ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

Hail and storm damages represent the most often occurring cases for building insurance companies. Currently, the damage is estimated by an insurance expert, visiting the damaged building and drafting a report. Researchers at the Computer Vision Lab at ETH Zurich joined forces with business and sales people, spinning out the company Casalva, to strongly reduce such costs via automated image analysis. The idea is that the insurers’ clients upload photos of the damages, which will then be analyzed automatically by a computer. This involves computer vision technologies – grounded in the ERC project VarCity – to recognize the damaged building structures and to analyze the corresponding textures as to assess the extent of the damage and the estimated costs for its repair. Cutting costs is not the only consideration, as the fast assessment of damages improves customer satisfaction and prevents the occurrence of additional damages because of a delayed repair (like water leaking before repair). Such follow-on damages are estimated to be 20% of overall costs on average and are therefore far from negligible. Guaranteeing a short term response currently is a major issue, as a single storm may affect thousands of buildings. Processing times tend to stretch out due to the peak in cases following such extreme weather events. Over half of hail storm damage cases concern facade structures. The VarCity project produced methods to automatically parse facades into such structures, and to select the best way to describe their textures. These will be refined to optimally deal with the application area. The remaining technical developments and risk mitigations will be funded through other means (a Swiss project that has already been submitted), while this Proof-of-Concept project will focus on equally important aspects like market analysis, development of a corporate identity and graphical house style for the Casalva spin-off, that has been created but should now get market introduction.

143 750 €

Start date: 2017-09-01, End date: 2018-08-31

Melanoma is one of the fastest growing cancers worldwide, especially in regions with a high number of Caucasians such as Europe. Currently, 100,000 diagnoses and 5,000 deaths from melanoma are registered in Europe every year. This increase in melanoma incidence is a serious health problem and poses an economic as well as societal concern. The survival in patients with malignant melanoma is very poor with a five year survival rate of about 10%. Indeed, the current clinical therapies against malignant and metastatic melanoma have a relatively low efficacy and are associated with significant adverse events. Therefore there is an urgent need for development of novel drugs that can cure or prolong the survival of these patients. Molecular targeted therapy by using a drug that reduces the growth and spread of cancer cells via inhibition of a specific protein is a foundation stone of precision medicine and treatment. We have identified a lead molecule that inhibits proliferation and metastasis of human malignant melanoma cells. The present proof-of-concept proposal aims at lead optimization, preclinical verification, IPR positioning, market assessment, and other commercial activities including go to market strategy and dialogue with potential collaborators. This will make a unique medical and commercial opportunity to develop a highly specific drug against a disease in urgent need of new treatment options.

150 000 €

Start date: 2015-11-01, End date: 2017-04-30

"Computational chemistry is playing an increasingly important role for research in the pharmaceutical industry, oils & plastic, and materials development. Simulation and high-throughput screening can be orders of magnitude cheaper than experiments in the early stages of drug design. The ERC project preceding this application has developed several new techniques that make it orders-of-magnitude more efficient to calculate free energies from simulations rather than approximate docking screening. We have already had great academic success, but the requirement of large computer clusters or access to the Folding@Home network makes it difficult to implement in industry. To address this, we have developed a new framework for peer-to-peer distributed computing combined with Markov state models (called “Copernicus”) to be presented at Supercomputing’11. Copernicus completely removes the need to deal with single simulations, and allows users to specify workflows - directly on their laptop - in terms of free energy calculations or sampling of complex processes such as protein folding. Workflows are transparently uploaded to a server and split into distributed calculation workunits (e.g. in a company), computer clusters, but also cloud computing to deal with peaks in usage. The results are again transparently moved to the user’s machine. This provides a clear competitive advantage in terms of efficiency, and it removes all investment and support costs related to high-performance computing. This is of course not limited to molecular simulation, and in addition to the pharmaceutical track we want to investigate usage in the financial industry. We have just submitted a patent application for the dynamic data flow network that makes the peer-to-peer usage possible, but we would need a programmer to turn the research-level code into a working proof-of-concept for high-throughput screening applications in the pharmaceutical industry and another person to work on business development."

