FUSTIC Open Innovation Day

June 21st, 2023, unlimitrust campus, Prilly, Vaud

Dear Fustic members and friends,

What an incredible day it was at the FUSTIC Open Innovation Day!

It was filled with innovation, creativity, and engaging discussions, where FUSTIC took its playrole of catalyzer and connecting point that fosters discussions and builds bridges between academics, industries, startups, and cities, all working towards a more sustainable future.

We would like to express our appreciation to all the presenters, roundtable discussion panelists, workshop and exhibition organizers, and everyone who attended to share their ideas and insights on open innovation topics and showcase open solutions.

Thank you to our sponsors and partners: Unlimitrust campus and Economy of Trust team, Etat de Vaud, SPEIEPFL ENAC, Real Estate Meetings, MATTHEY – PETIT SA.

Once again, we extend our deepest thanks to everyone who contributed to making the FUSTIC Open Innovation Day a resounding success!

Photo credit: Armand Goy

Program outline

PRINT THE PROGRAM

Welcome coffee | 08h15 – 09h00

Opening | 09h00 – 09h30

Frédéric Dreyer is a Doctor of Science from EPFL and holds Master’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science and Environment, as well as an Executive MBA from HEC Geneva.
With a solid experience of more than 10 years in the industry, the former director of the research and development department of Panerai (Richemont Group) has contributed to major innovations in microtechnology.
Previously as the Director of the Office for Promotion of Industries and Technologies (OPI), Geneva State department, supported companies on their 4.0 transformation in an ever-changing ecosystem.
Currently Innosuisse mentor for start-up and SME, co-founder of SwissInspect startup, specialized in predictive and prescriptive maintenance of infrastructures. Frederic is also Innovation and partnership officer at EPFL ENAC faculty and founder of FUSTIC association, dedicated to promote the societal and ecological transition by championing research in digital technology and sustainable cities, regions and infrastructure.

Lauranne Macherel is a Swiss lawyer working in the legal, diplomatic, and international negotiation fields for the public and private sectors for over a decade. She worked as a Legal Adviser for the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) for more than five years. Her main focus was international public law, particularly international human rights and counterterrorism issues. She represented Switzerland’s interest and position in multilateral negotiations within the United Nations and worked on many initiatives. She held various positions in Switzerland, China, and the United States.

Today, as Deputy Secretary General of the Economy of Trust Foundation, she works closely with various public and private entities to deliver innovative solutions to bring trust in digital and physical interactions and transactions. As a strong advocate for sustainability, international law, human rights, and inclusion, she is convinced that bringing diverse perspectives and experiences together is crucial to creating sustainable, impactful solutions.

Prof. Claudia R. Binder is a distinguished researcher and academic specializing in environmental sciences and human-environment relations. Having received her PhD from ETH Zurich, she has held significant positions at the University of Zurich, the University of Graz, and the University of Munich. She is currently serving as the Dean of the ENAC School at EPFL, and is the founding director of the renowned Laboratory for Human-Environment Relations in Urban Systems (HERUS). Her research focuses on analyzing the sustainable transition of urban systems, particularly related to urban metabolism and transformation processes. Dr. Claudia Binder actively contributes to national research programs and sustainability initiatives, showcasing her commitment to advancing knowledge and promoting sustainability in the built and natural environment.

Presentations | 09h30 – 10h00

 

Former neuroscientist, Dr. Noémie Mazaré currently serves as the Open Science officer at EPFL. In this role, she contributes to the development and implementation of EPFL’s Strategy for Open Science. She also collaborates with stakeholders both within and outside of the university to advance Open Science principles in research, education, and innovation, and advocates for Open Science issues and discussions on campus.

 

Claudia Bienentreu is heading the innovation team “AXAnauten” of AXA in Switzerland.

