>>venture>> 2014: And the winners are…

The Audimax at ETH Zurich was crowded yesterday when the winners of >>venture 2014>> were announced. In addition to the award ceremony Novartis CEO Joe Jimenez held a keynote speech. An event report will follow on startupticker.ch.

The top ten start-ups are:

Winner
L.E.S.S. SA ("Light Efficient SystemS",) (Electronics / Hardware, EPFL)
 L.E.S.S. provides a serious alternative to today's LEDs by providing their customers with ultrathin, -bright, and -uniform lighting systems. These key assets, offered by their unique fiber technology, allowed L.E.S.S. to successfully enter the industrial vision and display backlighting markets.

Runner-up
SamanTree Technologies AG (Medical Technology, EPFL)
Saman Tree Technologies is a digital microscopy company with the mission to enable digital in vivo histology for complete surgical tumor removal. Early-stage cancer diagnosis and subsequent complete surgical resection yield the highest chances for complete cure. Enabling efficient point-of-care digital pathology, SamanTree's surgical microscopes will substitute the "frozen section analysis". Video: http://youtu.be/-GGxbZjBLZQ.

Top3
Gimball (Electronics / Hardware, EPFL)
Flyability is developing Gimball, a game-changing flying robot, which can be flown indoors and in complex environments: it can stay stable after collisions with obstacles and can thus go where other robots can't. Furthermore, it is safe to fly close to humans. Video: http://youtu.be/JreXXn7mSoY.

Top4
Polyneuron Pharmaceuticals (Pharma / Biotechnology, University of Basel)
Polyneuron Pharmaceuticals is an early-stage biotech start-up developing a novel drug class for the treatment of autoimmune disorders. Their technology platform "Antibody-catch" and the derived compounds pave the way for a paradigm shift in treatment. The first drug candidate was developed to treat an autoimmune nerve disorder similar to multiple sclerosis. Video: http://youtu.be/cFUd4UzZVIg.

Top5
rqmicro (Agriculture / Food, ETHZ)
rqmicro provides a novel system for the rapid detection of water- and foodborne pathogens. The main USPs are superior sensitivity and a time to result of under one hour. Compared to the classic cultivation-dependent methods that require days for a result, rqmicro's approach yields results in a significantly shorter time with higher accuracy and lower detection limits.
Video:http://youtu.be/GZTxz8-0pNM.

Top6 – 10 in alphabetical order: Bright Sensors (Energy / Cleantech, EPFL), Lunaphore (Medical Technology, EPFL), Qloudlab (Medical Technology / ICT, EPFL), SwissLeg (Medical Technology), Versantis (Pharma / Biotech, EPFL).