122 600 €

Start date: 2012-08-01, End date: 2013-07-31

BIONOTE– A CROWDSCIENCE PLATFORM FOR IDENTIFYING AND LEARNING ABOUT ALL SPECIES ON EARTH MAJOR GOAL: To inspire and empower people to identify, document, explore and protect the world’s biodiversity. BioNote will advance Europe’s commitment to monitor and protect biodiversity, by greatly facilitating access to species identifications worldwide. It will simultaneously increase information on where species occur for research, education, citizens, government and industry. We share this planet with 7 million other species, many of which provide key services and goods for humans. But, the world's biodiversity is threatened today by urbanization and climate change. To protect the world's valuable biodiversity, citizen scientists need a way to easily identify species with their smartphones, and researchers need large datasets of species occurrences to build models. BioNote provides a platform the give both groups the tools they need. We will create the go-to software and data platform for species identification, collaboration and big data analysis, with our smartphone app and data portal. BioNote will provide an increase in knowledge about biodiversity; a massive input of new species observation records; facilitate access to biodiversity data needed for decisions on land use; provide ~20 jobs to university-educated individuals in the EU, and ~100 in tropical regions in the next 4 years; and drastically lower the cost of biodiversity research. BioNote has so far received initial funding from three different organizations who support and believe in BioNote's future, and formed an outstanding core team of scientists and experienced business people.

149 427 €

Start date: 2016-08-01, End date: 2017-07-31

In the fight against cancer, it is well recognized that tumors are highly heterogeneous and they might differ considerably not only between tumors types but also among tumors of the same type or even for the same tumor during progression. As a result, the efficacy of standard cancer chemotherapies varies, and while some patients respond to a particular treatment, other patients do not gain any benefit and in many cases, the condition of the patient deteriorates due to adverse effects. Consequently, crucial in cancer therapy is the prediction of a patient’s response to treatment. Failure of standard therapies has led to the introduction of a new era of personalized, patient-specific treatments, which are based on the identification of biomarkers that characterize the state of a particular tumor. Many solid tumors (e.g., breast cancers and sarcomas) stiffen as they grow in a host’s normal tissue. Stiffening is caused by an increase in the structural components of the tumor. As tumor tissue becomes stiffer, mechanical forces are generated within the tumor, that cause the compression of intratumoral blood vessels, resulting in compromised vessel functionality, which leads to poor drug delivery and therapeutic outcomes. Recently, it has been demonstrated that “stress-alleviation” strategy, which uses anti-fibrotic agents to promote tumor softening, improves uniform delivery of drugs and enhances therapy. Here, we propose the use of state-of-the-art Atomic Force Microscopy-AFM techniques for the development of a NanoMechanical biomarker, which will quantify the mechanical FingerPrints of Cancer. This biomarker will aim to: (i)predict the patient’s response to treatment with chemotherapy and (ii)monitor treatment outcomes, in the case of strategies that target tumor mechanical properties (e.g., stress-alleviation therapy). Furthermore, we propose to develop an AFM-based software product to be used as a commercial tool for the measurement of the NanoMechanical biomarker.

150 000 €

Start date: 2019-05-01, End date: 2020-10-31

Materials with excellent diffusion barrier properties are highly relevant for packaging applications (food, pharmaceutics), sealing (car tires), protective encapsulation (microelectronics, photovoltaics, displays), and anticorrosive coatings (automotive). In all these fields of application, there is a strong technological demand for more effective, less costly, and environmentally benign solutions, which constitutes a significant business opportunity. The proposed project aims to develop novel barrier layers and anticorrosive coatings based on functionalized carbon nanosheets that are prepared from reactive, carbon-rich molecular precursors with chemical functional groups that provide surface-specific binding and adhesion. These materials combine the excellent barrier and anticorrosive properties of atomically dense carbon or inorganic thin film coatings with the tailored surface properties of monolayer coatings. Moreover, their preparation will be compatible with scalable and inexpensive solution-phase processing methods such as painting, spraying, or printing, followed by UV curing. The goal of the proposed project is to provide technology demonstrators for a diffusion barrier layer aimed at packaging applications, as well as for a wear-resistant, anti-corrosive coating on a metal surface.

