
Capture Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience SV/LNCO Jean-Baptiste Beau
Corintis Power and Wide-band-gap Electronics Research STI/POWERLAB Remoc van Erp; Pirouz Sohi
FiberLab Laboratory of Photonic Materials and Fiber Devices STI/FIMAP Bastien Schyrr
Omnigrasp Soft Transducers Lab STI/LMTS Vito Cacucciolo, Valentin Py
Solaxer Solar Energy and Building Physics Laboratory ENAC/LESO-PB Anna Krammer; Maxime Lagier
Spectrace Laboratory of Integrated Performance in Design ENAC/LIPID Jeffrey Hubbard

10 Innogrants have been approved. 

Project Laboratory Unit Project leader
Allure Biorobotics Laboratory STI/BIOROB Mohsen Falahi
Sensemodi Laboratory of Movement Analysis and Measurement SIT/LMAM Olga Motovilova, Jérôme Thevenot
Alithea Genomics Bart Deplancke’s Research Group CV/UPDEPLA Daniel Alpern
Tune Insight Laboratory for Data Security IC/LDS Juan Troncoso Pastoriza
RAAAM Technologies Telecommunications Circuits Lab STI/TCL Robert Giterman
School Rebound Computer-Human Interaction in Learning and Instruction IC/CHILI Thibault Asselborn
LBTech Solar Energy and Building Physics Laboratory LESO-PB ENAC/LESO-PB Luc Burnier
Space4Impact Space Center / Innovation Space Center Gaetant Petit, Edoardo Alberti
AICA Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory STI/LASA Lukas Huber, Baptiste Busch
Retreeva Laboratory for Functional Inorganic Materials (LFIM) SB/LFIM Olga Trukhina

11 Innogrants have been approved. 

Project Laboratory Unit Project leader
Visual Structure Swiss Finance Institute CDM/ Semyon Malamud
Water Probe Laboratory for fundamental BioPhotonics STI/LBP Orly Tarun
Largo Films Image and Visual Representation Lab IC/IVRL Sami Arpa
FlowBone Laboratory of Biomechanical Orthopedics STI/LBO Ulrike Kettenberger
Compair Laboratory for Processing of Advanced Composites STI/LPAC Amaël Cohades
Depoly Laboratory of molecular simulation SB/LSMO Samantha Anderson
SenSwiss Microsystems laboratory 4 STI/LMIS4  V. Steininger & P. Philipp
Asterivir Supramolecular Nanomaterials and Interfaces Laboratory STI/SUNMIL Paulo H. Jacob Silva
Limula Biotech Laboratory of Stem Cell Bioengineering SV/UPLUT Yann Pierson
Rea Swiss-up engineering Chair – Laboratory of Life Sciences Electronics STI/CLSE Erick A. Garcia Cordero
ShadMe Solar Energy and Building Physics Laboratory ENAC/LESO-PB  Yujie Wu

12 Innogrants have been approved.

Project Laboratory Unit Project leader
Foldaway Haptics Reconfigurable Robotics Lab STI/RRL Marco Salerno, Stefano Mintchev
Neural Concept Computer Vision Lab IC/CVLAB Pierre Baqué
Prediva Integrated Systems Laboratory IC-STI/LSI1 Nicee Srivastava
CO2 Transformation Laboratory of Organometallic and Medicinal Chemistry SB/LCOM Felix Bobbink
3seNs Laboratory of Advanced Semiconductors for Photonics and Electronics SB/LASPE Pirouz Sohi & Ian Rousseau
EMETS – Water Treatment Laboratory of Inorganic Synthesis and Catalysis SB/LSCI Chin Lee (Jeff) Ong
3D MetalPrinting Laboratory of Thermomechanical Metallurgy STI/LMTM Nikola Kalentics
GoBeyond Optics and Photonics Technology Laboratory STI/OPT Nicolas Decharmes, Raphael Barbey
NeuralSoft Laboratory for Soft Bioelectronic Interfaces STI/LSBI Nicolas Vachicouras, Ludovic Serex, Florian Fallegger
FloChIP Laboratory of Systems Biology and Genetics SV/LSBG Riccardo Dainese
Bionomou Robotic Systems Laboratory STI/LSRO Frank Bonnet
Warp Coding Operating Systems Laboratory IC/LABOS Nikolche Mihajlovski

a record 15 Innogrants have been approved.

