Under the leadership of CEO André Kudelski, the Innosuise Board appointed 20 experts with a track record in innovation to the Innovation Council of Innosuisse, as reported last week. Among them nine members bring startup expertise to the council, six are from large corporations, and five bring experience from academia and research. These include;
From the startup world
Yves Béhar –the founder of fuseproject, the San Francisco and New York based design and branding firm. He is also Chief Creative Officer at Jawbone, where he has worked for the last 11 years. Morever, Béhar is a Co-Founder of OUYA, an open sourced gaming platform, and the start-up August, a next generation home entry system.
Nicoletta Casanova – CEO and President of FEMTOprint, a hightech Startup manufacturing 3D printed microdevices out of glass with high precision and quality.
Alisé De Tonnac – CEO and co-Founder of Seedstars World, an international startup competition for the developing world. The competition culminates with a competition in Switzerland for a total of $1 million. De Tonnac spent a year traveling the world, establishing the competition to activate up-and-coming areas.
Renat Heuberger – owner and CEO of South Pole Group, a Spin-off und Cleantech startup specialising in reducing greenhouse gases. Heuberger is a social entrepreneur specialising in sustainability.
Thomas Puschmann – founder and head Swiss FinTech Innovation Lab at the University of Zurich as well as co-founder and co-director of Swiss Fintech Innovations. Puschmann was also head of the competence center from the Universities of St. Gallen and Leipzig.
Kelly Richdale – vice president of ID Quantique, specialising in quantum-safe crypto solutions, designed to protect data for the long-term future. Richdale is also a member of the CTI and the president of (ISC)² Chapter Switzerland. She founded A4Vision, an IT startup providing innovative 3-dimensional facial recognition products for security applications. Richdale brings considerable experience from both academics and business.
Stephan Siegrist – founder and leader of Think Tank W.I.R.E. Siegrist has analyzed interdisciplinary developments in the economy, science and society for many years and is concerned with the effects of digitalization in the life sciences, financial services, media, infrastructure and mobility.
Stelios Tzonis – coforunder and partner of Digital-Strategy an IT startup helping companies to investigate and evaluate new products and services, market diversification, merger & acquisition and investments opportunities. He founded four other startups including Urturn, Mnemis, Singularis and Lysis.
Members from the corporate world include:
- Jean-Luc Bazin – Head of Technology Scouting at Swatch Group
- Christine Demen-Meier – Metro Innovation Chair Holder and Head of Entrepreneurship and Innovation department at Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne Ecole hôteliere de Lausanne (EPFL)
- Bernhard Eschermann – CTO of ABB
- Sophie Kornowski-Bonnet – Head of Roche Partnering at Roche Basel
- Myriam Meyer – Founded and managing partner of mmtech. She is also a member of five company boards including Swiss Post Ltd and Lufthansa Technik AG.
- Alois Zwinggi – Managing director and Member of managing board of World Economic Forum (WEF)
From Academics and research:
- Christophe Copéret – Professor at the ETH Zurich
- Clemens Dransfeld – Professor at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts North Western Switzerland (FHNW)
- Frédéric Hemmer – Head of the Information Technology Department at CERN
- Emanuela Keller – researcher at the Unispital Zürich and founder of startup NeMoDevices which is developing a new class of neuromonitoring system
- Adriano Nasciuti – Head of Research Institute at University of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland (FH Tessin)
- Philippe Renaud – professor at EPFL
As of 1 January 2018, Innosuisse will take over the functions of the current Commission for Technology and Innovation CTI, the federal agency concerned with promoting science-based innovation. The Innovation Council is the specialist body of the future Innosuisse. It decides on funding applications and provides scientific and innovation-related support to the funded projects.
(RAN)