149 500 €

Start date: 2016-02-01, End date: 2017-01-31

Having developed a liquid scanning probe - microfluidic probe (MFP) - for creating spatially-defined microscale biochemical environments and microscale molecular assays within the ERC-BioProbe project, in this proof-of-concept project, - CellProbe - we seek to leverage this technology toward realization of a commercially viable single-cell analysis platform

150 000 €

Start date: 2019-04-01, End date: 2020-09-30

"Our research in attosecond science supported by the ERC advanced grant ALMA “Attosecond Control of Light and Matter” has led us to develop a simple technique to fully characterize and control ultrashort laser electric fields. The characterization and subsequent control can be divided into two parts: - Measurement of the spectral phase of short light pulses by measuring second harmonic generation as a function of dispersion introduced by e.g. a pair of glass wedges (""d-scan"" technique). From the “dispersion scans”, the spectral phase of the pulse can be retrieved and then adjusted to perform compression of the laser pulses. - Ultrafast measurement of the Carrier Envelope Phase offset of amplified laser pulses (""Ultrafast CEP"" technique). It is based upon interferometry, where the second harmonic of the red edge of an octave-spanning spectrum is spectrally interfered with the blue edge. In our implementation, the detector is a linear photodiode array and Field-Programmable Gate Array based- electronics enables us to determine the CEP at a rate of up to 100 kHz. The d-scan technique was invented in Lund in 2011 as a collaborative project between the University of Porto and Lund University. An international patent application was filed on the 11th of October 2011 and published on the 18th of April 2013. The “Ultrafast-CEP” technique was invented in Lund in 2010 and nicely complements the “d-scan” technique. Our goal is to build a device for characterization and control of femtosecond pulses by combining both techniques and to commercialize it. Our characterization device will be useful for the ultrafast laser community. This includes university laboratories and research institutes in physics, chemistry, biology and medicine as well as biomedical and materials science industry."

149 954 €

Start date: 2014-05-01, End date: 2015-04-30

In our ERC grant GEnetic NEtworks as a tool for anti-CAncer Drug Development we used siRNA screening and genetic networks to identify dCTPase being involved in DNA repair and replication. Further studies revealed that dCTPase plays a role in the degradation of nucleoside analogues used in cancer treatment. We then used an RNAi approach to validate dCTPase as a target to improve nucleoside analogue therapy. The dCTPase protein was purified and we set up an enzymatic high-throughput assay to screen >65,000 compounds, which generated hits that inhibit dCTPase (IC50~1-10μM). Using in house medicinal chemistry we developed TH1217, a low nM potent and selective dCTPase inhibitor with favourable pharmacokinetic properties. TH1217 synergistically induces apoptosis and cell death in combination with cytidine analogue treatment in cancer cells in vitro and in vivo, but shows no increased toxicity in nontransformed dividing cells. Here, we want to explore the commercial potential of the dCTPase inhibitors identified in the ERC grant. In this programme, we will, with the company Oxcia AB, establish the viability of the business programme using technical analysis, develop a business strategy and direction, specifically secure IP, perform market analysis, develop a business plan, manage preclinical development and prepare for clinical trials in collaboration with clinicians and regulatory bodies, IMPD application to Medical Products Agency and identify and discuss with potential commercialization partners and funding agencies to support cost of clinical trials. We have a non-profit foundation that owns our IP rights in an effort to secure long term support for translational science aimed at bringing new therapies to patients. In our planned business model, we start a new company that holds an exclusive license to the IP from the foundation which is used to develop the overall business programme and attract investments.

150 000 €

Start date: 2016-01-01, End date: 2017-06-30

"Development of advanced therapeutics based on non-small molecule drugs for brain diseases is an area of intense research. Experimental work using viral vector-mediated in vivo gene therapy showed great potential as a competitive therapeutic strategy for clinical use in neurodegenerative diseases. AAV vectors are now in early clinical trials stage for treatment of Parkinson’s disease. Although it is deemed very important to have controlled expression in the brain, none of the currently tested strategies have implemented an approach that can be exogenously controlled. Regulation of the therapeutic intervention is important not only for safety reasons but has important implications for tuning the delivery of the therapeutic molecule to the individual needs of the patients, i.e., personalizing their treatment. The core of this proof-of-concept application is to develop a novel gene regulation system as a product for clinical use in patients with Parkinson’s disease. The applicant has assembled a strong team of experts that can take this exciting idea that has spun out of his ERC-funded research to an early business strategy and bridge to commercialization. The work will include filing of new IP, a proactive use of novelty search, formation of a dedicated start-up company for handling the new IPR as well as in-licensing of related IP, and sketching a path towards commercialization via obtaining regulatory authorization, investigation of strategies for large-scale production of the product."