Project Laboratory Unit Project leader
Creal3d Optics & Photonics Technology Laboratory STI/OPT Vincent Gajdosik, Tomas Sluka
Nanogence Powder Technology Laboratory STI/LTP Abhishek Kumar
Viventis Microscopy Prof. Oates Group SV/UPOATES Petr Strnad, Andrea Boni
Imverse Foundation Bertarelli Chair in Cognitive Neuroprosthetics SV/LNCO Javier Bello Ruiz, Robin Mange
ADC Imaging Laboratory of Bioorganic Chemistry and Molecular Imaging SB/LCBIM Aleksey Yevtodiyenko & Elena Dubikovskaya
Microbiome Diagnostics Chair of Applied Statistics SB/STAP Paulo Refinetti
Mirrakoi Biomedical Imaging Laboratory STI/LIB Daniel Schmitter , Zsuzsanna Püspöki, Pablo Garcia-Amorena
Feeltronix Foundation Bertarelli Chair in Neuroprosthetic Technology STI/LSBI Arthur Edouard Hirsch, Aaron Gerratt, Hadrien Michaud
Retina Imaging Laboratory of Applied Photonic Devices STI/LAPD Timothé Laforest, Dino Carpentras, Mathieu Kunzi
Tomoprint Laboratory of Applied Photonic Devices STI/LAPD Damien Loterie, Paul Delrot
VascuSafe Microsystems Laboratory 4 STI/LMIS4 Guillaume Petit-Pierre, Marc Boers
EmbryoSpin Microsystems Laboratory 1 STI/LMIS1 Marco Grisi, Marc Conley
Instoa – Digitalization of Clinical Trials Operating Systems Laboratory IC/LABOS Nicolas Gobet
Medusoil Soil Mechanics Laboratory ENAC/LMS Dimitrios Terzis
Mano Defitech Foundation Chair in Brain-machine Interface STI/CNBI Luca Randazzo

 

12 Innogrants have been approved.

Project Laboratory Unit Project leader
FXII Inhibitor Laboratory of Therapeutic Proteins and Peptides SB/LPPT Christian Heinis, Andres McAllister
Active Wearables Robotic Systems Laboratory STI/LSRO Simon Gallo, Giulio Rognini
Chef’s Road Operating Systems Laboratory IC/LABOS Youssef El Houti, Abdelkoudouss Badou
Vizir Image and Visual Representation Laboratory IC/IVRL Martijn Bosch & Adrien Bierbaumer
Dispencell Stem Cell Dynamics Laboratory SV/LDCS Georges Muller & David Bonzon
Thinkee Group Kayal STI/GR_KA Nastaran Asadi Zanjani, Johann Bigler & Jean-Charles Fosse
Lironix Laboratory of Macromolecular and Organic Materials STI/LMOM Giuseppe Sforazzini
MiraEx Group Villanueva STI/GR_LVT Clément Javerzac-Galy & Nicolas Piro
TWIICE Laboratoire de Systèmes Robotiques STI/LSRO Marek Jancik & Tristan Vouga
EEG buds Defitech foundation chair in Brain-Machin interface STI/CNBI Naik Londono
Lumigbo Laboratory of Biomedical Orthopedics STI/LBO Andreas Schmocker & Azadeh Khoushabi
GRZ Technologies Laboratory of Materials for Renewable Energy SB/LMER Noris Gallandat & Claudio Ruch

11 Innogrants have been approved.

Project Laboratory Unit Project leader
Twenty Green Electronics and Signal Processing Laboratory STI/ESPLAB Mario Zaiss & Duncan Sutherland
Sthar Laboratory of Theoretical Physical Chemistry SB/LCPT Alberto Hernando de Castro, Miroslav Sluc, Marius Wehrle & Eduardo Zambrano
Swiss Sonic Production Laboratory of Microengineering for Manufacturing STI/LPM Csaba Laurenczy
Targeted cancer therapy Laboratory of Synthesis and Natural Products & Radtke Group SB/LSPN & SV/UPRAD Viktoria Reinmüller
Volumina Microsystems Laboratory 4 STI/LMIS4 Amélie Béduer & Thomas Braschler
Cellphmed Laboratory of Virology and Genetics SV/LVG Marc Friedli
Technis Microsystems Laboratory 4 STI/LMIS4 Naïk Londono, Martin Hofmann & Wiktor Bourée
TasteHit Unit of prof. Salathé SV/UPSALATHE Alexei Kounine & Christopher Burger
ArtMYN Audiovisual Communications Lab IC/LCAV Loïc Baboulaz, Alexandre Catsicas, Julien Lalande, Mathieu Rudelle
Daphne Swiss Plasma Center SB/SPC Mario Michan
Insolight Laboratory of Applied Photonics Devices STI/LAPD Laurent Coulot, Mathieu Ackerman, Florian Gerlich

