Technologies

The dramatic global health emergency due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic requires new diagnostic devices capable of identifying the presence of virus particles in patient biological samples. In this direction, the development of an innovative low-cost test, which provides the result within a few minutes, which is reproducible and which can reveal the direct presence of even a few viral particles, would be of fundamental importance for the monitoring and containment of the pandemic.

A distributed micro-cogeneration system has been developed for continuous and programmable autonomous production of thermal (between 25 and 70 kW_th) and electrical (between 5 and 10 kW_el) energy starting from heterogeneous biomasses.

Our innovative proposal involves an educational robotics training program, resulting from an experimental research that combines traditional educational approaches with the utilization of robotics. Specifically, the educational robot Thymio, developed by EPFL, serves as a facilitator in the learning process to enhance School Readiness.

Detection devices for the presence of molecules of interest (analytes) enjoyed a renewed burst with the introduction of biological components (biosensors). Their high specificity is often used in various fields, from environmental monitoring and biomedicine to the protection and promotion of agri-food products. However, the high cost of production and the lack of compatibility with mass sampling (high-throughput) sometimes limit their use.

Lifeshell is an anti-seismic furniture construction concept, which can be used for making wardrobes, tables, desktops, beds. It’s made by timber based panels: highly resistant and flexible, relatively lightweight and inexpensive. Lifeshell benefits from the natural wood elasticity and from smart connections for dissipating the great impact energies occurring during an earthquake. Lifeshell has been designed for resisting partial building collapses, and to provide a safe shell where inhabitants can find refuge.

The prototype uses soil moisture sensors which, through a measurement of dielectric permittivity, estimate the soil moisture based on which irrigation is started through relay-controlled solenoid valve. The system was developed using Open Source technologies. Specifically, for the hardware components, a small sized board computer Raspberry PI 3B + was used together with a 4G LTE Wi-Fi router and a Modbus rs485 / USB converter.

To the enterprises working in the field of nutrition/nutraceutics and drug development/repositioning, we offer the know-how and state-of-the-art instrumentation of our labs to monitor multiple relevant biological parameters at the cellular level: metabolic activity, vitality, health, but also stress and toxicity. The use of advanced imaging techniques based on fluorescent/bioluminescent probes together with the availability of time-lapse acquisitions, guarantee the cutting-edge analysis of different biological parameters over time.