Successful concepts with biomaterials ryon Summer School under the motto ‘From idea to start-up’
2024/11/04
The 2nd ryon Start-Up Summer School took place in Darmstadt in October 2024. Participants had the opportunity to take a look into the future of synthetic biology. Over five varied days, the international participants learnt a lot about business models and how to develop a business model from an idea into a professional pitch deck in just a few days. This year's event focussed on the topic of biomaterials in the context of the ‘CoM2Life’ cluster project, which is in the running for a top cluster in the renowned Excellence Strategy of the German federal and state governments.
The Summer School opened on the first two days with presentations by internationally outstanding researchers in this field: Avi Schröder (Technion Israel), Brigitte Staedler (Aarhus University), Roman Jerala (Ljubljana), Martin Grininger (Goethe University Frankfurt), Martin Fussenegger (ETH Zurich) and Aranzazu del Campo (INM Saarbrücken). From TU Darmstadt, the two young scientists Andrea Belluati (Emmy Noether Research Group at the Department of Chemistry) and Fatemeh Mirzapour (Junior Professor at the Department of Biology) presented their work. Finally, the two start-ups Akribion Genomics and Biovox reported on the real life of a start-up.
Turning it into a business case
Over the course of the week, all teams developed an idea from the field of biomaterials and turned it into a business case. They were supported by the experienced business coaches Georg Fischer and Bartosz Kajdas. The final pitches took place at the ryon GreenTech Accelerator in Gernsheim, where the teams were assessed by an experienced jury consisting of Dorothea Starck (BASF SE), Andrea Miclea (High-Tech Gründerfonds), Silko Grimm (Evonik), Michael Rayner (Merck KgaA) and Nico Bruns (TU Darmstadt).
The winning team, consisting of Lara Luana Teruel Enrico, Soumya Sethi, Siyu Song and Magdalena Schachtl-Riess, presented the start-up project LivLuLens, which is based on an already patented and published research result from the Leibniz Institute for New Materials (Saarbrücken, Dynamic Biomaterials). The aim was to develop an innovative contact lens that contains a small ring of bacteria and continuously produces hyaluronic acid to ensure optimum moisture. The prize for the best start-up pitch was presented by Thomas Walther, Vice President for Innovation and International Affairs.
Unter dem Motto „Von der Idee zum Start-up“ wurde mit der Summer School eine Plattform geschaffen, um jungen Forschenden die Möglichkeit zu geben, neue Geschäftsideen zu entwickeln und umzusetzen. Die Veranstaltung wird organisiert von Joerg von Hagen vom ryon GreenTech Accelerator, Heinz Koeppl, Sprecher des Centre for Synthetic Biology sowie Andreas Walther (JGU Mainz) und Tanja Weil (MPI Mainz).
CoM2Life
Biomaterials are part of the CoM2Life excellence initiative , which focuses on approaches to support biomaterials research with the cutting-edge technologies of tomorrow. These advances are expected to lead to breakthroughs in medical research and personalised medicine in the coming decades. Examples include feedback-controlled drug delivery devices for homeostatic regulation, tissue models to replace animal testing, metabolic regulation systems for tumour immunotherapy, tissue repair and artificial organ development.
Com2Life is one of the projects with which TU and its partner universities currently apply for the Cluster of Excellence funding line by German federal and state governments.
TU Darmstadt is represented in the Excellence Strategy competition with a total of three project outlines . In addition to “CoM2Life” on communicating biomaterials, these are “Reasonable Artificial Intelligence” (RAI) on artificial intelligence and “The Adaptive Mind” (TAM) from the field of cognitive sciences.
Centre for synthetic biology/bjb