12 Innogrants have been approved.

Project Laboratory Unit Project leader
Xsensio Nanoelectronic Devices Lab. STI/NANOLAB Esmeralda Magally
RAW Data-Intensive Applications and Systems Lab. IC/DIAS Miguel Branco
Cloud Storage Image and Visual Representation Laboratory IC/IVRG Thomas Lochmatter & Radhakrishna Achanta
Biosemic Laboratory of the Physics of Living Matter SB/LPMV Wiktor Lisowksi
Lucentix Laboratory of Protein Engineering SB/LIP Rudolf Griss & Alberto Schena
Intento Chair in Non-invasive Brain-machine Interface STI/CNBI Andrea Maesani & Andrea Biasiucci
SensArs Neuroprosthetics Translational Neural Engineering Laboratory STI/TNE Francesco Petrini, Stanisa Raspopovic & Marco Capogrosso
Cell Culture Platform Laboratory of Stem Cell Bioengineering SV/LSCB Sylke Hoehnel & Nathalie Bradenberg
Graspeo Real-Time Coordination & Distributed Interaction Syst. STI/REACT Andrii Vozniuk
Nowy Dependable Systems Lab. IC/DSLAB Loïc Gardiol, Amer Chamseddine & Silviu Andrica
Perspectives Artificial Intelligence Lab. IC/LIA Claudiu Musat
EAR Audiovisual Communications Lab. IC/LCAV Juri Ranieri & Ivan Dokmanic

10 Innogrants have been approved.

Project Laboratory Unit Project leader
Playfulvision Computer Vision Laboratory IC/CVLAB Horesh Ben Shitrit
Makur L’IDIAP Laboratory STI/LIDIAP Joan Isaac Biel
Neofluidis Microsystems Laboratory 2 STI/LMIS2 Ata Tuna Ciftlik
Imperix Industrial Electronics Laboratory STI/LEI Simon Delalay & Nicolas Cherix
Code Tickler Dependable Systems Lab IC/DSLAB Cristian Zamfir
G-Therapeutics Chair in Spinal Cord Repair SV/BMI Vincent Delattre
Bright Sensors Microtechnics Production Lab. STI/LPM Gael Farine & Conor Slater
Rovenso Biorobotics Laboratory STI/BIOROB Thomas Estier
Anemomind Computer Vision Laborator IC/CVLAB Julien Pilet
Oncoeffective Microsystems Laboratory 4 STI/LMIS4 Robert Meissner

9 Innogrants have been approved.

Projects Description Laboratory Project leader
Distalmotion Development and commercialization of a new surgical device that will enable a new generation of minimally invasive surgery in the abdominal cavity. www.distalmotion.com STI/LSRO1 Ricardo Beira
Cellestia Optimization and preclinical validation of the Notch inhibitors for cancer therapy. SV/UPRAD Rajwinder Lehal
Osmotech An Innovative Way of Generating and Storing Electricity. www.osmoblue.com STI/LMIS4 Elodie Dahan
Faceshift Analysis of face motions and to animation of virtual characters for use in movie or game prodcution. www.faceshift.com IC/LGG Thibaud Weise
Nanolive Quantitative super-resolution microscopy. www.nanolive.ch STI/LAPD Yann Cotte
Morphotonix Fusion of photonics, state-of-the-art microtechnology and food. http://www.morphotonix.com STI/LMIS1 Shenqi Xie & Vaida Auzelyte
SmartCardia New medical technology for remote monitoring the treatment of heart patients. www.smartcardia.com STI/ESL Srini Murali
DNA Watch Anti-counterfeiting solution for luxury watches. www.dnawatch.ch SB/LASPE Nasser Hefyene
Shoelace wireless Smart wireless devices in close proximity to cooperatively acquire high rate content. www.shoelacewireless.com IC/ARNI Lorenzo Keller

67 projects were submitted; 17 went through a second phase assessment and 6 have been approved.

Projects Description Laboratory Project leader
Mindmaze New interactive rehabilitation method for stroke patients. www.mindmaze.com. Video demo SV/LNCO Tej Tadi
Therapeutics for ALS Development of therapeuties for Amyotrophie Lateral Selerosis (ALS), also known as Charcot’s disease. STI/LP Prof. Klok
L.E.S.S.
Nanostructured fibers for illumination. www.less-optics.com
 STI/GR-STI Yann Tissot &
Simon Rivier
Swiss to 12 Passive components for terahertz technology. www.swissto12.com SB/LPMN Alessandro Macor &
Emile de Rijk
KB Medical Medical robotic system that allows the surgeon to be more precise. www.kbmedical.com STI/LSRO2 Philippe Bérard &
Szymon Kostrzewski
Azbooka Online assistant of Maths for school kids. STI/LC Evgeny Milyutin

48 projects were submitted; 10 went through a second phase assessment and 5 have been approved.

