Three ETH Pioneer Fellows win the 3Pi Pitch competition

Organised by the ETH Pioneer Fellowship and ETH Entrepreneurship Teams, the 3Pi competition (Pioneer Pi (3.14) minutes Pitch) offers 10 ETH Pioneer Fellows the opportunity to present their projects to the audience. More than 170 visitors, including investors, ETH spin-offs, fellow students, and other key players in the Swiss entrepreneurial environment, attended the event, culminating in awarding the best pitches. The winners received a ticket to the Swiss Innovation Forum.

Meet the winners

The first place went to Simona Fehlmann and Nicole Kleger, co-founders of Sallea, a project focusing on developing 3d scaffolds by combining 3D printing with salt leaching. This approach allows designing complex objects from materials that cannot be printed directly, such as Magnesium. Such complex, defined porous objects are highly desired, especially where tissue ingrowth is required – users designing 3D cell scaffolds or bone augmentation dental implants will benefit from this technology. Beyond the medical field, Sallea’s solution can also be used to manufacture soluble cores for the space and aerospace industry. The project has been in the ETH Pioneers for two months.

Alexandre Anthis, the founder of medtech startup AnastoSeal, won the second prize after impressing the jury with his pitching style and innovative solution. His project focuses on developing a universal suture and staple support patch that assists surgeons and even non-specialised medical personnel to instantly and unambiguously assess inner body surgical reconnections during the rehabilitation period of patients. Thanks to the patch, doctors can easily monitor patients that undergo abdominal surgeries to prevent leakages, which occur in approximately 10 percent of the patients. Not only did Alexandre impress the jury, he also scored the highest points in the audience voting.

The third prize went to Lukas Böcker and Severin Eder, founders of Authentic Seafood. The founding duo wants to reduce the strain on oceans due to overfishing. Over the last decades, the proliferation of capture and culture fishery practices has resulted in 34% of global fish stock being overfished and the destruction of mangroves at rates 3 to 5 times higher than the global deforestation rate. These circumstances, paired with a global rise in demand for seafood, present an enormous incentive for us to produce sustainable seafood analogues.

Authentic SeaFood aims to provide vegan seafood that matches or exceeds its animal counterpart in terms of structure and nutritional quality. The team combines sustainable and plant-based raw materials to design a nutritionally balanced food composition. With an innovative food printing process, it will provide authentic seafood analogues that captivate with the snap and succulence of seafood. The jury was convinced by the startup’s approach to tackling the fishery problem and the timeliness of its solution.

(RAN)