Café des Sciences: 5 pays et une langue (Edition Spéciale Francophonie)

Contribué par Junior Project Managers Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Afin de célébrer le mois de la francophonie, une édition spéciale Café des Sciences a été coorganisée avec d’autres pays et régions francophones le jeudi, 19 mars 2020. Cinq scientifiques et startups de Belgique, du Canada, de France, du Luxembourg et de Suisse ont été invités à présenter leurs projets et partager leur expertise sur l’intelligence artificielle dans la santé, l’environnement des animaux de compagnie, la géographie humaine et la technologie de capture de CO2.

La conférence s’est déroulée sous forme de webinaire dû à la situation actuelle avec le coronavirus. Plus de 150 personnes étaient inscrites.

Notre modérateur Gaétan Messin, attaché scientifique au consulat de France a fait un excellent travail. Selon lui, cet événement scientifique de la Francophonie est unique dans le monde.

A partir du haut vers la droite: Romain Dittgen (Luxembourg), Gaétan Messin (modérateur, France), Charles Bark (France), Prof. Louis Fradette (Canada), Dr. Felix Moesner (Suisse), Matt Morawski (Suisse), Pierre Lebrun (Belgique)

A partir du haut vers la droite: Romain Dittgen (Luxembourg), Gaétan Messin (modérateur, France), Charles Bark (France), Prof. Louis Fradette (Canada), Dr. Felix Moesner (Suisse), Matt Morawski (Suisse), Pierre Lebrun (Belgique)

Notre premier intervenant – Pierre Lebrun de Belgique, nous a introduit sa société YiQi Care. YiQi Care développe des applications de haute technologie autour de l’environnement des animaux de compagnie en Chine. La société a pour objectifs, d’informer, d’éduquer et d’améliorer l’environnement de tous les animaux de compagnies en Chine. YiQi aide à la gestion de la communauté de la ville de Shanghai en proposant une boîte de récupération de déchets animaliers avec un conteneur intégré pour animaux de compagnie et un fournisseur automatisé de sacs de ramassage biodégradables verts. Cet équipement moderne a pour but de renforcer le tri des déchets, de réduire le plastique, de sensibiliser et responsabiliser la société et de préserver une activité urbaine saine.

Puis vint le tour du Prof. Louis Fradette de Canada. Il est Chef de département en ingénierie chimique à Polytechnique Montréal. En 2013, Louis Fradette a rejoint CO2 solutions Inc., en tant que directeur de la technologie et premier vice-président des procédés et de l’ingénierie. Lors de la conférence, Professeur Fradette nous a présenté son projet Valorisation Carbone Québec (VCQ), un projet unique de 30M$ visant à la démonstration industrielle de capture et de l’utilisation du CO2 pour la production de produits à valeur ajoutée. Durant la présentation, il nous expliqua la capture et l’utilisation du CO2 et comment VCQ crée différentes opportunités de partenariat.

Notre troisième conférencier est Charles Bark de France. Il est fondateur et CEO de HiNounou Intelligent Robot, une société AI BLOCKCHAIN Predictive Healthcare Data Platform qui aide les seniors à vivre plus longtemps, en meilleure santé et plus heureux à la maison. Avec une population vieillissante, le nombre de seniors en besoin de soins quotidiens et d’assistance augmente à grande vitesse. Pour cela, HiNounou propose un kit de soins à domicile, composé de différents appareils connectés afin d’assurer une surveillance quotidienne de la santé et une identification précoce des risques. La compagnie offre aussi le premier service d’assurance abordable en Chine dédié aux personnes âgées. En raison du coronavirus, HiNounou offre le premier anti-covid aid kit pour éviter la foule à l’hôpital et donner la priorité aux patients qui ont réellement besoin d’un soutien vital naissant.

Romain Dittgen de Luxembourg prit ensuite la parole. Chercheur postdoctoral à Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Romain Dittgen est géographe et s’intéresse aux modalités de changement sociétal dans divers contextes en Afrique subsaharienne. Il nous a présenté un de ses projets, « (Ré)imaginer les espaces chinois en Afrique urbaine ». Il donna l’exemple d’un modèle d’une transplantation d’une nouvelle ville chinoise dans un contexte africain.  