Her mission is to enable collaborations between AXA and external innovation partners like startups, corporations, clients and academic institutions, to develop open innovation initiatives and unlock new business opportunities. She is a lecturer at HWZ (Hochschule für Wirtschaft Zürich), sharing her knowledge about disruptive innovation, open innovation and digital business models in the insurance industry. She has a strong background in strategic marketing and communications and has been working in the financial services industry in Switzerland and Germany in the past 20 years.
She is passionate about understanding customer needs, technology trends, developing innovative business models and connecting people and ideas.

Round Table 1 | 10h00 – 10h45

Can Open Science drive innovation?

Daniel, coFounder of INNOArchitects and responsible for strategic execution as well as product and business developments for customers in multiple sectors.
Daniel has been in innovation, business development and startup collaborations for more than 30 years.
He was in multiple executive roles at Swisscom and was part of the venture kick board.

Emile Dupont spent, after his MSc and PhD in microtechnologies from EPFL, the last 10 years helping Swiss innovators implement and bring to market ideas and technologies from the academic world. He is the responsible at Innosuisse for the technology and knowledge transfer team and for programs such as the Innosuisse Innovation Mentoring and the Innosuisse Innovation Boosters, that want to help the creation of more radical ideas by promoting the utilisation of design thinking methods and open innovation settings in different thematics.

Katrin Beyer is an Associate Professor at EPFL, specializing in the seismic behavior of structures. She is a renowned researcher, published widely in the field, and is a member of the executive committee of the European Association for Earthquake Engineering. Katrin is also an advocate for open science, sharing experimental data and models.
As an Associate Dean at EPFL’s School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, she contributes to academic leadership.
Furthermore, Katrin Beyer co-founded SwissInspect, an award-winning start-up focused on digital twinning of infrastructure, using computer vision and machine learning.

Séverine Vuilleumier has acquired by leading projects in fundamental and applied research a strategic sensitivity to different opinions, cultures, and approaches. Her career path, from environmental engineering to biology, genetics and health, has given her a deep understanding of major health, societal and environmental challenges. She has been a research associate at EPFL and at the University Hospital of Lausanne (CHUV) and a group leader at the University of Lausanne. She is currently a Professor at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Western Switzerland (HES-SO), La Source, where she is developing research and education in environmental health and sustainability.

Sunje has always had a passion for research. Starting out in the geosciences and then in scientific publishing, her interest in responsible and open research practices led her to the world’s largest particle physics research laboratory: CERN. After a PhD at CERN and Humboldt University in Berlin, a research stay at Harvard University and, most recently, a secondment to Germany’s largest research organization, she returned to her roots at CERN. She works with the communities towards open research practices and services.

Through the various assignments, Sunje has developed an understanding of research management from all possible perspectives: researchers, citizens, research institutions, and policymakers. She believes: The increasing complexity of data-driven and reusable research practices demands a comprehensive and scalable approach to prepare for a fruitful future. Research results need to remain trustworthy and accessible to be or become part of global decision-making.

Coffee break | 10h45 – 11h15

Round Table 2 | 11h15 – 12h00

Open Innovation in Business models, an option for everyone?

Arnaud Chevallier is Professor of Strategy. He helps executives solve complex problems and make better decisions under uncertainty. His research, teaching and consulting draw on empirical findings from diverse disciplines to provide concrete tools that prepare executives to manage the strategic challenges they face in today’s dynamic global marketplace.

At IMD he is Director of the Global Management Foundation program and the Master of Science in Sustainable Management and Technology program offered jointly by IMD, the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and the University of Lausanne.

Bahaa is the VP and Business Development and focuses on developing partnerships and promoting the diverse innovative technologies developed at CSEM.
Before joining CSEM, Bahaa had more than 7 years of industrial innovation management experience with business leaders (Swatch Group/Belenos Clean Power Holding), where he oversaw several projects related to new venture creation and R&D projects in the sustainable energy domain.
Bahaa holds a Master’s in Chemical Engineering from the Ecole Européenne d’Ingénieurs de Chimie, Polymères et Matériaux (ECPM)’of Strasbourg, France and a PhD in Electrochemical Engineering with a Post-Doc fellowship, from EPFL in 2006. Besides these degrees, Bahaa has pursued a full range of business courses including an Executive MBA in Management and Corporate Finance from ‘HEC Lausanne’ in 2012, and a Certificate of Leading Digital Business Transformation from ‘IMD’ in 2019.

