Lausanne, Switzerland, 3 July 2015 – Yesterday the seven members of the Silicon Valley Startup Camp selection panel convened in Lausanne to choose the ten local students who will be given the opportunity to travel to Silicon Valley this September to cultivate their entrepreneurial spirit.

The application and selection process for the third edition of the Silicon Valley Startup Camp, which was first launched by BCV in 2013, was announced in the press and promoted on Facebook starting in March. Some seventy students applied in total, and nineteen finalists were brought in for interviews. The panel members were very impressed by the quality and diversity of the applications and the candidates’ enthusiasm.

In the end, four women and six men showing particularly high potential were picked.  Five of the successful candidates are from the University of Lausanne’s Faculty of Business and Economics (HEC/UNIL), four from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), and one from the Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne (EHL). Students from the Vaud School of Management and Engineering (HEIG-VD) and the Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ECAL) were also among the finalists. This clearly shows that there is a budding entrepreneurial culture throughout the Canton’s higher education institutions.

Here are the names of the successful candidates:

Adnan Chatila, 21 years, EPFL

Louis Derungs, 21 years, UNIL

Dina Elikan, 23 years, UNIL

Simon Favre, 21 years, EPFL

Estelle Geneux, 20 years, UNIL

Clément Javerzac-Galy, 24 years, EPFL

Paul-Edgar Levy, 22 years, UNIL

Marco Palumbo, 23 years, EPFL

Charlotte Schaus, 21 years, EHL

Maude Schmidt, 24 years, UNIL

In September they will spend a week in Silicon Valley, where they will have a packed schedule of tailor-made workshops, visits to universities and companies, and meetings with venture capitalists. The Camp is organized in cooperation with the swissnex scientific platform in San Francisco.

The selection committee is made up of representatives from each of the project partners:

Hervé Lebret, Unit Head, Innogrants, EPFL
Philippe Moreillon, Vice Recteur, UNIL
Vincent Dousse, Director of the Institut de Gestion et Entrepreneuriat, HEIG-VD
Julien Guex, Assistant Director, Vaud Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Foundation for Technological Innovation (FIT)
Bettina Ferdman, Director and Founder, Philias
Joao-Antonio Brinca, Head of Strategy & Organization, BCV
Christian Jacot-Descombes, Press Officer, BCV

Contact

Christian Jacot-Descombes, Press Officer
Tel.: + 41 21 212 28 61
Email: christian.jacot-descombes@bcv.ch