Et pour finir, notre dernier intervenant, Matt Morawski de Suisse, directeur du développement commercial et co-fondateur de Deep Cube SA, spécialisé dans l’IA pour l’outil d’aide au diagnostic des maladies de la peau. Matt nous a présenté Deep Cube et ses technologies IA pour des diagnostics de soins de santé en temps réel dans des domaines comme l’oncologie, la biologie, les neurosciences et l’ophtalmologie. Matt a représenté Deep Cube sur la scène internationale avec succès en remportant 2 prix à Shanghai pour Deep Cube: 1ère place pour la meilleure startup Suisse lors de la Pitching Night au CES Asia 2019 et 2ème place parmi 600 startups du monde entier lors de la Conférence et Compétition Mondiale AI (WAIC) 2019.

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A la fin de la présentation, une session questions-réponses était mise en place afin de permettre une interaction entre le public et les intervenants.

Veuillez cliquer ici pour le lien de téléchargement de l'enregistrement du webinaire.

Café des Sciences – Edition spéciale de la Francophonie, était coorganisée par le consulat général de Belgique et la délégation générale Wallonie Bruxelles, le consulat général du Canada, le consulat général de France, le consulat général du Luxembourg et swissnex China. Nous tenons à exprimer nos remerciements et notre appréciation pour leur grand soutient dans la coorganisation de cet événement !  Nous remercions aussi le modérateur et les cinq conférenciers d’avoir partagé leurs expertises de grande valeur.

New Year Café des Sciences: IoT & Organic Waste

By Percy Chen, Junior Project Manager Art-Science

All of past Café des Sciences lecture event pages

All of past Café des Sciences lecture event pages

Started exactly one year ago in January 2019, Café des Sciences is a format at swissnex China offering a monthly platform for scientists, start-ups, and artists with Swiss background to present their projects and connect with the local community. The lectures aim to provide a casual setting in which speakers can present their works and engage with the attendees in meaningful manners.

Twelve months later, the Café des Sciences series has garnered a solid track record — 12 events at 5 unique venues, 480 total attendees with 80 plus core community members, as well as 20 speakers on novel topics ranging from shadow banking, drone revolution, to VR, biosensors, and smart home technologies.

Therefore, on 9 January 2020, to formally wrap up a year worth of content and celebrate its success, the New Year Café des Sciences featured multiple past speakers for their project updates, a keynote presentation from Enwise CEO Stéphane Vernède, a live performance from Passepartout Duo, and a community award for those who have voluntarily shared their ideas, expertise, and time with this diverse and interactive group of people.

Past speakers presented in the New Year event include Ying Liu, Assistant Professor, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics and Alumna HEC Lausanne (Café des Sciences #1: Shadow Banking in China); Laurent Coulot, Co-founder and CEO of Insolight, a startup based at the EPFL Innovation Park in Lausanne, Switzerland (Café des Sciences #3: Looking Beyond the Horizon); Hao Hua, Associate Professor, Architecture at Southeast University, Doctor of Science ETH Zurich (Café des Sciences #7: From Architectural Anthropology to Digital Fabrication); Laura Couto Rosado, Swiss Artist and Designer, 2017 Residency at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Café des Sciences #8: Technical Spiral that We Inspire) and Xueying Mao, Biomedical Engineering Master ETH Zurich, Chief Representative of rqmicro AG China Office (Café des Sciences #10: Lives in Our Water). 

From left to right: Enwise CEO Stéphane Vernède; Percy Chen, Junior Project Manager at swissnex China; Cissy Sun, Head of Art-Science at swissnex China; Christopher Salvito from Passepartout ​Duo; and Felix Moesner, Science Consul & CEO at swiss…

From left to right: Enwise CEO Stéphane Vernède; Percy Chen, Junior Project Manager at swissnex China; Cissy Sun, Head of Art-Science at swissnex China; Christopher Salvito from Passepartout ​Duo; and Felix Moesner, Science Consul & CEO at swissnex China

Ying Liu, Assistant Professor, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics and Alumna HEC Lausanne (Café des Sciences #1: Shadow Banking in China)

Ying Liu, Assistant Professor, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics and Alumna HEC Lausanne (Café des Sciences #1: Shadow Banking in China)

