CHF 450’000 for Foodtech, cleantech and Biotech projects

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19.07.2019
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Three new projects founded by students from the Universities of applied Bern, Luzern and Western Switzerland (HES-SO/Valais) will each receive CHF 150’000 as part of the First Ventures program. The founders will now embark on their startup journey to develop solutions in the fields of Foodtech, cleantech and biotech.

Gebert Rüf Foundation launched the First Ventures program in 2018 to support promising start-up projects developed by bachelor and master students from Universities of Applied Sciences. Each project obtains CHF 150’000 to advance to the next stage.

In the recent selection round, three founding teams will benefit from the program. They include:

Michael Alistair Whyte (BFH) with the project Fermeat
Soybean okara is a nutritionally valuable material today largely treated as food waste. The team has developed an innovative food transformation platform (FTP) to convert okara into a vegan, textured, flavoursome meat-analogue with promising versatility. The core of the technological toolbox lies in the method of oxara preparation and subsequent solid substrate fermentation. Overall this translates into a vegan, sustainable and healthy material with meat-like properties, which meets a tremendously growing market worldwide. Proof of concept has been demonstrated in the form of (i) a vegan burger patty, (ii) chunks that can be added to soups and sauces, and (iii) “chicken”-like slices. The project goal is to improve, standardize, upscale and stabilize the processes involved, capturing the understanding and thereby pushing the entire concept into the position of being ready to manufacture at small-scale enterprise-level whilst simultaneously building first-business and customer relationships.

Fabian Jacobs (HSLU) with the project zevvy
Owners of smaller properties with up to ten rented apartments often use Excel to manage their utility billings. Other software that allows the user to create utility bills is focused and developed for large projects and thus is too complex and expensive for smaller projects. With the cloud solution zevvy,  the team gives smaller projects with fewer resources the possibility to create easy and quickly shared solar energy billing. With just a few clicks a bill can be generated. Zevvy is focused on a simple user interface that makes it easy to manage projects. Furthermore, zevvy is to be extended to integrate power counters directly to avoid manual input and to create more benefits for the users. The platform has been online since March 2019 and has already attracted several hundred users.

Cindy Weber (HES-SO Valais/Wallis) with the project LifeCellAgglutination
Drug development is strongly accompanied by diagnostic tests to identify the disease and to monitor the effectiveness of therapy. More than 50% of treatment decisions are based on the results of diagnostic procedures. The number of blood cells, divided into their various specific subgroups, in the body can provide important information about the current state of health. For example, elevated T cell counts may correspond to tuberculosis infectious disease. The method used today in centralized laboratories and hospitals for the quantification of blood cells, so-called flow cytometry, requires highly qualified personnel, high acquisition costs, maintenance and support.

LifeCellAgglutination (LCA) project focuses on a diagnostic test that offers, unlike the usual method, a user-friendly, economical, fast, patient-friendly and equally effective alternative. This test will give medical personnel and decentralized clinical facilities in developed and developing countries the opportunity to identify diseases more approachable, faster and easier.  The test allows a quantitative determination of blood cell subgroups with a single drop of blood and the result in less than 10 minutes. The test is based on an antigen-antibody reaction between specific beads and the target cells. Thanks to the versatility of the technique, it will be possible to create a platform to target different diseases. The principle of the specific quantification of target cells, more precisely T cells, with only one drop of blood has already been proven. In future tests, the LCA system will be further developed, designed and evaluated in order to produce a functional prototype.

 (SK/RAN)

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