150 000 €

Start date: 2012-11-01, End date: 2013-10-31

"Within the past three years as part of the ERC funding, we have performed extensive research to identify novel factors that might influence adipogenesis and thus control development of obesity and associated metabolic disorders. One of the factors we identified in a translational approach, was the transcription factor retinoic acid orphan receptor gamma (RORγ) which regulates fat cell formation in mice and humans. RORγ is considered as an orphan nuclear receptor as only weak natural ligands that antagonize receptor function have been identified so far. We were able to identify a high affinity natural occurring ligand (Ba1) which is a bile acid isoform and which potently represses the activity of RORγ. Genetic ablation of RORγ expression can rescue obesity associated development of type 2 diabetes, similarly in mice Ba1 supplementation of the diet, prevents the development of diet induced type 2 diabetes. Thus, Ba1 is a ligand for RORγ that has the potential to serve as a therapeutic agent for the treatment of obesity associated insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. With this application we would add value to the current state of the project in different aspects. We plan to perform a toxicological assessment of Ba1 which will show if it can enter further development without problems. In parallel a set of well-defined Ba1 analogs will be synthesized with the aim to widen our IP position. Furthermore, we plan a detailed evaluation of the in vitro and in vivo efficacy of the newly synthesized Ba1 analogues. We anticipate that it will be possible to implement this naturally occurring bile acid in the context of two separate therapies. Ba1 can be envisioned to be employed as a nutraceutical in common foods. Also, Ba1 could find a niche in the ever-expanding over-the-counter market. Ba1 or modified derivatives may also be useful as stand-alone medication, to treat metabolic co-morbidities such as type 2 diabetes associated with obesity."

145 697 €

Start date: 2012-04-01, End date: 2013-03-31

The emergence of networked cyber-physical systems, in which sensor/actuator networks are integrated with software algorithms, facilitates the development of advanced Building Management Systems (BMS) aimed at enhancing energy efficiency in buildings, which accounts for 40% of the energy consumption in the EU. When a fault arises in some of the components, or an unexpected event occurs in the building, this may lead to a serious degradation in performance or, even worse, to situations that would endanger people’s lives. Studies estimate that 20% of the energy consumed in commercial buildings for heating, ventilation, air conditioning, lighting and water heating can be attributed to various faults. Therefore, there is a market need for an intelligent building automation diagnostic system which integrates with existing BMS to facilitate continuous and effective monitoring of the buildings. The objective of the proposed proof of concept is to develop the Domognostics platform, a novel solution for monitoring building automation systems, detecting and diagnosing any component faults and/or unexpected events, and providing remedial reconfiguration actions, aiming at improving operational efficiency. Domognostics will interoperate with existing BMS to extend their capabilities, and will integrate directly with heterogeneous sensor types, such as IoT devices, mobile sensors, wearables, etc., to increase redundancy of the available information and measurements. The Domognostics platform will utilise intelligent fault diagnosis algorithms with machine learning capabilities to boost its capacity to learn from experience, and semantically enhanced reasoning to facilitate the flexibility of adding new sensors or replacing faulty components, as needed. The theoretical foundations of these techniques were developed as part of the ERC Advanced Grant project Fault-Adaptive, which started in April 2012, and is currently being carried out at the University of Cyprus.

150 000 €

Start date: 2017-05-01, End date: 2018-10-31

Here we present an original design of a compact and portable set-up able to generate very broadband (70-100 nm at 300 nm) and powerful (>1uJ/pulse) ultrashort deep-UV pulses. Compared with other schemes, it guarantees an aberration-free propagation, an easy installation and minimal dispersion. The present project aims to bring the current prototype to the level of a commercial device. The conceived design will allow to manufacture a compact, portable and cost effective device, which will be user-friendly and with almost no required maintenance. There is no such a source commercially available and the schemes proposed in scientific literature require an advanced level of competence in optics and laser physics, are not cost effective and unsuitable for industrial applications. There is thus a need of sources for ultrafast broadband radiation in the deep-UV to advance and enable new ultrafast science and extend into this spectral range the technological application of ultrafast laser sources. The implementation of the proposed device will definitively fill this gap.