Benjamin is a deep tech enthusiast with over fifteen years of experience in contributing to cutting-edge technological developments. He joined CERN’s KT Group in 2018, where he coordinates the transfer of CERN technologies towards applications in healthcare and quantum technologies, by fostering collaborations with industrial, academic and clinical partners.

Romain is an innovative entrepreneur and private pilot from Switzerland, driven by a deep fascination for emerging technologies. As the founder of Uzufly, he is dedicated to unleashing the untapped potential of aerial imagery across diverse industries such as Architecture, Engineering, and Gaming.
Romain’s academic background includes an MSc in Management, Technology, and Entrepreneurship from EPFL, along with a BSc in Civil Engineering from EPFL and HKUST.

Presentation| 12h00 – 12h10

Mr. Conz joined the Vaud Economic Development Agency in 2002 as a project manager and was then promoted to head of a unit whose main mission was to support innovation, entrepreneurship and industry. At the same time, between 2006 and 2008, he held the position of deputy director for an organization mandated by four cantons in French-speaking Switzerland in charge of prospecting and setting up foreign companies. With a DAS in entrepreneurship and business development, Mr. Conz also assumed the ad interim position of head of the Department for the Promotion of the Economy and Innovation for ten months in 2018. In addition, he represents the State of Vaud in the bodies of various entities of the Vaud economic promotion network, including the Foundation for Technological Innovation, the EPFL Innovation Park Foundation and Cautionnement romand.

Mr. Conz experience, at the interface of the public and private sectors, provides him with an in-depth knowledge of the functioning of the State, the economic fabric of Vaud and the large network of partners involved in economic promotion. 

Lunch and Networking | 12h10 – 13h40

Exhibitions | 12h10 – 13.40h

Gianfranco Moi is a senior Executive with extensive international experience in both Public and Private Sectors. Strong interest in Public Organizations Governance, eGovernment, Economic Development, Social Services, Smart City, IoT, Open Digital Innovation, Living Labs, Data Protection, Blockchain, A.I. and Quantum Computing. Gianfranco is Digital Strategic Advisor at University of GENEVA and Director of R&D at IDE4 association.

Jean-Marie Le Goff is a physicist and computer scientist recently retired from CERN, now president of the IDE4 association. He works on enhancing the cognitive insight of humans into the understanding of data using visual analytics: the science of analytical reasoning supported by interactive visual interfaces that combines the power of visual perception with high performance computing.

Workshop

Building your own landscapes with CSX, an OSS MIT2.0 tool based on concepts that powers the next generation of Visual Analytics.

CERN has developed CSX a Visual Analytics tool that integrates Information Retrieval, Data Analytics, Graph Analytics and Data Visualization into an OSS MIT 2.0 platform to enable users to make full benefit of the latest features and IT developments in Data Science without needing coding skills. On-going API-based coding additions will provide users with AI assistance and online access to external data sources. With CSX users can leverage their skills by sharing their findings to a public at large in the form of PowerPoint presentations or reports without sharing the data.

The Office for Economic Affairs and Innovation (SPEI) supports and advises companies and entrepreneurs based in the canton of Vaud.

Companies which are based in the canton of Vaud, and in particular those in the industry and advanced technology sectors, can ask for support from the canton’s Office for Economic Affairs and Innovation (SPEI), which provides information and advice for companies and entrepreneurs at every stage in their development. SPEI guides them through the canton’s various administrative requirements and recommends organizations which will be able to help with their specific needs, be it coaching, financing, innovation or export, for example.

