Startup Contest
Share your technological innovation, no matter how early the stage.
The EIPBN 2024 Startup Contest is designed to support entrepreneurs, students, research staff, and faculty transition early-stage technologies into scalable ventures. The contest is the most visible way to present an innovation related to our founding topics of electron, ion and photon beam technology as well as micro-/nano-fabricated devices enabled by these patterning or novel nanomanufacturing techniques.
The Startup Session will consist of a keynote speaker followed by the Startup Contest. Ventures participating in the Startup Contest will be invited to pitch to the conference audience. The pitch will be presented live. The format for the pitch will be a 3-minute pitch followed by 2 minutes of Q&A with the audience. EIPBN 2024 Startup Contest winners will be announced later on the same day.
The winner will receive a sponsored exhibitor package consisting of an exhibition booth and services displaying your business for two days, Wednesday, May 29 through Thursday, May 30. The winner of the Startup Contest will be announced on eipbn.org and honored at EIPBN 2024 conference dinner on Thursday evening (one complimentary ticket will be waiting for the winner).
This contest is ideal for any venture developing a technology that is related to any of the topics in the technical scope of the conference. The contest encourages participation from all ventures incorporating new technical findings from any of EIPBN’s fields of scientific interest. Entry is open to startups at any stage of development – from early ideation to technology validation and growth. This contest aims to support the transition of technology and ideas from the lab into a scalable venture.
Entry is open to all attendees of EIPBN 2024. Please make sure to use the EIPBN 2024 Startup Contest Application template to submit the abstract for the startup competition.
Submit your startup contest application through our abstract portal.
Application Submission deadline is Friday, April 19, 2024.
Applications submitted after the deadline will be considered on a case by case basis.
Startup Keynote
From Science to Startup – The Story of XRnanotech
Florian Döring
Abstract: XRnanotech is an award-winning spin-off company from the Paul Scherrer Institut in Switzerland that develops nanostructured diffractive optical elements for the high-tech industry and the international scientific community. Following a decade of research and development, XRnanotech was incorporated in 2020 as a spin-off from the largest research center in Switzerland. This contribution highlights the opportunities and challenges of founding a spin-off company and illustrates the path from a scientist to an entrepreneur.
Since its foundation, XRnanotech has grown into a team of 13 people, who are constantly developing the start-up with their different expertise. With over 100 customers on a total of five continents, the company operates worldwide. Over the last years, the areas of application for the products have become ever broader and XRnanotech now serves numerous business sectors, including industry and academia.
Dr. Florian Döring is the CEO and founder of XRnanotech, an award winning Swiss deep-tech company that develops and fabricates innovative diffractive optical elements. He holds a PhD in Materials Physics from the University of Göttingen and was a postdoctoral fellow in the lab for micro- and nanotechnology of the Paul Scherrer Institut in Switzerland. During his research career, he developed and fabricated high-quality X-ray optics with record-breaking resolution. Following his entrepreneurial mindset, he completed an MBA and thereafter founded the company XRnanotech with the vision of bringing these record-breaking optics to the market. With his dedicated team of scientists, engineers and business people, he is constantly working to develop even better nanostructures and optics and making them available to customers all over the world.
Previous Contest Winners
2023 Startup Contest Winner
2022 Startup Contest Winner
2021 Startup Contest Winner
More Information
Please check back frequently or connect with us on LinkedIn for Startup Contest updates.