Projects Description Laboratory Project leader
Large field confocal fluorescence microscopy Combining size and high resolution in optical microscopy by providing sharpness where there is blur; enlarging image when restricted in size; solve traditional tradeoff for the users STI/LMIS1 Bastien Rachet
Cloud management Design and development of a tool to correlate user- and service-level problems with faults in the underlying software and hardware, in an automated manner. It targets cloud data centers, SaaS providers, and large organizations demanding stringent service guarantees. IC/LABOS Jean-Philippe Martin-Flatin
Abionic A combination of micro-technologies and medical applications through the use of microfluidics for fast, reliable and medical diagnostics. www.abionic.com STI/LOB Nicolas Durand
Bug Buster Automated testing, improved security and reliability of web applications development. www.bugbuster.com IC/LABOS Olivier Crameri
Samantree Technologies By using light instead of mechanical tools and microscopic pores instead of large perfusion tubes, the project develops new endoscopic imaging, where light can be modified to serve as an ultra-thin scalpel or ultra-precise tweezers, necessary for cellular or subcellular operations. www.samantreetechnologies.com SB/LCPPM Davor Kosanic

48 projects were submitted; 11 went through a second phase assessment and 5 have been approved.

Projects Description Laboratory Project leader
Minsh The first underwater social world for Twitter users. IC/LSR Barbara Yersin & Jonathan Maim
Ozwe A computer without a mouse and keyboard. AA/CRAFT Frédéric Kaplan
WippSo A new synthesis tool for electronic circuit design which facilitates engineering companies in building smaller, lower power, application specific FPGA designs. STI/MM Marco Mattavelli
Anti-cancer agents New chemistry compounds as anti-tumour agents: compounds that are able to re-install apoptosis (self-killing) of cancer cells represent interesting potential drugs to fight cancer, especially those that are toxic to cancer cells and not to non-tumour cells. They are several possible targets in cancer cells that, once hit by a suitable compound (bullet), can induce apoptosis. Among them we can aim the energy producing machine and proteins that promote cell division. Synthetic, as well as natural compound derivatives have been identified that can act on either one of these two targets. SB/LGSA Claudia Bello
Imina Technologies Imina Technologies designs, fabricates and sells complete manipulation platforms to nanotechnology scientists. A unique combination of ultra precise positioning stage with revolutionary mobile micro-robots provides the leading edge research community with devices of simplicity and flexibility never reached before. www.imina.ch STI/LSRO2 Benoît Dagon, Guillaume Boetsch and Christophe Canales

 

2008

43 projects were submitted; 14 went through a second phase assessment and 8 have been approved.

Projects Description Laboratory Project leader
DB4all DB4ALL provides services for extracting data from websites into a structured form, in a time record and at very competitive fees. IC/LBD David Portabella
Aïmago Functional Brain Imaging is understood as vizualizing an aspect of brain function by measuring localized changes in cerebral blood flow. The method used here is Laser-Doppler Imaging (LDI) with state of the art electronics, signal processing and statistical analysis. www.aimago.com STI/LOB Michael Friedrich
Excellness Biotech Cell culture is a process that allows cell expansion out of the body. This technique constitutes an inescapable step to study any biological processes and to test the effects of any cosmetics or therapeutic agents. Presently standard cell culture is performed in plastic dishes. The major challenges of cell culture are 1) to expand cells in sufficient amounts and 2) to preserve the stability of cell characteristics in this stressful ex-vivo environment. Cellnes develops an innovative culture dish technology that allows better cell growth than any existing standard methodology. Go to www.excellness.com SB/LCB Pierre-Jean Wipff
Novagan III-nitride-based optoelectronics have experienced a tremendous development since 15 years. Blue light emitting diodes (LEDs) and laser diodes (LDs) are now standard products. A gap exists for devices having mixed properties of LED and LDs. This open the way for more advanced optoelectronic devices such as Superluminescent Light Emitting Diodes (SLEDs). Go to www.novagan.com SB/LASPE Eric Feltin
Aleva Neurotherapeutics Development of implantable microelectrodes used in Deep Brain Stimulation therapy for neurological diseases. Target customers are neurosurgeons performing Deep Brain Stimulation therapy using implantable neurostimulators seeking to improve the efficiency and success rate of the therapy while decreasing surgery time and complexity. www.aleva-neuro.com STI/LMIS4 Andre Mercanzini
Filtering methods Securing and filtering Internet communications (including email filtering and web content filtering). The main goal of the project is to demonstrate and license the technology that was developed during a PhD (including also work that is not yet published). IC/LCA2 Slavisa Sarafijanovic
Social networking Bridging the gap between social activities and internet browsing by building tools that will allow users to interact directly with other people accessing the web, all that in real time. IC/LABOS Rodrigo Schmidt
Madeinlocal Find & Meet your friends in the city! The project aims at promoting local life and commerce using the latest technologies, iPhone & web, and at building a social network for local life. MadeinLocal is an interactive guide for bars, restaurants and events as well as a social network to find and communicate with your friends with geo-localized messages. IC/MEDIA Manuel Acevedo