SPEI can also provide direct financial support for small and medium-sized companies and startups in the industry and advanced technology sectors. This financing is designed to support innovation-based projects, the development of R&D, and production capabilities or expansion into international markets. For example, it is possible to obtain financial support for acquiring intellectual property rights, developing new products or markets, training newly hired scientific or technical staff, and for trade fairs and exhibitions abroad.

Brian Carlsen is the CEO and founder of Thot. He recently completed his PhD in Physics, during which he developed Thot. Previously, he competed in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) at the highest level and served as CTO for his academy. With his help, the academy quintupled in size. Brian also worked as a small business consultant for five years, working with owners to create business plans and marketing strategies tailored for their success.

Ignacio Aleman is the COO and co-founder of Thot. He has a MSc in Data Science from EPFL. As an engineer, Ignacio led a small team developing scalable, state-of-the-art decentralized AI systems. Before this, he spent three years in Asia studying business. A natural comic, Ignacio is always keen to lighten the mood. He is a regular in the local improv scene and has performed at live shows. He is also a passionate climber, constantly trying to push his boundaries.

Workshop

Thot replaces the tedium of manual data analysis and organization through automation. This saves researchers time and energy while facilitating collaboration using interactive tools that are built upon FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data and open science principles. Using these principles, Thot’s online platform provides a secure hub for researchers to easily publish, find, and reuse data, creating a unified interface for interaction.

On our platform, researchers can contribute to projects without barriers, facilitating mass collaboration. Thot’s data tracking – from creation through final result – allows verification that data has not been tampered with, creating an open and verified scientific landscape.

ENAC-IT4Research is a team of software, data engineers and data scientists at the service of the School of Architecture, Environmental and Civil Engineering at EPFL, collaborating with researchers to help them make the best use of their data and build effective and reproducible data pipelines.

They build reproducible data and software tools tailored to labs’ needs, to support throughout the data lifecycle, e.g., from building data acquisition pipelines to deploying custom data visualization interfaces.

Come talk to the team about open-source projects, data pipelines and any technical challenges!

Keynote | 13h40 – 14h

Dr. Luciana Vaccaro studied physics at the University Federico II in Naples, Italy. She started her professional career at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), in Switzerland. In 2000, she obtained her PhD in microtechnology at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), before being appointed lecturer at the Institute of Microtechnology of the University of Neuchâtel. In 2006, she became director of the postgraduate programs in health economics and management at the University of Lausanne. In 2009, she returned to the EPFL to set up and manage the Grants office, with the goal of ensuring the funding of Swiss and European research. She was appointed Rector of the HES-SO on October 1st, 2013. Since then, she has been leading the largest university of applied sciences in Switzerland with more than 21,000 students and 28 schools, active in six fields of study. Simultaneously to her role as Rector, Luciana Vaccaro has held various positions in organizations responsible for the support and promotion of Swiss education, research and innovation. Between 2015 and 2021, she was member of the Foundation Council and the Executive Committee of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). Between 2019 and 2023, she was Vice President of Innosuisse, the Swiss Innovation Promotion Agency. Between August 2021 and January 2023, she was President of the Chamber of the Universities of Applied Sciences within swissuniversities, which brings together the rectors of the nine Swiss universities of applied sciences. Since February 1st, 2023, she is President of swissuniversities, the Rectors’ Conference of the Swiss Universities.

Workshops | 14h – 16h

Construction and Architecture

Louis Trümpler is the Digital Lead at WaltGalmarini, with a strong focus on sustainability and digital transformation within the AEC industry. He is deeply passionate about timber construction and its potential for creating a more sustainable built environment. He is also enthusiastic about integrating digital tools with eco-conscious construction practices. Louis has had the privilege of contributing to groundbreaking sustainable timber high-rise projects such as Pi (V-Zug) and Rocket (Ina Invest, Winterthur). Additionally, he has been actively involved in educational initiatives like the BIM-LCA platform, which emphasizes practical, environmentally responsible building approaches.