Laura Couto Rosado, Swiss Artist and Designer, 2017 Residency at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Café des Sciences #8: Technical Spiral that We Inspire)

Laura Couto Rosado, Swiss Artist and Designer, 2017 Residency at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Café des Sciences #8: Technical Spiral that We Inspire)

After the updates from previous speakers, Stéphane Vernède, CEO at Enwise, shared the mechanism behind modular digester for organic waste: dry anaerobic digestion technology OSCAR and a real time IoT monitoring technology OTTO. His presentation really puts the issue of waste processing into perspective. For example, in 2018, China has produced 1,000,000,000 tons of organic waste, amounting to 1,500 Shanghai Tower put together in volume. In Shanghai alone, 9,500 tons of municipal organic waste are produced daily. Today we barely have the capacity to process the first 1,000 tons of waste. What is good, however, is on 1 July 2019, Shanghai has enforced waste sorting policy, taking its first step towards this serious matter.

“China’s war on trash is the world’s too.” concluded Stéphane after a long Q&A session where many people demonstrated strong interests in Enwise’s technology and waste processing issue in general.

Stéphane Vernède delivering the introduction

Stéphane Vernède delivering the introduction

One of Stéphane’s slides showing the amount of organic waste China produces yearly.

One of Stéphane’s slides showing the amount of organic waste China produces yearly.

Another slide on OSCAR and OTTO technologies

Another slide on OSCAR and OTTO technologies

Christopher Salvito during his live performance

Christopher Salvito during his live performance

The next speaker is Christopher Salvito from Passepartout Duo, a music group comprised of himself and pianist ​Nicoletta Favari​. The​ musical events​ they create focus on reconsidering the modalities in which people listen to and connect with music and are cast from a wide range of aesthetics and disciplines. Their mission is to become ambassadors for contemporary music through performance, to cross cultural and aesthetic boundaries through interdisciplinary projects, and to be catalysts for the global mobility of art and artists.

Christopher went into details about their experience in North America and Europe: over a dozen artistic residency programs in USA, Canada, Italy, Spain, Lithuania, Finland, Iceland, and more nations. Their extensive travel gave them rich opportunities to collaborate with all different kinds of artists, such as dancers, visual artists, animators, as well as other musicians and composers. Recently, Passepartout Duo has done residency programs at Dimensions Art Centre in Chongqing, T3 Art District in Beijing, and currently they are among the artists in residence at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai.

As We Speak, the snare drum solo Christopher performed focuses on the relationship between recorded voice and music. A machine-like monotone female voice plays in the background, introducing itself as “Vicky”. At first, it speaks coherently, announcing its joy to be the chosen voice. Yet, very soon it realizes as the musical piece comes to an end, it too will cease to speak. It starts to glitch, producing repetitive noises, affirming itself, “I am alive”, and questioning itself right after, “Am I alive? Am I a live?” The 5-minute piece ends with prolonged reiterations of “Stop speaking”. The cold, monotone voice gives the statement a nebulous meaning. Is it questioning whether or not it will stop speaking? Is it lamenting the fact that it will stop speaking? Does it accept its fate towards the end? It is up to the audiences for interpretation.

Likewise, Christopher plays snare drum alongside the voice. Using drumsticks, jazz brush, snare string and his fingers, he compliments the voice with different timber and volume of sounds. The interaction between Christopher and the voice creates a constant feedback loop where one listens and reacts to the other, forming a true cybernetics system.

Christopher Salvito introducing his trips in Europe

Christopher Salvito introducing his trips in Europe

Finally, the event finished with multiple community awards. As mentioned before, Café des Sciences lecture has gathered a solid core community. We wanted to award those who voluntarily contributed their time with us through constant participations. The award winners are Zhenyu Peng (10 CdS attended), Xueying Mao (7 attended), Jina Zhu (7), and John Evans (6). We would like to thank you for sticking with us and shaping this series for the better!

