ZKB Pionierpreis Technopark: Audience award

If you’re attending the award ceremony on May 7th at Technopark Zurich, you’ll have the opportunity to vote for your favorite startup. Alongside the three finalists competing for the public vote, four additional nominated companies will be showcased in the networking zone, and they too are eligible for your vote. Voting details will be shared at the event and will be possible from 17:00 until approximately 18:30.

Please note, each visitor is permitted only one vote. To ensure fairness, we kindly request that you refrain from voting for your own startup. The winner will be announced during the award ceremony and will receive a prize money of 2’500 CHF.

4QT (Zurich)	Excavators, dumpers, and other heavy construction machinery are significant polluters and challenging to electrify owing to their high energy requirements and difficult access to charging stations. 4QT’s patented double-rotor drive offers a solution to this problem and contributes significantly to climate-neutral construction.
Avelo (Schlieren)	Avelo’s innovative breath aerosol collector uses existing PCR tests to provide a simple and rapid diagnosis of lower respiratory tract pathogens, leading, for example, to better and more targeted treatment of tuberculosis – the fourth most common cause of death worldwide.
Decentriq (Zurich)	Decentriq offers a SaaS platform with data protection technologies and advanced AI solutions. It enables companies to work together on confidential data and create insightful statistics or AI models without the need to share raw data.
Eightinks (Schlieren)	One of the biggest challenges in energy transition is how to store energy. Eightinks has developed a manufacturing process for next-generation lithium-ion batteries based on a multi-layer curtain coating for electrodes. This will make it possible to resolve issues relating to scalability, costs, energy density, charging times, safety, and recyclability – fundamentally changing the state of the art.
Flybotix (Lausanne)	Aerial inspections by drones are often hindered by confined spaces and limited flight times. Flybotix technology overcomes these challenges by equipping a cage drone with a patented propulsion system that doubles the flight duration currently possible.
Limula (Lausanne)	Cell and gene therapies (CGT) offer hope for patients with previously incurable cancers. However, these treatments are inaccessible to most eligible patients because their production is based on a complex manual process. Limula is developing a sophisticated bioreactor that enables automation in manufacturing and promises to make CGT scalable and accessible to a greater extent.
Stimit (Biel/Zurich)	Intensive care patients lose up to 50 percent of their diaphragm within the first three days of artificial ventilation. Stimit’s innovation aims to preserve this vital breathing muscle non-invasively by stimulating the phrenic nerves to activate the diaphragm. The goal is to encourage faster, unaided breathing and to avoid unnecessary intensive care costs.