Three Sorbonne University projects win i-Lab competition

For 20 years, the i-Lab competition has rewarded the creation of innovative technology companies. Of Three Sorbonne University projects were among the laureates. Among the winners, 14 Grand Prizes were awarded for projects that meet the societal challenges defined by the France Europe 2020 agenda and one of these Grand prizes went to Sorbonne University.

Tortoise

This start-up, co-founded by Laurent Ponson, a researcher at the Jean-Rond d'Alembert laboratory, was awarded a Grand Prize for the DECIFRAC project. Tortoise revolutionizes the world of failure analysis and the characterization of fracture properties of materials using algorithms that are able to extract unpublished information (resistance of the material, condition of the damage). The technology proposed by Tortoise will allow industrialists to develop better materials and better protect themselves against damage.

BrainTale

The BrainTale platform will commercialize comaWeb, an innovative medical device for the personalized diagnosis and prognosis of patients in a coma in intensive care. This secure web platform provides access to robust and reliable quantification of neurological lesions via MRI brain images. Health agencies want to establish new standards of care for these patients, and BrainTale could become one of the pillars for setting these new standards. BrainTale was developed by Vincent Perlbarg, a neuroimaging research engineer at the Brain and Spinal Cord Institute (ICM).

Hewel

Fabien Lieval is the co-founder of the Hewel start-up, which has developed ImVisio, an immersive digital reading microscope. The concept, patented within the Department of Pathological Anatomy and Cytology (ACP) of the Pitié-Salpêtrière University Hospital, will be the first professional workstation in ACP to converge classic and digital pathologies in one ACP workflow.

By recreating the conditions of observation and manipulation of the histopathological slides identical to those of an optical microscope and by offering new functionalities (traceability, ergonomics, telemedicine, expert opinion, etc.), ImVisio will accompany 60,000 pathologists around the world that are facing the digital revolution.

In the last 20 years, the i-Lab competition has established itself as a benchmark in the world of innovation and a real growth accelerator for tech-intensive start-ups. This year, 81 percent of the winning projects come from public research. 

This release was first published 3 September 2018 by Sorbonne University.