140 625 €

Start date: 2018-01-01, End date: 2019-06-30

Renewable energies such as solar and wind are intermittent and require efficient storage methods. One of the most promising methods for renewable energy storage is water splitting, which converts these energies into hydrogen fuel. Solar or wind-driven water splitting can be done using electrolyzers, and alkaline electrolyzers are potentially scalable because they do not use precious metal catalysts. However, current alkaline electrolyzers employ catalysts that have low efficiencies and are prone to corrosion. This project aims to apply several novel classes of water splitting catalysts developed in our ERC Starting Grant project in alkaline electrolyzers. The catalysts are inexpensive and have higher energy efficiencies than those employed in commercial alkaline electrolyzers. They are potentially more stable as well. The goal of the project is to provide technology demonstrators for the use of these catalysts in alkaline electrolyzers, which is expected to result in higher efficiencies and stability at a similar cost.

149 959 €

Start date: 2017-05-01, End date: 2018-10-31

This project aims at turning the novel approach to automated delineation of complex curvilinear structures we have developed under ERC funding into industrial-grade software that can be commercialized. Our primary goal will therefore be to transform our research software into user-friendly plugins with well-defined APIs that can be bundled with widely used commercial software platforms. In the neuroscience and biomedical areas, we have identified three such platforms and will explore potential licensing agreements with the companies selling them. In the field of aerial cartography, we have close links to an EPFL spin-off company that could help us break into this very different market. We will also investigate the feasibility of launching a new startup company to carry out any further development that might be required. To this end, we will conduct a market study to assess the size of the market and develop a business plan.

149 648 €

Start date: 2018-01-01, End date: 2019-06-30

It is unquestioned that early detection of cancer is a major factor contributing to therapy outcome. Unfortunately, only few tumour markers have been identified for early stage cancers to date, and the reliable detection of tumours before the manifestation of morphological changes still remains an unresolved problem in routine clinical diagnosis. A recent study came to the conclusion that shedding rates of currently available cancer biomarkers are a factor of 10-4 below the necessary sensitivity to reliably detect cancers during their first decade. In other studies, the reliability of currently existing biomarkers such as the PSA-marker for prostate cancer is questioned. The development of alternative early-stage tumour markers, in particular also for epithelial cancers, is therefore urgently necessary. FLOWERFIELDS is aimed to provide means and methods to detect such cancer cells before an aggressive tumour is formed. To that end, we plan to exploit the extracellular molecular code called “The Flower Code” (Fwe) that is expressed in very early stage cancer or precancerous cells. Fwe may be integrated into routine immuno- or PCR-assays for the detection of a variety of epithelial cancers. Applications may include early-stage diagnosis but also the evaluation of therapy outcome. The current project has two aims: (i) to develop improved ligands for ELISA diagnostic tests for Flower gene expression, (ii) to validate the concept clinically on human samples in both immuno- and PCR-based assays. The clinical validation of a biomarker candidate is a key success factor for being able to feed it into development stage of a commercial partner.

138 030 €

Start date: 2013-02-01, End date: 2014-01-31

"This proof of concept (PoC) project seeks to explore the possibility of commercializing an optical imaging instrument with the unique ability of permitting a single detector to acquire and store several images simultaneously. This new concept, which is named Frequency Recognition Algorithm for Multiple Exposures (FRAME), employs an ""image-coding"" strategy, where different exposures are given a unique structural “code”. Thanks to this novel coding approach, the camera sensor may be exposed to light several times before readout is necessary – a completely new feature within the field of optical imaging. The ability for a single detector to acquire a number of images simultaneously opens up for a variety of new measurement schemes such as: 1) Ultra-high-speed videography 2) Instantaneous three-dimensional imaging 3) Simultaneous multispectral imaging. The main goal of the ERC Starting Grant funded project “Spray-Imaging” is to develop and apply new optical imaging approaches for the detailed characterization of atomizing spray systems. The need for both ultra-high-speed and three-dimensional (3D) imaging are then of importance especially for the study highly transient two-phase flow phenomena. This PoC will focus both on the development of both a prototype instrument and a control software. Our business idea is to produce an optical instrument – an “add-on” device – that will permit the user to incorporate the FRAME imaging concept. This approach will allow users to seamlessly upgrade any given optical arrangement (e.g. for any given illumination source and detector) with the FRAME functionality."

