Startups Developing Sensor Socks, Precision Diagnostics for Cancer Treatment, Perovskite Solar Cells and an AI-based Platform to Mentor Python Code Writing Each win CHF 10,000
23.09.2020
Capskin, Parithera, Peroprint & Upero, and Python Upskilling win Venture Kick's first stage of financial and entrepreneurial support. Their projects help footwear brands to collect better data, cancer centers be more efficient in prolonging their patient's lives, industrials considerably reduce the production cost of photovoltaic solar cells, and coders to learn at their own pace and level while being guided to understand Python in a holistic way.
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 Capskin: CEO Oliver Glauser, CTO Lukas Sommerhalder and CSO Shihao Wu
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 and Dr. Weida Chen (CTO.jpg) Parithera: Dr. Antoine Herzog (CEO) and Dr. Weida Chen (CTO)
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, Dr. David Martineau (CTO), Dr. Toby Meyer (co-founder, CEO Solaronix.jpg) Peroprint and Upero: Anand Verma (co-founder, CEO), Dr. David Martineau (CTO), Dr. Toby Meyer (co-founder, CEO Solaronix)
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 Python Upskilling: Benjamin Russel, Antonio Fortin and, Thomas Boys
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Capskin: Sensor socks for better footwear
Shoes have an enormous impact on our health, comfort and performance in work, leisure and sports. Creating and adapting optimal footwear is therefore crucial. Countless professionals work on this complex task and use the latest technology. However, no existing system is able to look inside shoes to measure crucial foot-shoe interaction. To bring footwear to the next level, a new measurement tool is needed. CEO Oliver Glauser from ETH Zurich, CSO Shihao Wu from the University of Bern, and CTO Lukas Sommerhalder from ETH created the Capskin socks as the perfect tool to look inside shoes. With modern data science, they drastically improve the understanding about what makes good shoes. Their sensorized socks feel just like normal socks: thin, soft and stretchable. They are a mobile, unobtrusive all-in-one solution for capturing invaluable data for the footwear development, fitting and adaptation process. Due to occlusion, optical solutions can only capture how the shoes (instead of the feet) move and deform.
And sensorized insoles get internal pressure data only from below but not from all around the foot. In contrast, the Capskin solution directly captures the full foot-shoe interaction, more specifically, the foot deformation, including ankle movement, as well as the full pressure distribution. With this complete data, footwear professionals will be able to bring shoes to the next level.
They will use Venture Kick funds to develop a proof of concept sock, find a footwear brand as collaboration partner and raise seed funding. www.capskin.com
Shoes have an enormous impact on our health, comfort and performance in work, leisure and sports. Creating and adapting optimal footwear is therefore crucial. Countless professionals work on this complex task and use the latest technology. However, no existing system is able to look inside shoes to measure crucial foot-shoe interaction. To bring footwear to the next level, a new measurement tool is needed. CEO Oliver Glauser from ETH Zurich, CSO Shihao Wu from the University of Bern, and CTO Lukas Sommerhalder from ETH created the Capskin socks as the perfect tool to look inside shoes. With modern data science, they drastically improve the understanding about what makes good shoes. Their sensorized socks feel just like normal socks: thin, soft and stretchable. They are a mobile, unobtrusive all-in-one solution for capturing invaluable data for the footwear development, fitting and adaptation process. Due to occlusion, optical solutions can only capture how the shoes (instead of the feet) move and deform.
And sensorized insoles get internal pressure data only from below but not from all around the foot. In contrast, the Capskin solution directly captures the full foot-shoe interaction, more specifically, the foot deformation, including ankle movement, as well as the full pressure distribution. With this complete data, footwear professionals will be able to bring shoes to the next level.
They will use Venture Kick funds to develop a proof of concept sock, find a footwear brand as collaboration partner and raise seed funding. www.capskin.com
Parithera: Introducing clinical utility of circulating tumor cells liquid biopsy
Precision medicine is revolutionising cancer care. To unlock its full potential, it requires precision diagnostic. Parithera, led by Dr. Antoine Herzog (CEO) and Dr. Weida Chen (CTO), both originally from ETH Zurich and now located at EPFL, provides a minimally invasive, inexpensive and highly actionable cancer diagnosis platform to guide treatment decisions of clinicians. With a new generation of magnetic nanoparticles in conjunction with an automated device, Parithera is able to isolate circulating tumor cells (CTCs) at higher numbers and purities than current CTC liquid biopsy solutions. Parithera aims at being the first company to introduce clinical utility of CTC liquid biopsy by conforming to clinical needs (automation, high sample throughput and integration into existing clinical workflows).
They plan to use Venture Kick fund to establish their online presence and invest in their proof-of-concept device. www.parithera.com
Peroprint and Upero: Digitally printed perovskite solar cells for the speciality photovoltaic market
They plan to use Venture Kick fund to establish their online presence and invest in their proof-of-concept device. www.parithera.com
Peroprint and Upero: Digitally printed perovskite solar cells for the speciality photovoltaic market
The present photovoltaic market is dominated by silicon solar cells. These are fabricated using energy-intensive and resource-hungry processes. Also, silicon wafers are fabricated in fixed shapes and sizes, considerably reducing design flexibility. Anand Verma (co-founder, CEO), Dr. David Martineau (CTO), Dr. Toby Meyer (co-founder, CEO Solaronix), and Andreas Meyer (CTO Lumartix) have developed a digital printing technology to fabricate efficient and stable perovskite solar cells with custom design capability. The fabrication techniques they developed are highly efficient and flexible, which will reduce the production cost considerably, even for customized items. With this breakthrough, the team can cater to the diverse needs of Internet of Things, electronic goods, sensors, and ultimately designer solar tiles industries. They are already working with a couple of industrial clients where customized solar cells have been successfully tested. These collaborations will generate first revenues for the startup, and will establish the company among the first to commercialize perovskite solar cell technology in real-world electronic devices (lab to product).
The Venture Kick Funds will be used to acquire research projects with prototyping for clients, promotions and IP. This will also help in getting new funds from agencies like the EU, and further develop the technology for the current customers.
Python Upskilling: AI mentoring in writing quality Python code
For the past three years Python has topped the ranking of the most in-demand coding language. It is still rapidly growing. With no surprise, as two million individuals learned Python in 2018, there is a strong and growing demand for upskilling in Python. To meet this demand, founder Benjamin Russell, Ph.D. CS at York, Senior RA at Princeton (app. math) and data science consultant for Unilever, Nestle, Dr. Antonio Fortin, head of content. and Oxford Researcher, Thomas Boys, head sales & marketing and co-founder, MSc Mathematics at EPFL, and two talented developers from the EPFL data science master program, created Python Upskilling, a SaaS-based platform offering near human-level AI mentoring in writing quality Python code. Inspired by how a mentor guides a learner, an AI-driven smartly adapts to a user’s needs to offer essential live feedback and mentoring which, only humans have been able to provide until now.
The Venture Kick Funds will be used to pay salaries and free-lancers to create workbooks and video content, as well as for Hosting and other IT costs.
The Venture Kick Funds will be used to pay salaries and free-lancers to create workbooks and video content, as well as for Hosting and other IT costs.