Workshop:

The workshop, ‘Building a Sustainable Future: Practical Applications of LCA and BIM’, will not only explore the practical aspects of using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Building Information Modelling (BIM) for sustainable construction, but also foster open discussions with participants throughout. 

Central to this session is the BIM-LCA platform, a resource that demonstrates how these tools can substantially reduce a project’s carbon footprint. The free online course provides an overview of LCA and showcases practical workflows for implementation. 

Backed by real-life examples and case studies from Louis Trümpler work, workshop will explore how this contributes to the sustainability of future territories, infrastructure, and cities. 

Louis Trümpler firmly believes that innovation in this field should be as open as possible, and looks forward to discussing why with all of you.

Andrea Settimi is a Ph.D. Research er at the Chair of Timber Construction of EPFL, with core expertise in computational design, digital fabrication, computer vision, augmented reality, and AI systems in timber construction. He did his bachelor’s studies in Architecture in Brussels, Belgium, at ULB-La Cambre Horta. He then attended a one-year master’s course in Helsinki, Finland focused on timber design, construction, and technology at Aalto University. Having worked for one year in Zürich in construction details he decided to complete his studies at EPFL where he obtained his diploma on the topic of half-timber structures and digital fabrication.

Workshop

Full robotic automation in construction has attracted considerable attention in the construction domain. Although effective, these technologies require high capital investment, highly qualified operators, and are typically bounded to closed-sourced hardware. At IBOIS, by researching in AR and AI technologies, they are developing a rapid, open-sourced and decentralized alternative for timber fabrication based on retrofitted ordinary electric tools and embedded sensing devices. Augmented Carpentry is meant to structure the development of widely accessible construction processes for timber materials. Operators will be guided by a digital co-pilot through the fabrication of complex geometries before possible only with numerically controlled machines. The workshop will introduce the participants to a brief state-of-the-art of open-sourced digital fabrication, next they will learn about the current developments in augmented carpentry, and finally, workshop will showcase a live-demo of a preliminary version of augmented carpentry.

Cyril Waechter, thermal and energy specialist based in Geneva. Designing heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems and performing energy analysis for 14 years. Running his own company Cyril Waechter BIM Insight for more than 7 years with a leitmotiv «Let’s not reinvent the wheel».

Advocating for open data, open standard and free and open source software (FOSS). Authoring : pyRevitMEP, BIMxBEM (research at EPFL’s CNPA laboratory), python-materialsdb (uses the open material database created by E4Tech). Contributi: IfcOpenShell/BlenderBIM Add-on (useful and promising open bim add-on for Blender), Arch User Repository (AUR). Open Source Architecture Community (OSArch) member. Recently interviewed in Conversation Constructive.

Workshop

Discover how AEC professionals started to create a software using the open bim standard Industry Foundation Class (IFC) as first class citizen to suits their own needs instead of expecting in vein software vendors to develop functionalities they needed and fix painful bug reported for more than a decade. Native IFC edition firstly created in BlenderBIM Add-on push the boundaries of what you can and should except for a BIM authoring software. From a IFC parser and geometry converter IfcOpenshell became a powerful ecosystem of tools holding BlenderBIM Add-on, planning editing and analysis, cost analysis, model auditing, structural analysis, energy model authoring and new features and related libraries coming in and around like python-materialsdb or BBIM2ARM to fulfill AEC professionals needs.

Depending on your interests we can look for example at the ifcopenshell python API, native ifc edition with BlenderBIM Add-on or how they are used in practice for energy modeling process using IfcRelSpaceBoundary elements and materials data from materialsdb.

Noël Picco received his M.S degree in Architecture from the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, with his master’s thesis in 2020 which was awarded the ETH Medal. Expanding on his academic research he co-founded the office Malheur&Fortuna, which specializes in exploring the latent architectural potentials embedded within domains such as logistics, mobility, and waste management infrastructure. In 2021, Picco joined Rapp AG in Basel, a prominent general planning company known for its extensive breadth of expertise. Within this capacity, his work predominantly revolves around fostering sustainability and driving digitalization within planning and building processes such as circular construction and the integration of data-driven tools.