Felix Moesner, Science Consul & CEO at swissnex China, and John Evans with his community award

Felix Moesner, Science Consul & CEO at swissnex China, and John Evans with his community award

Felix Moesner, Science Consul & CEO at swissnex China, and Jina Zhu with her community award and iconic gesture

Felix Moesner, Science Consul & CEO at swissnex China, and Jina Zhu with her community award and iconic gesture

The New Year Café des Sciences started this year on a high note. In 2020, we plan to keep the current format of Café des Sciences and bring in more engaging topics. Thank you again for all those who have been involved in this project!

Stay tuned for the next event!

(For more event pictures from the night, please click here.)

The Invisible Growth of Food Tech 

By Percy Chen, Junior Project Manager Art-Science

On September 19, the ninth Café des Sciences: The Invisible Growth of Food Tech took place at the swissnex China office. Mr. Fabian Graf, the Co-founder and CEO of the food technology startup Faitron, gave an exceptionally interesting presentation on the new trend Food 2.0 and its connection to his entrepreneurial development. 

Mr. Graf introducing Food 2.0 concepts

Mr. Graf introducing Food 2.0 concepts

What is Food 2.0?

Food 2.0 is a trend that aims to transform the way we eat and make food more sustainable, innovative, wholesome, as well as responsible. 

Why do we need Food 2.0?

Three reasons.

  1. The majority of diets nowadays focuses on meat, which uses up a lot of resources. Producing a pound of beef consumes 16 times more energy than a pound of grain and requires up to 100 times more water. 

  2. Animal brutality and its consequences: to make more profit, factories use all means to reduce costs and increase unit output. Animals are almost always stored in tiny spaces with bars limiting their movements, forcing them to eat, sleep, and repeat. In addition, the extensive use of various antibiotics is problematic, for it will eventually be passed on to humans. Finally, once an infectious disease breaks out, all the animals in the farm must be culled. Recently, more than 100 million pigs died to a swine fever epidemic and it is still on going.

  3. Finally, in terms of nutrition and health care, researches have shown that in general cases, plant proteins are healthier than red or white meat.

How do we do Food 2.0?

Many startups have attempted to develop new ingredients or processing methods to replace animal proteins with plant proteins. One example is the startup Impossible Food – its impossible burger received favorable reviews for tasting like beef. Likewise, in Switzerland, ETH Zurich is working with companies such as Nestlé to launch its future food initiatives. The aim is to train students to address the challenges of sustainable food supply by researching and developing high quality, healthy and cheap food.

In the second half of the presentation, Mr. Graf elaborated on his inspirations for Faitron. Founded in 2016, Faitron’s timeline coincided almost perfectly with the paradigm shift towards healthier food. Faitron’s two products, HeatsBox and BabyBoo, provide convenient ways for people to take out food and monitor food temperature to ensure safety.

The audiences showed immense interests and asked questions ranging from the technologies and patents, to the reasoning behind certain designs, as well as Mr. Graf’s opinions toward cheaper alternatives on Taobao. Indeed, the discussion was fruitful and it continued even after the event.

Once again, we would like to thank Mr. Fabian Graf for his excellent speech and our audiences for their enthusiastic engagements!

If you are interested in Faitron and would like to provide feedbacks via a survey, feel free to join here. Likewise, for more pictures from the event, please click here.

Stay tuned for our next event!

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Audience members asking about BabyBoo, one of Faitron’s products.

Audience members asking about BabyBoo, one of Faitron’s products.

Francophonie - A Call to Gather: Café des Sciences Special Edition

By Yao Lan, Junior Project Manager Interdisciplinary & Special Projects & Luca Mondada, Junior Project Manager Innovation & Entrepreneurship

To celebrate the Francophonie month of March, Café des Sciences Lecture series presented a special edition co-organized with other French speaking countries and regions on Thursday, 21st of March. 5 Scientists and startups from Belgium, Canada, France, Luxembourg and Switzerland were invited to present their research and pitch their projects. Creative design, sustainable energy, botanical science and various other topics are discovered and explored through the lecture. An audience of more than 70 French speakers in Shanghai gathered together in the swissnex China conference room to exchange with the speakers and enjoy the social networking Apéro.

