First Place of Innovation Competition for Malaria Biosensor IBI-3
March 24th : The Innovation Competition of the Jülich Innovation & Entrepreneurship Certificate (JUICE) Program was won by Gabriela Figueroa Miranda (IBI-3), together with her working team, Dr. Viktoria Schlykow (PGI-10) and Tabea Wiedenhöft (IBI-2). The Jury conformed by Prof. Wolfgang Marquardt (Chairman of the Board of FZJ), Dr. Christian Cremer (Head of UE-I), Bram Wiljands (Head of RWTH Innovation), Barbara Diehl (Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation SPRIND), and Dr. Georg Schaumann (Founder of SenseUp) decided to give the first winning price to this team after their 3 minutes pitch presentation of their business idea for a biosensor that detects malaria. The winning price consisted of 2.500 euros that they can use for further training, coaching, conference visits or similar activities.
In the Jülich Innovation and Entrepreneurship Certificate (JUICE) program, conducted for six months, the three young researchers developed a Start-up idea for an electrochemical biosensor that detects malaria. The biosensor was developed at IBI-3 as part of the doctoral research project of Gabriela, who closer to the end of her doctoral phase got the motivation to push this great performing biosensor as a real market product. The JUICE program provided them the theoretical knowledge and practice experience about defining their business model, how to do market research, and how to give a convincing pitch.
Gabriela: “We not only learned but also put all the theory into practice through interviewing different non-profit organizations, research institutes, clinicians, and through a lot of web search to collect all the required information to structure our business model. I had realized the importance of getting feedback from your possible customer as soon as possible. In this program, I got very helpful and valuable experience” Gabriela.
More information about the JUICE program can be found here: https://intranet.fz-juelich.de/de/organisation/ue/juice
What are the next steps?
Gabriela: “The idea is to continue forward with this developed biosensor until it reaches the market, where it can help as a reliable detection tool in countries suffering from malaria. We also want to use the same technology for the development of other biosensors that can detect other diseases, for example, COVID-19. So, we see this development as a technology platform for further evolving the concept of our future Start-up”