Workshop

Phoenix3D is a new open source Rhino3D + Grasshopper tool to design optimum truss structures made of new and reused components. It aims to support a more circular design approach in the structural design process. Thus, Phoenix3D enables to intuitively create and explore optimum structures in terms of environmental impact and other design goals. Its underlaying concept allows for real time feedback and fast design variations. Rather than one closed design loop, this tool is tailored to synergize with other Grasshopper components to guarantee a smooth design workflow.

Noël will present concrete and real uses cases performed by Rapp AG.

Energy

PhD, architect and industrial engineer, Sergi Aguacil joined the EPFL’s Laboratory of Architecture and Sustainable Technologies in 2014. His research focuses on the challenges of integrating photovoltaics into building renovation processes to achieve long-term carbon emission targets. Following the completion of his PhD thesis in 2019, Sergi has taken over the leadership of the Building2050 group at EPFL-Fribourg as responsible for the integration of innovation in the Smart Living Lab building to ensure its environmental performance, special and technical flexibility so that the building can be used as a cutting-edge research infrastructure always at the forefront of innovation.

Workshop

The way we design our buildings, neighbourhoods and cities has evolved to incorporate more and more criteria to achieve sustainability goals. A forward-looking, multi-criteria approach, combined with digital tools – allowing a range of variants or scenarios to be tested – is one way that designers and planners are feeding into the decision-making process. The earlier these considerations are addressed and become part of the project at the earliest stages of its design, the lower the risk of drifting away from the objectives. In this workshop, we will show a series of examples of the use of the online tool DesignExplorer for decision making and sharing project data with the different actors involved. We will present two projects at the building scale (new construction and renovation) and one project at the neighbourhood scale. Within our research groups, this tool allows us, among other things, to share the results of our studies.

A practical exercise will be proposed for those who want to try it live with their own laptop, for this we will need: an internet access, MS Excel and a storage space like Google drive.

The workshop will be held in French, but we can complete it in English if necessary, so do not hesitate to come and explore the possibilities of DesignExplorer.

Mobility and Logistics

Jasso Espadaler Clapés received the B.S. degree in civil engineering from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), Barcelona, Spain in 2018 and the M.S. degree in civil engineering from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland, in 2021. After finishing his studies, he joined the Urban Transport Systems Laboratory (LUTS) at EPFL as a scientific assistant focusing mainly on the use of unmanned aerial systems to monitor traffic congestion. His research interests include traffic data analysis, environmental science, and traffic flow optimization.

Workshop

Access to high-quality traffic data is essential for traffic researchers and practitioners to develop solutions to alleviate heavy congestion and make more sustainable cities. However, traditional data collection techniques have become outdated, and they cannot adapt to the needs of smart cities. This is why unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or more commonly referred to as drones, have caught the eye of traffic engineers to collect traffic data in the recent years. Drones offer a pioneering method to collect data in the form of vehicle trajectories thanks to the latest developments in computer vision algorithms.

In this context, the team of EPFL Prof. Geroliminis performed a unique experiment using a swarm of 10 drones in 2018 in Athens, Greece, to collect nearly half a million vehicle trajectories. Particularly, the swarm of drones covered the central parts of Athens during the morning peak hour (8:00am-10:30am) each working day of the week. The relevance of this newly introduced dataset (nicknamed pNEUMA) relies on the scale of the experiment in an urban multimodal environment, which is still the first-of-its-kind, and the fact that it is part of an Open Science initiative. Researchers from all over the world are already using the dataset for their own research.

Evangelos Paschalidis is a Postdoctoral Research and Teaching Associate in the Transport and Mobility Laboratory, EPFL. He received his PhD from the Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds, UK in 2019, where he was also involved in a number of projects as Research Fellow. Evangelos’s main areas of interest include driving behaviour, safety, statistics, and discrete choice modelling. He is currently working with Prof. Michel Bierlaire on international migration. His research outputs have been published in a number of academic journals in the fields of transportation and road safety, and he has presented his work at several international conferences.

