At the beginning of March, the EPFL Sustainable Innovation Challenge 2026 came to life. Over the past eleven months I led the design of the challenge and the selection of both the participating teams and the jurors — and seeing it finally come together, after months of preparation, made it all worth it.
Eight finalist teams from Sweden, Poland, the Netherlands and Switzerland gathered at EPFL to pitch their sustainable innovation projects, each with real scalability ambitions. Two days of pitches, workshops and conversations that were genuinely stimulating — not just because of the ideas, but because of the people behind them.
The jury
A special thank you to the jurors who did an outstanding job challenging the teams and pushing them to confront the hard questions: Selin Yilmaz (UNIL), Léa Bitard (Resilio, B Corp certified), Jean-Pierre Danthine (EPFL, Enterprise for Society Center — E4S), Grégory Huot (OIKEN), Sascha Nick (EPFL), Thomas Gascou (Alpiq) and Siroune Der Sarkissian (EPFL). Identifying the gaps in a project is often exactly what allows it to scale and create real impact — and that's what a good jury forces a team to confront.
The teams
To all eight teams — Hepo, Sailowtech, Swiss Solar Boat, Æther Swiss Kite, Nemean BioLabs, CaptuREE, Summit Studios and Generative Urban Small Turbine — I hope this is just the beginning. Building a project or a startup around a sustainability challenge is hard. Do it anyway.
Congratulations to the top three: Sailowtech, CaptuREE, and Nemean BioLabs.
Why I keep doing this
I volunteered on event logistics for the very first edition of the Challenge back in March 2025 — setting up stands, helping with catering — before stepping in a month later to lead the design of the 2026 edition itself. Watching it grow from something I helped set tables for into an international forum with a real jury, real teams and real stakes has been the most concrete leadership experience of my time at EPFL so far.
And to whoever is reading this: we have no shortage of smart people working on important problems. That gives me genuine confidence.