ARIA wins Innovation for Change 2018: among 8 business ideas, the Jury awarded a project of network of sensors mapping air pollution in cities

25 June 2018

For five months, 51 young students - MBA from Collège des Ingénieurs Italia and PhD from Politecnico di Torino together with the support of CERN Ideasquare - received 8 challenges from companies and institutions inspired from the global sustainable development goals of the UN with a common objective to work on innovative and scalable solutions to these challenges based on technologies of CERN & Politecnico di Torino.

The results of these months of intense work are 8 business ideas and related prototypes, which were presented today in the setting of the Castello del Valentino to an audience composed of investors, protagonists of the European business scene and students of CDI and Politecnico of Torino.

These are the impact innovation projects presented by the teams:

  • a system that certifies the quantity of water used in the production of any good or service, not only in the agricultural world, to make consumers aware and decisive;
  • a platform to catalogue the most advanced technological solutions being developed all over the world and companies that intend to create products based on those technologies;
  • sensors that map urban air pollution in real time, identify sources of pollution and minimise their impact on people (Winning team, called ARIA);
  • a network of cameras and detectors already present in the cities to monitor the flow of people during events and concerts, allowing a rapid outflow in case of accidents;
  • a solution that eliminates the dispersion into the environment of polyethylene caps, responsible for much of the pollution by microplastics present in the seas and lakes;
  • an App that increases the inclination of female students towards technical-scientific studies through the proposal of successful female models and situations in the real world.
  • an on-demand service for recharging electric cars ("leave it where you want, get it recharged") and also helps to manage the peaks in consumption of the national energy network.
  • a tablet designed for the elderly that allows them to follow effortlessly the news shared by their children or grandchildren on social (images, videos, messages), thus remaining participatory and active.

The companies and institutions that launched the challenges to the youngsters, helping them to develop their projects, were CERN, the City of Turin, ENEL, the Agnelli Foundation and UniCredit.

The prototypes and technical solutions adopted were examined today at the Castello del Valentino in Turin by a jury composed of Guido Crespi, Senior Partner & Managing Director of BCG Italia; Nicola Redi, Managing Partner of Venture Factory; Guido Saracco, Rector of the Politecnico di Torino and Charlotte Warakaulle, who is responsible for CERN's international relations. The jury awarded ARIA as winner of Innovation 4 Change 2018: three of its founders will be able to join in November the Web Summit 2018 of Lisbon, the biggest tech event of the world.

For more information:

IdeaSquare/CERN

IdeaSquare (http://ideasquare.web.cern.ch/) is a specialised CERN experimental innovation centre which hosts research and development projects on detection technologies and collaborates with interdisciplinary Master level education programmes. Located near the Globe of Science and Innovation, it offers ad hoc meeting spaces and rapid prototyping facilities for innovation-related projects. The aim of Ideasquare is to put people in touch to give life to new ideas, projects and prototypes in an open context, contributing to the activities of the CERN Technology Transfer Group through innovative products and solutions of global importance.. Telephone: +41 22 767 2623  - e-mail: kt@cern.ch

CDI Italia

Collège des Ingénieurs Italia (http://italy.cdi.eu/it/) is an independent institution of excellence for postgraduate management training to young engineers and scientists and is part of the European network of the Collège des Ingénieurs. Founded and promoted by Fondazione Agnelli, Fondazione Edoardo Garrone and Fondazione Pirelli, CDI Italia is based in Turin at TAG Fondazione Agnelli, via Giacosa, 38. Telephone: +39 346 6292182 - e-mail: diyala.daveni@cdi.eu

Politecnico di Torino

Politecnico di Torino (www.polito.it) was founded in 1906 and originates from the School of Application for Engineers founded in 1859. It is accredited by international rankings as one of the leading technical universities in Europe, with about 33,000 students, 14% of whom are foreigners, from over 100 countries.

The Polytechnic proposes itself as a centre of excellence for training and research in Engineering, Architecture, Design and Planning with close relations and collaborations with the socio-economic system.  It is in fact an all-round Research University, where training and research integrate and form a system, to provide a concrete response to the needs of the economy, the territory and, above all, the students, with a view to the strong internationalisation of teaching, research and technology transfer activities, with collaborations with the best universities and research centres in the world and agreements and contracts with large international industrial groups, but also with local companies, where it is proposed as a reference point for innovation.

Contact: +39 011 0906286 - email: relazioni.media@polito.it

 

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