 

2007

45 projects were submitted in 2007; 16 went through a second phase assessment and 7 have been approved.

Projects Description Laboratory Project leader
Recommendation Systems As the Internet is growing, people are overwhelmed by information and cannot deal with it. Recommendation Systems are tools to help recommend items to the user that they would not have found otherwise. Current systems (like the one found on amazon.com) have profound problems: not very accurate, cannot explain recommendation, lack of privacy. A new recommendation tools that overcomes all of the above problems is proposed. www.prediggo.com IC/LIA Vincent Schickel-Zuber
Energy Storage An increasing recourse to renewable energies is one of the key solutions to address the current resource and environmental concerns related to the world energy supply. These energies present the advantages of being inexhaustible and harmless to the environment. However, many of them, such as wind and solar energies, suffer from one important drawback: their unpredictable intermittent nature that makes them not always available when and how needed. Consequently, energy storage means are necessary to transform this “take it when you get it” power into a schedulable power. So far, electrochemical batteries are the main commercially available energy storage solution to bridge the intermittent power of renewable energy sources. However, their toxicity and short duty lifetime (1 to 5 years) makes them incompatible with the aforementioned advantages of those sources. The Solution: Pneumatic Energy Storage (PES) appears as the viable response to this question. It is based on the natural elasticity or compressibility of air, i.e. it works like an “Air-spring”. Air, the storage medium is available everywhere; the operating principle produces no greenhouse gas; the system can operate for more than 20 years and will yield no problematic waste at disposal. Therefore, PES technology naturally fits renewable energy sources. www.enairys.com STI/LEI Sylvain Lemofouet-Gatsi
Gliapharm Glial cells and astrocytes in particular are emerging as potentially very interesting targets for neuroactive agents in a variety of pathologies, including cognitive impairments of various origin, neurodegenerative diseases, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, depression and migraine, to cite a few. Thus developing a therapeutic strategy targeted at astrocytes to improve cognitive impairment in neurodegeneration would be a particularly important first step to develop a whole new field of neuropsychopharmacology. SV/LNDC Pierre Magistretti
Optimax In today’s increasingly competitive markets, companies often require the ability to form complex and highly dynamic supply chains in order to stay competitive. Often times billions of dollars and their very survival are at stake. Electronic auctions are becoming an increasingly popular way of negotiation in supply chain formation and optimization. They have the potential to achieve much better deals by encouraging competition among suppliers, and to offer important cost savings and much faster decisions by avoiding tedious back and forth one-to-one negotiations. IC/LIA Adrian Petcu
Map3D At present the attempts of reducing regional air pollution often are unsuccessful mainly due to the lack of tools allowing objective decisions. Thus decisions are taken mainly based on the existing air pollution point monitor stations at the ground level which do not reveal the underlying processes and causes and therefore are insufficient for the development of abatement strategies and on air pollution modelling studies investigating few days air pollution episodes. It is necessary to have a permanent modelling system which provides daily forecast of local meteorology and air pollutant (gases and particles) concentrations. This system will allow easy and direct access to the modelled concentrations for decision makers and environmental administration. The design will also allow easy and fast introduction of scenarios and therefore to forecast the influence of new projects, infrastructure measures or short-term abatement measures rapidly and cheaply. www.gaiasens.com ENAC/EFLUM Olivier Couach
MEMS scanners and micro-projection systems Lemoptix (formely Scanlight Imaging) aims to revolutionize scanning and video projection systems by using advanced Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) technologies to achieve significant size and cost reductions. Several professional and end-user markets are about to get deeply transformed by the emerging use of MEMS technologies, using techniques similar to semiconductors. Indeed, scanners and video-projectors could benefit from significant size and cost reductions, thus opening up new applications and markets for barcode scanners, endoscopes, optical spectrometers, heads-up displays and video-projectors. We have developed a unique thermal actuation micro-mirror technology able to replace polygonal mirrors commonly used in scanning applications. This technology opens up other applications such as heads-up displays, disposable endoscopes and optical spectrometers (gas sensors). These micro-mirrors have already been successfully tested by the 2nd world barcode manufacturer and are in agreement with the specifications for this application. We are also currently developing the second micro-mirrors generation based on similar technology platform, to access the micro video-projection market. We focus on two successive products: the fabrication of stand-alone micro-mirrors and the development of miniaturized colour video-projectors. www.lemoptix.com STI/LMIS4 Nicolas Abelé
Neurosurgery Stereotactic surgery is a minimally-invasive form of surgical intervention which makes use of a three-dimensional coordinates system to locate small targets inside the body and to perform on them some action such as ablation (removal), biopsy, lesion, injection, electrical stimulation, implantation, etc. In neurosurgery, stereotactic procedures refer to the use of a reference frame, a mechanical device equipped with head-holding clamps and bars which puts the head in a fixed position in reference to the coordinate system (the so-called zero or origin) of the frame. Each point in the brain can then be referenced with respect to this frame. Our project aims at developing a new system that will replace the heavy and uncomfortable frames used today by a light stereotactic tripod that will be easy to use for the surgeon, comfortable for the patient and as precise as the current techniques. www.stereotools.com STI/LTS5 Jean-Philippe Thiran