150 000 €

Start date: 2016-06-01, End date: 2017-05-31

Our idea is to enable the next generation of mobile network infrastructure for high speed data communication through the use of a new technology platform called gap waveguides. The demand for mobile data is growing rapidly and operators see their costs for mobile infrastructure rising. To meet the demand, and at the same time manage costs, the industry is looking at an increased adoption of smaller, more cost-efficient mobile base stations (small cells) closer to the end-user. These are expected to be connected wirelessly through high bandwidth point-to-point (PTP) solutions operating at 60 GHz and above. To be used at scale, these PTP solutions must fit into the city landscape, be cost-efficient, and easy to install. However, current radio frequency (RF) technology at 60 GHz leads to bulky and expensive products with poor performance as losses increase dramatically with frequency. Gap waveguides is a newly invented technology platform for constructing microwave circuits, which has been shown to have inherently low losses. Our concept is to apply the gap waveguide technology to RF front-ends in PTP solutions. The objective with the proof-of-concept study is to understand the market need for an integrated 60 GHz RF front-end in more detail, and evaluate potential mass production methods to verify the concept’s commercial viability. The study will be performed in four phases: (1) A pre-study capturing the current research status and detailing the project plan; (2) A market verification including market, customer competitive analyses; (3) A mass production method evaluation to identify and evaluate potential methods for machining and assembly of gap waveguide based components; and (4) A definition of the way forward summarizing key findings, conclusions, drafting of plans for market entry and production development. A team consisting of the Principle investigator, a project manager, a business analyst and an external technology expert will perform the study.

149 825 €

Start date: 2016-02-01, End date: 2017-07-31

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most aggressive form of brain cancer with marginal life expectancy even with the most aggressive available therapy. We have identified a previously unanticipated vulnerability of GSCs which when targeted, leads to a rapid and complete cell death of all tumor cells isolated from nine different patients diagnosed with GBM. The cellular mechanism has been identified and involves an increased vulnerability of GSCs to massive vacuolization which can be induced by a small molecule, termed Vacquinol-1. The vacuolization results from an induction of massive macropinocytosis leading to cytoplasmic membrane rupture and cell death. Vacquinol-1 reduces viability in vitro with approximately 70 times greater potency than current chemotherapy and efficiently and significantly reverses disease and prolongs survival in animal models of human GBM. Vacquinol-1 is highly selective for glioblastoma cells and is not present in other examined cell types, including astrocytes from the brain. Vacquinol-1 has favorable pharmacokinetics, oral bioavailability and exhibits excellent overall preclinical characteristics. Synthetic chemical expansion of Vacquinol-1 reveals an exquisitely delicate structure activity relationship. IP protection has been filed. In order to be able to validate this discovery into an innovation and possible commercialization we need to: 1) Compare potency and efficacy with competing compounds in development stage. 2) Establish optimized dosage regimen from in vitro and in vivo cytotoxicity and brain exposure measurements. 3) Develop a GMP-compatible stereo-selective synthesis of an appropriate Vacquinol-1 isomer for amending composition of matter to patent and pre-GLP/GLP toxicological and phase I clinical trials. 4) Together with Karolinska Institutet Innovations AB protect the intellectual property, validate commercialization potential and establish a development plan.