Workshop

Biogeme is an open-source Python-based software package designed for maximum likelihood estimation of parametric models, with a particular focus on discrete choice models. Biogeme supports a variety of discrete choice models, including logit, logit mixtures, nested logit, cross-nested logit, latent class, and hybrid choice models. It offers advanced features such as model diagnostics, Monte Carlo simulation, assisted specification, sampling of alternatives and more. It is widely used not only in academic transportation research, but also in fields such as health and environmental economics, as well as in industrial projects, and has a large community of users. Biogeme is developed and maintained by Prof. Michel Bierlaire, Transport and Mobility Laboratory, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland.

Urbanization

Prof.Dr. Joachim Huber, Deputy Head Dencity – Urban Development and Mobility at the Institute for Urban Development and Infrastructure, Bern University of Applied Sciences.

Prof. Dr. Huber has been conducting research at BFH since 2006 in the fields of urban design, urban development, and planning, with a special focus on post-densification, energy efficiency, and spatial visualization.

Since 2014, he has been involved with a team in the SCCER Mobility – Efficient Technologies and Systems for Mobility, which resulted in a specialization in large-scale spatialization of statistical data, which is implemented with practice partners in applied research and development.

Prof. Dr. Huber has many years of experience abroad in academic research (Bauhaus University Weimar, Ohio State University, Istituto Svizzera die Roma) and has extended this knowledge with an Executive MBA from HSG University St. Gallen.

Andreas Eigenheer, Dr. sc. nat., Focused project manager, strong in conception and with commercial flair.

Experienced in innovation and business development in industry, research, and administration, able to approach new topics without bias, to analyze and document independently, and edit and summarize expert contributions in a goal-oriented manner that is appropriate for the target group.

Adept at working in parallel on a variety of projects, giving assignments, documenting progress, and assisting students, colleagues, and supervisors in carrying out their tasks. Setting priorities in confusing situations and to get to the heart of complex issues.

Workshop

New forms of housing through strategic values development as social open innovation in an interdisciplinary MINT teaching module (PH Bern, Uni.Bern, BFH). Using CH best practice for learnings through Swiss cooperative housing projects: Kraftwerk 1, Mehr-als-Wohnen, Kalkbreite and Warmbächli, sustainable diverse forms of living are developed on the Bernese large-scale butchery Meinen as circular economy CE ReUse Space.

The innovative goal is the integration of context and participatory social stakeholder information as a black box in correlation with the white box of values in an open coached planning process, which on the one hand generates housing typology, on the other hand also enables emergence of sustainable social space on neighborhood and settlement level. Each enlargement and opening of the system-environment boundary generate diverse complexity and unforeseen. A specific role is taken by a coach/moderator/curator to value and save the unexpected in a larger context.

We emphasize on the importance of the unpredictable inflow, matched with the form shaping character of the shared values in a social open innovation discourse.

Health and environment

Séverine Vuilleumier has acquired by leading projects in fundamental and applied research a strategic sensitivity to different opinions, cultures, and approaches. Her career path, from environmental engineering to biology, genetics, and health, has given her a deep understanding of major health, societal and environmental challenges. She has been a research associate at EPFL and at the University Hospital of Lausanne (CHUV) and a group leader at the University of Lausanne. She is currently a Professor at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Western Switzerland (HES-SO), La Source, where she is developing research and education in environmental health and sustainability.

Workshop

During this workshop, we will investigate how health has a critical role in sustainability and how individual empowerment and shared (open) information are expected to lead a major shift on health outcomes associated major achievements for our environment. Indeed, we are currently facing triple planetary crisis which are climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss. In this three fields health is a key driver toward sustainability, let’s talk about it.

Apéro | 16h00-17h00