 

2006

46 projects were submitted in 2006; 23 went through a second phase assesment and 9 have been approved.

Projects Description Laboratory Project leader
SPAD: Single Photon
Avalanche Diode (Fastree3D)		 SPADs are photodetectors capable of detecting the arrival time of a single photon with picosecond precision. This characteristic makes SPAD-based 3D image sensors applications superior in terms of sensitivity, keeping eye-safe operation, and precision, if compared to existing 3D images sensors using the time-of-flight principle. In addition cost issues are addressed by the use of commercially available CMOS technologies. IC/LAP &
STI/LMIS3		 Cristiano Niclass
Biocomposites Bone is a natural cellular composite which is one of the most repaired tissue of the organism. Surgeons currently use either auto- or allo-grafts / demineralised bone matrix, which, however, have a limited availability, or present pathogen transmission risks, respectively. Synthetic tissue grafts are thus investigated in order to provide porous templates (scaffolds) for tissue regeneration. Polymer or ceramic scaffolds are mainly used today. However, there is a need for improved mechanical properties and enhanced biological behaviour of synthetic scaffolds. The Innogrant focuses on a ceramic-polymer composite, with suitable morphology, mechanical and osteoconductive properties to repair cancellous bone. A new porous bioresorbable composite was developed by a solvent-free technique. The absence of solvent and its promising properties tailored to those of natural bone are highly interesting for surgeons. STI/LTC Laurence Mathieu
Doppler Imaging System A high-speed laser Doppler imaging system was developed for visualisation of the microvasculature blood blow in biological tissue like skin. Significantly, microcirculation is the ultimate arbiter of the adequacy of tissue perfusion in the presence of vascular disease, injury, or tissue irritation. Accessing the microcirculation of the blood in a non-contact non-invasive manner offers monitoring of various skin conditions including burns grading, skin cancers, psoriasis, eczema, and scars. Also, the new imaging system offers important functional information for monitoring of wound healing and the diagnosis of allergies. The imaging device possesses the fastest ever imaging speed for this type of device and generates detailed flow-map (speed, concentration, and perfusion) images in real time at high special resolution. The outstanding performance of the system creates the opportunity to advance the laser Doppler imaging technology towards everyday medical applications, such as the basic disease diagnoses performed by physicians. The key applications of the technique lie in the domain of dermatology and plastic surgery. STI/LOB Alexandre Serov
Bio-simulations Computer-based bio-simulations have the potential of reducing the costs by 30% by replacing the clinical tests with virtual testing. Only the molecules that proved to work in the bio-simulation stage are then validated in real tests, thus saving a considerable amount of time and money to the new drug development process. However all the current bio-simulation solutions on the market provide insufficient computing performance, they are extremely expensive and difficult to use as they require strong expertise in Cluster, Grid and Super- computing operating and management techniques.
This Innogrant addresses the fundamental speed computing performance issue by the mean of original and elegant design of hardware architectures dedicated to the bio-simulation applications. The core hardware is made easy to integrate as acceleration co-processor in the whole range of existing computing systems (laptop, workstation, server, supercomputer) at board/motherboard level in a plug-and play fashion. Our core products are acceleration modules that speed up the computation time by a factor of 10 to 50 times.		 IC/LAP Payal Kapoor
Cathodoluminescence In order to improve semiconductor nanostructures to be used in future electronic and optoelectronic devices, a detailed understanding of the electronic processes in these nanostructures is indispensable. Even the most sophisticated methods used to explore material properties and dynamics run into limits when applied at the nanoscale. Current techniques either have good spatial resolution (down to tens of nanometers or below) or an ultrafast time resolution (down to picoseconds), but not both. The group of Prof. Deveaud at EPFL managed to go an important step ahead by developing a picosecond time resolved cathodoluminescence (pTRCL) setup with unprecedented combined spatial and temporal resolutions. This setup tracks movement of charge carriers in nanostructures at trillionths of a second (10^-12 s !!) and 50nm spatial resolution. The prototype in our laboratory will be further developed to get a industry ready turn-key application. Go to www.atto-light.com SB/LOEQ Samuel Sonderegger
Media Delivery – Jilion The project aims at developing an Internet marketplace for promoting and distributing user generated content. Recommendation and social networking techniques will be used in order to establish strong relations between user and content. www.jilion.com IC/ALGO Zeno Crivelli
The Noc of Choice Today, embedded systems, such as mobile phones, wireless communication products, set-top boxes and multimedia portable devices are incorporating rich and varied functionalities on the same device. With the increasing complexity of these systems, the communication requirements between the components inside the system are rapidly increasing. Current bus-based communication architectures do not provide the required scalability needed to support the high bandwidth requirements of these applications. NETWORKS-ON-CHIP (NOCS) are one of the most promising possible answers to the scalability concerns of the interconnection systems. NoCs bring a packet-switching communication paradigm, such as the one seen in large area networks, to the on-chip domain. NoCs are an excellent solution for high-performance, high-complexity designs as mandated by today’s and tomorrow’s user needs. This objective of this project is to create commercially viable NoC solutions for embedded systems. Go to www.inocs.com STI-IC/LSI Srinivasan Murali
An internet service A travel-related, internet service, based on applied mathematics and computer science techniques. www.routerank.com IC/LCA Jochen Mundinger
Application-aware wireless networks The goal of this project is to develop a proof-of-concept prototype for a novel wireless networking architecture that employs application-aware optimizations. This architecture has the potential to improve performance by a significant factor with respect to current state-of-the-art, and enable a new class of application using commodity hardware. IC/LCAV Henri Dubois-Ferriere

