W.A. de Vigier Foundation Top 60 startups pitch

Bionomous has been selected as one of the Top 60 startups by the W.A. de Vigier Foundation! We are very proud to announce that Bionomous has been selected to participate in the Top 60 startups pitch event organised by the W.A. de Vigier Foundation. The event will be held online on February 4 at 9am and they will live stream it on their website. William A. de Vigier created in 1987 the W.A. de Vigier Foundation because he wanted to give young entrepreneurs the necessary startup capital to push good ideas forward. He…

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Software developer internship (80 – 100%)

About BionomousBionomous is a spin-off from the Biorobotics Laboratory at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, in Switzerland. Our team works on the development and commercialization of devices that automatize processes in biology and biotechnology, to accelerate research in fields such as genetics, toxicology, development and behavioral biology, and non-clinical studies.Your missionWork within the framework of the Bionomous project on the development, testing and deployment of software tools for our new product. The candidate will produce, maintain and document Android application that are used to control the device, as well…

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IMD Startup Competition

Bionomous is one of the winners of the 23rd annual IMD Startup Competition! We are very excited to announce that Bionomous has been selected to participate in the IMD Startup Competition, which provides a unique opportunity to get the insights of participants in IMD’s MBA and Executive MBA programs and work with them. This offer is open to all Swiss-based startups and runs in collaboration with the Swiss government's Innosuisse-Swiss Innovation Agency, VentureKick, MassChallenge Switzerland, investiere and Amazon Web Services.   This year they have selected 20 ventures (including Bionomous) and 18 startups to participate in the…

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Small model organisms

Over the past years, zebrafish have proven to be excellent model systems for a wide panel of experiments. We have discussed throughout our previous articles their advantages and disadvantages, how they could be incorporated to various research fields and different automation techniques which facilitate their handling in laboratories. Today we will discuss 4 other model organisms: Drosophila melanogaster, Xenopus laevis, Caenorhabditis elegans and Arabidopsis thaliana, all have in common their genetic similarity to humans, their ease of care and prolific breeding. While this last feature is particularly useful for studies requiring…

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Studying zebrafish behaviour: robotics and automation

In today's article we will take a step back from zebrafish embryos and discuss how adult zebrafish collective behaviours can be studied using robotic systems.Danio rerio, commonly known as zebrafish is a small but robust cyprinid, commonly found in food plains of the south of Asia, particularly India. They thrive in shallow and slow flowing-waters and can generally be found in standing water bodies, often connected to rice cultivation. This is most likely due to the high content of zooplankton in rice cultivations, a major component of the zebrafish diet. Zebrafish…

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Venture Kick – Stage III

We want to thank Venture Kick for their trust and support! It was January this year when we were selected to enter the Venture Kick program and now we are very excited to announce that we have reached the 3rd stage succesfully! Bionomous has been awarded with the 150,000 VK funding to bring automation to the lab. Since we entered the Venture Kick road, we have accomplished several milestones that would not have been possible without their support. Among others, we have been able to finish the development of the beta version…

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Morphological and phenotypic characteristics of zebrafish embryos

In our modern world, development of new synthetic compounds and chemicals is essential for many industries, such as the pharmaceutical, clothing and food industries. This has become a major public and environmental issue as many of these compounds can be toxic and detrimental to human and animal health. In addition to these artificial toxins, chemicals can occur naturally in the environment such as heavy metals or nitrates. Although it is widely recognised that such compounds can cause damage to life, how harmful they are and how they cause disease needs…

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SICTIC Investor Days

We are very grateful for having been given the opportunity to pitch at the SICTIC Investor Days.This month we had the magnificent opportunity to pitch our company twice at the SICTIC Investor Day events.SICTIC (Swiss ICT Investor Club) is a non-profit association with a strong investor community which organizes the deal flow and matchmaking of startups and investors online and at pitching events.Since 2018, SICTIC has become the largest and most active business angel network in Switzerland and was awarded “Best Performing EBAN Member 2018” from over 150 member organizations in more than 50 countries.For…

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Zebrafish early embryo sorting

Over the past 20 years, the use of zebrafish in the lab has dramatically increased. In 2000, PubMed displayed 657 articles when searching for “zebrafish”. In 2020, that number shot up to 3’979 publications (1). This is most likely due to the many advantages zebrafish represent as an animal model (and which are resumed in our article What are zebrafish). Particularly, their high breeding capacity is a very interesting asset for experiments requiring large sample sizes. Zebrafish can indeed produce up to 300 embryos weekly, hence why they are referred…

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Artificial Intelligence for zebrafish egg sorting

Artificial intelligence always triggers a lot of curiosity when mentioned around a dinner table. AI brings in mind to a lot of people the latest fantastic movie released in the cinema with cool robots and futuristic computer systems. In reality and up until today, AI is really the science of giving to a material device the ability to show cognitive behaviour similarly to humans in order to learn and solve complex problems. AI is very present in our everyday lives and its development and achievements made in various fields is…

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