9 Winners of the Innovation 2022 Competition
Accompanied by SATT Lutech, the innovators at Sorbonne University were celebrated at the award ceremony for the Innovation 2021-2022 Competition on July 4, 2022. The entire innovation sector of the Sorbonne University Alliance was acknowledged: the awareness, detection, pre-maturation and maturation teams as well as the incubation players.
i-PhD
The i-PhD section is aimed at young researchers to promote their work to create or co-create startups in technological breakthrough, in connection with technology transfer structures and public research laboratories. In addition to visibility, each winner benefits from a support program to accelerate their project (mentoring, privileged access to the French Tech grant with an increased threshold, immersive moments in the deep tech ecosystem, promotional tools for the Grand Prix).
i-Phd Winners
Aniss Achenar - Pierre Louis Institute of Epidemiology and Public Health
The fight against malaria starts with a good diagnosis. Indeed, microcopy remains the Gold Standard for the diagnosis of several pathologies such as malaria, which remains a global public health problem alongside tuberculosis and HIV. Rapid diagnostic techniques are costly and do not all meet the clinical needs for urgent diagnosis because they require mobilizing people 24/7.
Thus, DeepCare – Malaris plans to set up a semi-automated system for microscopic diagnosis combining imaging and artificial intelligence to make a rapid and reliable diagnosis.
The Malaris system enables the analysis of images captured under the microscope and the production of analysis results, thus alleviating the biologist's task during his examination. We guarantee the traceability of parasites detected on the microscopic field and their quantification on thousands of cells analyzed by our algorithms.
Alan Rodrigo Diaz Rizo - Computer Science Laboratory of Sorbonne University
Globalization and outsourcing of semiconductor manufacturing have led to a large number of unauthorized uses of the intellectual property (IP) of integrated circuits.
Today, IP piracy is considered one of the main threats to hardware security and European digital sovereignty.
SyncLock is an innovative, unique and patented technology to protect the IP of radio frequency transceivers and secure the supply chain of wireless communication chips.
i-Lab
The i-Lab component of the competition promotes the results of public research through the creation of innovative technology companies. It finances the best research and development projects for the finalization of an innovative technological product, process or service, thanks to significant financial aid and adapted support.
The i-Lab Winners
Tom Darras - Laboratoire Kastler-Brossel
Quantum computing allows to efficiently handle highly complex problems, such as the discovery of new molecules, that conventional supercomputers are not able to solve. The problem is that quantum processors are limited in size, i.e. in the number of qubits. Today, the largest quantum processors can have at best a few hundred qubits, so a single quantum processor cannot provide a computational advantage for industrial challenges. One strategy to solve this problem is to interconnect these quantum processors to increase their computational capabilities. However, realizing links between processors is a highly challenging task, and very specific technologies must be developed to achieve this ambitious goal.
The deeptech start-up WeLinQ is developing quantum memories needed to synchronize the signals from different processors to make them work in parallel, thus enabling quantum computing to deliver on its promise. WeLinQ has achieved the world record for quantum memories in the lab using a technology based on laser-cooled atoms. The start-up plans to produce its first high-performance quantum memory product that is integrated, transportable, and deployable in quantum computing centers with the goal of achieving the first proofs of concept for processor interconnects at quantum computing providers.
Vincent Hingot - Laboratoire d'imagerie biomédicale
Every year, 15 million people suffer from stroke. This represents the 3rd cause of death and the 1st cause of disability in the world. Although effective treatments exist, patients are too often deprived of them due to lack of time. For Resolve Stroke, the objective is simple: to save 30 minutes on the initial treatment and thus preserve up to 10 years of life expectancy in good health and save lives.
To achieve this, Resolve Stroke is developing a portable brain-imaging device that will allow emergency care to begin in the ambulance by providing doctors with essential imaging biomarkers to adapt treatments. The device is based on super ultrasound resolution, a new ultrasound technology discovered by one of Resolve Stroke's co-founders that makes brain imaging possible on a wearable device and economical enough to be deployed on a large scale and have a major societal impact.