 

2005

34 projects were submitted in 2005; 18 went through a second phase assesment and 7 have been approved.

Projects Description Laboratory Project leader
Automatic Instruction Set
Creation		 Harnessing the unprecedented potential offered by semiconductor density while maintaining control over costs in the design of integrated circuits presents a challenging but attractive opportunity for electronic design automation tools: existing methodologies for creating the architecture of an integrated circuit are predominately manual and typically require several man-years of effort to achieve.
The technology being developed presents a methodology that automates the process of creating designs directly from the software functional description of the circuit. Design creation is extremely rapid, thus enabling engineers to consider and trade-off different possible architectures. Human errors are reduced, time-to-market constraints are contained and due to the exploration characteristics the chances of meeting the requirements are significantly enhanced.		 IC/LAP Paolo Ienne
Recombinant proteins The primary objective of this program is to obtain a confirmation of early results on specific promoters for the production of recombinant proteins. The objective is to establish a comparison between promoter strength, compared at various industry standards, and to do this in highly controlled conditions. This study is also designed to establish the potential commercial interest. SV/LBTC Florian Wurm
Highly extendable substrates Traditionally, expansion of cell populations on Petri dishes require passaging to new surfaces when the cell monolayer becomes confluent. Passaging is labour-intensive and involves cell exposure to degradative enzymes, which contribute to cell phenotype changes that are problematic for tissue engineering.
The Cartilage Biomechanics Group of EPFL has invented a device for culturing cells on highly extendable (1000%) substrates. A transparent elastomer membrane is mounted in a Petri dish-like geometry, then a PC-controlled motor specifies its extension rate. This reduces the need for passaging since the elastomeric culture surface can increase as cells multiply. This promotes efficient population expansion and phenotype preservation. These features can improve the quality of engineered tissues while reducing manpower and materials. Mechanical stimulation may also reinforce desired phenotypes in cells such as fibroblasts, chondrocytes, and myocytes.
This device is of interest in biotechnology and tissue engineering where current cell culture methods are unsatisfactory. In addition, the device enables novel research investigations into cell-surface interactions and mechanically activated gene expression. Our aims are to promote technology transfer with a multifaceted approach including (1) in-house device use, (2) collaborations with other laboratories, and (3) sales to other laboratories. Functioning prototypes are currently available. Go to www.cytomec.com		 STI/LRO Tom Quinn
Service2service.Net The goal of this project is to create a network where automatically generated business interactions between services will be realistic in all aspects, including security, reliability, and manageability. For that recent research results will be complemented with operational aspects essential for real business interactions to take place by creating and deploying in the network a set of core, essential services. Then in order to validate these core services and in order to create an initial critical mass of value in the network, a number of business services will be developed and deployed. These services will be aimed to provide an out-of-the-box solution for organizations with limited IT budgets like Small and Medium Size Enterprises (SMEs) or Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that want to have a hosted internet presence. IC/LIA Ion Constantinescu
Distributed Web