149 693 €

Start date: 2015-03-01, End date: 2016-08-31

Saturated N-heterocycles are an important class of compounds and are attractive as scaffolds in the development of new pharmaceuticals. As part of ERC supported research, we identified a new class of chemical reagents – “SnAP Reagents” – that alleviate previous synthetic challenges. These SnAP reagents enable the synthesis of more drug-like saturated N-heterocycles, including some of the most sought after, but most difficult to prepare scaffolds. They have been successfully commercialized and are in high demand. This high consumer demand, which is indicative of the interest in these products, is despite the disadvantages of this methodology: use of toxic materials, long reaction times, and relatively complicated reaction setups and workups. Furthermore, the sales of the reagents – while successful – have low margins and there are few opportunities for IP protection. We have therefore begun development of an innovative, cartridge-based, fully automated, stand-alone machine for conducting SnAP chemistry in a safe, rapid, and convenient manner. This approach provides a clear roadmap for a sustainable, successful Startup Entity by the development and sale of proprietary machines and disposable cartridges. The ERC PoC funding will be used to assemble sufficient prototype machines and develop disposable cartridges for initial sales and marketing efforts. The successful assembly of a working prototype will provide the basis for the sale of first generation machines and a revenue stream for establishing a sustainable business. We have already identified interested parties who will purchase the first-generation instruments and provide valuable feedback for improving and optimizing their operation. In the longer-term, it is expected that sales of the disposable reagent cartridges and development of new machines that follow the same principles will emerge as the main activities of the start up company. We will also translate the technology and IP to other chemistries.

149 040 €

Start date: 2016-11-01, End date: 2018-04-30

The ICE project will demonstrate that energy regulation services can be provided to the smart grid in a technically reliable and financially lucrative fashion by utilizing a combination of smart commercial buildings and commercial batteries. The key to out-competing traditional solutions with such a service is the provision of energy storage at low capital and operational costs, which the ICE solution does via a novel hybrid storage concept that mixes the inexpensive virtual storage capacity, but slow response, of smart commercial buildings, with fast, but expensive, electrical battery systems. The ERC project BuildNet has developed advanced algorithms to manage such a hybrid system that drastically reduces the required capex-intensive battery system compared to alternative solutions. ICE will take the first step towards commercialization of this concept via a production-ready demonstration of all components of the solution, and a detailed analysis of the resulting deployment and operational costs.

149 720 €

Start date: 2017-03-01, End date: 2018-08-31

InInVi originates from augmented reality (AR) research within the ERC project VarCity. Our findings from VarCity of highly robust plane tracking combined with state-of-the-art object recognition enables very robust and qualitatively very high augmentations. In this PoC project, we transfer these findings into commercial applications in the live TV production business. Here, mechanical, inflexible solutions dominate to create overlays or AR animations, for instance step sensors to measure the field of view of a camera. As the purely visually operating proof-of-concept technology allows to overcome many of their limitations, e.g. high set-up costs or the assumption of a fixed camera location, it provides new opportunities in video-on-demand, live TV and live streaming.

149 876 €

Start date: 2016-03-01, End date: 2017-08-31

Energy storage has become a global concern in modern society. With his ERC Advanced grant, Prof. Östling, an expert in solid state electronics from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, is trying to develop emerging devices based on silicon technology but with other materials than silicon, such as graphene and its analogue MoS2. These unique materials offer opportunities to novel applications, especially those related to energy storage. Prof. Östling and his team have recently developed an efficient inkjet printing technique to reliably deposit these materials at high resolution. They have been able to directly print graphene-based supercapacitors with good performance. In the new PoC project, they will employ the inkjet printing techniques to demonstrate a novel type of energy storage devices which are expected to possess both high energy density and high power density, and establish initial commercialisation steps. Although the novel devices have complicated structure, the full-printing solution will not evidently increase the production cost. Considering the improved performance, the effective cost is actually reduced. Furthermore, the printing solution facilitates scaling up during commercialisation. These printed ultrafast batteries have great potential to meet the urgent and increasing demands from the rapid growth of portable electronic devices and electric vehicles.

150 000 €

Start date: 2014-12-01, End date: 2016-05-31

"This project aims at marketing a new laser based detector for identifying pollens in air, and further develop it for extending its application to the detection and identification of bacteria in air. Key markets are meteorological institutes for pollens and hospitals for bacteria identification, in order to address the problem of nosocomial infections. Business plans have been elaborated and even highlighted within the Mc Kinsey contest ""Venture 2012"", as one of the 20 finalists over 191 projects. Our bioaerosol detector also participated to the transatlantic campaign ""Planet Solar"" (www.planetsolar.org/deepwater) over the ocean for 6 months, and demonstrated its exceptional reliability and measurement quality. It also provided an extremely broad media coverage and thus worldwide visibility to our project."

148 901 €

Start date: 2014-06-01, End date: 2015-05-31