Resolve Stroke is a spin-off of Sorbonne University and is based on more than 10 years of research conducted in French public laboratories, and in particular on spectacular preclinical results leading to publications in prestigious journals (Nature in 2015, Nature Biomedical Engineering in 2021). Resolve Stroke is now entering a clinical translation phase that will see its first human trials begin in 2023.
More generally, our technology produces very high-resolution images of the micro-vascularization, the medical potential of which remains largely unexplored. In addition to the early treatment of stroke victims, the device thus developed could help in the diagnosis and monitoring of neurodegenerative diseases, cardiovascular and metabolic pathologies, as well as cancers. Its availability to clinicians should trigger clinical innovations. The first exploratory work carried out outside of stroke identification already holds great promise for the coming months.
i-Nov
The i-Nov program supports innovation projects with particularly strong potential for the French economy, carried out by start-ups and SMEs, in order to foster the emergence of leading companies with global reach. It co-finances research, development and innovation projects with a total cost of between 1 and 5 million euros, and contributes to accelerating the development and marketing of innovative solutions with high technological content. It is co-piloted by the Ministry of Ecological Transition and the Ministry of the Economy, Finance and Recovery and operated by Bpifrance in collaboration with Ademe.
i-Nov Winners (waves 7 and 8)
OncoDiag develops and markets non-invasive tests for diagnosing, monitoring recurrence and screening for cancer. The company is focused on bladder cancer, prostate cancer and colorectal cancer.
The Prostadiag project consists in developing, clinically validating, industrializing and marketing a test that will enable certain classification of:
- Indolent prostate cancers (those that will not progress or will progress very little) and for which surgery can be avoided (in this case, it will be possible to settle for surveillance)
- aggressive cancers that require extensive treatment (total removal of the prostate or radiotherapy).
The Prostadiag test is based on the identification and quantification of the expression of numerous RNA markers (patented) by Next Generation Sequencing (NGS).
Qumed aims to use the latest advances in Quantum Machine Learning to develop sorting algorithms based on polarizable force fields to create the first complete workflow dedicated to these highly complex targets representing the new frontier for pharmas.
Actronika is a company that develops and markets products based on its vibrotactile haptic technology, to bring high definition haptics to innovative products. It collaborates with major companies in the automotive, cell phone, video game, and entertainment markets, video games, virtual reality and well-being.
The objective of the project is to lead the design phases up to the pre-industrialization of the future Ryzm product.
Ryzm is a multimodal headset, combining sound and touch, the concept of which comes from research conducted by Claire Richards. The product is based on haptic technology designed by Actronika, as well as on acoustic techniques based on bone conduction and AI. The project aims to provide a new multisensory way to enjoy sound content, open to any listening profile, and to meet a constraint of accessibility on these contents for people with hearing loss.
The quantum computer challenges the security of IT infrastructures based on public key cryptography algorithms (https, VPN, payment, blockchain, signature...).
CryptoNext Security provides a solution to this threat with a hybrid quantum-resistant cryptographic library that can be easily integrated into various software and hardware environments.
The B-Trust project is the result of three observations:
- The significant and lasting increase in the practice of telecommuting
- The anchoring of usage habits to a restricted category of office automation and collaborative management tools that are functionally satisfactory
- The increasing risk on data protection and the demand for securing these tools by the companies themselves.
The B-Trust project aims, based on CryptoNext Security's expertise and solutions in quantum resistant cryptography, to bring sovereign and long-term security solutions to this growing practice of telecommuting and to the office automation tools commonly used.
Seamless Waves is a French company located in Paris, specialized in the design and realization of an innovative architecture of reconfigurable Radio Frequency (RF) transceivers, in particular for wireless communications dedicated to 5G and to the Internet of Things (IoT).
The Ecocom-5G project aims to implement a new generation of multi-standard, programmable, reconfigurable and low-power 5G/IoT chips. The architecture of Ecocom-5G chips will significantly reduce the ecological footprint associated.
The architecture of the Ecocom-5G chips will significantly reduce the environmental footprint associated with the energy consumption of 5G/IoT communications, as well as increase the lifetime of electronic devices and reduce waste, while meeting the demanding performance criteria of 5G/IoT.
Seamless Waves' chips are ideally suited for 5G/IoT applications.
5G/IoT applications while having low power consumption. They adapt to different communication standards, frequency bands and data rates.