What started as an idea a few years ago has been established itself at PSI as a valuable funding instrument for talented researchers or engineers: the PSI Founder Fellowship (PSIFF for short). It is aimed at researchers with an entrepreneurial spirit and is supported by UBS.
This year, two fellows from PSI are starting the program: Dr Sebastian Gliga from the "Photon Science Division" and Dr Lars Gerchow from the research division "Neutrons and Muons" convinced the PSIFF jury with their business ideas. We warmly congratulate the two budding young entrepreneurs and look forward to working with them!
The two promising business ideas are based directly on developments from PSI's basic research, but adapted for a new target audience:
The contactless readout of information stored on magnetic tapes ("tapes") by means of X-rays even where such tapes are in decay addresses challenges in the music industry, but also in digital data archives.
The simultaneous reading of positrons from two different isotopes, on the other hand, enables modern PET scanners to distinguish between types of cancer more quickly and thus offer the most optimal treatment method.
It is a long road from a promising research result to a marketable service or product, which requires a high degree of risk-taking and initiative. This is where PSIFF comes in, supporting PSI scientists and engineers who want to use the know-how they have acquired at PSI to further develop and implement a business idea with the aim of founding their own spin-off. Over a period of 1 - 1.5 years, the fellows are supported on their career path to becoming entrepreneurs both financially and through coaching and advice. During this time, an initial business model should be developed, market analyses carried out or initial customer contacts made. If the potential of the business idea is substantiated and an innovative product or service emerges, nothing stands in the way of founding a spin-off. From a technology transfer perspective, spin-offs are a very efficient way of commercialising research results and technologies from the PSI and making them available to both industry and society in the form of marketable innovations (such as medicines or detector technologies). Spin-offs are therefore of strategic importance for the PSI.
In recent years, numerous talents have already been supported by the PSIFF. The most recent spin-offs include Araris Biotech AG and XRnanotech.