Ranking 		The current Web search business is divided into two mostly isolated markets: general-purpose Internet search engines and enterprise-oriented Intranet search engines. On both markets, companies use a mix of text-based ranking and link-based ranking to order search results in their search systems and products. From what has been publicized, existing link-based ranking algorithms such as Google’s PageRank are built on centralized models which require a centralized computation of the ranking if used to rank the complete Web graph. Centralization causes many problems and limitations for Web search.
Our patented technology leads the computation of link-based ranking to a further advancement where distribution in a P2P fashion is the built-in feature of our model and algorithms. Distributed link-based ranking computation brings to a search system many advantages such as computation thus system cost reduction, better search quality (including fresher ranking results, stronger immunity to ranking spamming and pollution, and potential better ranking), and more flexibility in personalization.		 IC/LSIR Jie Wu
Microcooling A patent pending technology concerning a microbubble generator for a multi-microchannel heat transfer assembly which improves heat transfer by controlled bubble generation within a circulating coolant in order to more effectively cool microelectronic devices is the basis of the proposed implementation project. A prototype of the microbubble generator will be developed and tested (along with a cost-effective manufacturing technique) during the course of the project. The goal is to achieve an inexpensive microbubble generator design and to prove its ability to enhance the thermal performance of microcooling elements as a key step towards licensing of the technology. STI/LTCM James DeRose
Nanoparticle delivery – would become later Anokion The goal of this project is to obtain demonstrative, proof-of-principle data on drug loading and release with two recently developed nanoparticle systems. based on this data, it should be possible to pursue further commercial development. SV/LMRP Jeff Hubbell

 

The NCCR Spin Funds

The Swiss national science fondation funds projets in a similar way to the Innogrants, through its NCCR programs. The MICS spin fund was the first such initiative and as of October 1st, 2011, it has supported 16 projects enabling the creation of 10 small companies.

Projects Description Laboratory Project leader
Sensorscope Environmental monitoring. www.sensorscope.ch EPFL/IC/LCAV Mounir Krichane
Streamforge Internet Multimedia Streaming. www.streamforge.com ETHZ/ITET/TIK Pascal von Rickenbach & Nicolas Burri
Sreee! Mobile social networking games. www.sreee.com ETHZ/CAAD Steffen P. Walz & Thomas Seibert
Koubachi Interactions between plants and humans. www.koubachi.com ETHZ/INF/PC Moritz Koehler & Philipp Bolliger
Sentry Secure Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)-based Localization. EPFL/IC/LCA Panos Papadimitratos
Doxolo Real time trading platform. EPFL/IC/LSIR Ali Salehi
Bmob Urban Parking Management and Information System. www.bmob-park.com USI/INF Michal Piorkowski
Noti Automated image annotation on mobile devices. www.vidinoti.com EPFL/IC/LCAV Mathieu Monney
Scala Scala based development platform for Android. www.scalasolutions.com EPFL/IC/LAMP Antonio Cunei
Access Control Access Control based on Secure Proximity Verification. ETHZ/INF/SYSSEC Boris Danev
GEOS Embedded system for geo-localisation. www.s1tracker.ch EPFL/STI/CD Urs Hunkeler
Kandou Power and pin-efficient signaling for high speed data buses. www.kandou.com EPFL/IC/ALGO Anant Singh & Seyed Armin Tajalli
Pix4D Hands free mapping from UAV imagery. www.pix4d.com EPFL/IC/CVLAB Christop Strecha
Adimpact Automatic evaluation of visual impact Video demo EPFL/IC/IVRG Radhakrishna Achanta
Serafina Small, mass-producible and affordable autonomous robotic submarine, equipped with proprietary communication and localisation systems EPFL/ENAC/DISAL Alexander Bahr
Global fountain To transform the way people learn EPFL/IC/LCAV Pedro Pinto and Francisco Pinto

The Robotics spin fund is the second initiative. More about this by clicking here.