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The first speaker — Arthur Limpens from Belgium - introduced the development and keys to success of the startup DesignNest, a consumer product design platform. He started DesignNest during his studies and the company is today present across the globe, with a valuation around USD 30M and 120 employees across 5 locations as well as its own factory. He focused on widely used products, but proposed innovative designs focused on what purpose the product really serves. A good example is a multi-plug that looks unexciting at first; but its thought-through functional design made it an extremely popular product. The startup now launched a platform where designers from around the world can collaborate with the company to realize their products using their expertise and experience.

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The second speaker is Prof. Gilles Vincent. He is a Canadian scientist now based at the Shanghai Chenshan Botanical Garden, where he can grow plants in a controlled environment on a real-life scale. This setup is unique in the world, as most botanic experiments are either on a very small scale or have external factors that cannot be controlled. His research focuses on two questions very relevant for urban Shanghai: waste water treatment and “phytoremediation”: the use of plants to clean polluted soil. His team has successfully recognized plants suited for both tasks and the results of his research is already being applied by the municipality of Shanghai.

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Our third speaker is Pierre Angot from France. He is Co-Founder of ProtectorChain, a startup that helps companies improve the security of their supply chains using blockchain. He shared the blockchain technology with the audience. The blockchain allows every actor in a supply chain to record and store information that will be accessible to everyone. What makes this special and particularly useful is the fact that no actor can modify the data once it is stored. It thus acts as a proof of everything that has happened.

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After developing a prototype for robot vision during his PhD at ETH, the fourth speaker — Prof. Laurent Kneip from Luxembourg worked on extending his research to self-driving cars. He is now Assistant Professor at Shanghai Tech university, where he is developing a tool to drive cars autonomously based on the sensors that are already present today in cars on the market. His team is hoping to achieve that by limiting autonomous driving to a controlled environment; in particular, they hope to enable cars to park autonomously in certain parking lots. This technology allows to track movement using only a limited number of sensors, which can have many attractive real-world applications.

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The last speaker Laurent Coulot is from Switzerland. He graduated from EPFL, where he started working on solar panels with the goal of increasing their efficiency. Using technology usually reserved for space equipment and smartly focusing the light to reduce the costs, Laurent and his growing team came up with a design of solar panel that is viable for large scale production and commercialization. They are therefore moving to the next step, where China will play a decisive role for them: finding partners for the production of their solar panels.

From Left to Right: Arthur Limpens (Speaker), Co-Founder of DesignNest; Marie-Adélaïde Matheï, Consul for economic affairs, Consulate General of the Kingdom of Belgium / Wallonie-Bruxelles International; Gaétan Messin, Science & Technology Attac…

From Left to Right: Arthur Limpens (Speaker), Co-Founder of DesignNest; Marie-Adélaïde Matheï, Consul for economic affairs, Consulate General of the Kingdom of Belgium / Wallonie-Bruxelles International; Gaétan Messin, Science & Technology Attaché, Consulate General of France; Pierre Angot (Speaker), Co-Founder of ProtectorChain; Anneleen Van Landeghem, Consulate General in Shanghai, The Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg; Prof. Laurent Kneip, Tenure-Track Assistant Professor at Shanghai Tech university, Shanghai Tech University; François Dansereau, Head of Political and Public Affairs, Vice-Consul, Consulate General of Canada / Québec Government Office in Shanghai; Prof. Gilles Vincent (Speaker), Special advisor to the Executive President, Shanghai Chenshan Botanical Garden; Laurent Coulot (Speaker), Co-Founder and CEO, Insolight; Dr. Felix Moesner, CEO & Science Consul, swissnex China; Rahel Gruber, Operations Manager & Co-Deputy CEO, swissnex China.

Café des Sciences - Francophonie special edition, was co-organized with the Consulate General of Belgium / Wallonie-Bruxelles International, the Consulate General of Canada / Québec Government Office in Shanghai, the Consulate General of France / French Tech Shanghai and the Consulate General of Luxembourg. We'd like to appreciate our thanks and appreciation to their great support in co-organizing this event!

Café des Sciences is a new format at swissnex China offering a monthly platform for Swiss Spotlight Scientists and Start-ups to present their projects and connect with the local community. The lectures will offer a casual setting in which speakers can present their work and engage with the attendees during a Q&A period. Audience are welcome to enjoy the networking reception with Swiss flavour after the talk. The lecture is scheduled to take place every third Thursday each month at swissnex China or our partner spaces.