PlanetS and SSC: a joint meeting
On March 20th PlanetS organized a joint meeting in collaboration with the Swiss Space Center in Bern. The joint meeting was aimed at informing the participants on the available opportunities of technology transfer and new ideas in the space domain funding.
For CHEOPS a team of PlanetS and the University of Geneva developed a super stable light source that was patented. (Illustration ESA)
The event was opened by Andreas Werthmueller (Space Science and Instruments – Swiss Space Office). Following the introduction, Tatiana Benavides (Manager SSC Hub – ETH Zurich) and Willy Benz, our Director, gave respectively an overview of the SSC and of PlanetS organizations.
Julien Bonnaud (Space technology Advisor – SSC) presented the Call for Ideas 2019. The joint meeting took place in parallel with the opening of the SSC Call for Ideas 2019 (March 11th to April 8th), whose main objectives are to foster and promote Swiss technological and scientific competencies with a clear potential for space products and services or applications. As a reminder, the Call for Ideas 2019 is opened to all Swiss actors and the financial support granted to each selected project is up to 20k CHF for projects with a duration of 6 months.
An overview of the financial support currently offered by the Technology Platform to promote the transfer of technology of PlanetS was then given by Piero Pontelandolfo (Technology Platform Executive Officer – NCCR PlanetS). The Technology Platform provides financial support to every company, institute or research laboratory, given the following conditions are fulfilled: the proposed idea must be related to at least one of PlanetS’ projects and its activities and the project must be co-signed by at least one PlanetS Project Member and by a non-PlanetS Partner. The implementation of the idea shall result in either a commercial application, a direct benefit of one of PlanetS’ Projects, a market opportunity or a commercial product or a patent.
Finally, testimonials who received financial support within previous calls were invited to present their projects and share their experience. The testimonials were Bcomb (a company that develops natural fiber composite solutions and special engineering materials) and the patenting of the CHEOPS super stable light source.
In conclusion the joint meeting was a successful event, attendees came from different location all over Switzerland and showed appreciation and interest in the contents covered during the event.
Categories: Internal Newsletter, Technology Platform
