EPFL Changemakers: Incubating tomorrow's business ideas

Twenty EPFL students recently completed the first EPFL Changemakers program - a new initiative designed to help students develop leadership and entrepreneurial skills and flesh out their business ideas. We took a closer look at three of the promising projects they're working on. Twenty EPFL Bachelor's, Master's and PhD students took part in the first EPFL Changemakers program, which ran from October 2020 to February 2021. The program, a joint initiative of Tech4Impact and EPFL's Start-Ups Unit, concluded with a ceremony on 10 March where students presented their business ideas and shared the highlights of their experience. Detecting obstacles for white canes Raphaël Ausilio and Valentin Karam, two Master's students in microengineering, first came up with their idea a year ago, during a product design class. They were part of a group of five students who, for their class project, designed a system that could detect obstacles for white canes - making daily life easier for the blind and visually impaired. Ausilio and Karam saw a lot of potential in their idea and decided to take it further through the EPFL Changemakers program.