Banque Cantonale Vaudoise : 22 June 2017 - Ten university students selected for this year’s Silicon Valley Startup Camp

Lausanne, Switzerland, 22 June 2017 - 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 fifth 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 fifty students applied in total, and twenty finalists were brought in for interviews. The panel members were very impressed by the diversity and exceptionally high quality of the applications and by the candidates' enthusiasm.

In the end, five women and five men showing particularly high potential were picked. four of the successful candidates are from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), four from the University of Lausanne's Faculty of Business and Economics (HEC/UNIL), and two 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:

• Talitha Abraham, aged 22, EHL
• Yannick Bloem, aged 21, EPFL
• Christof Cardinaux, aged 21, UNIL
• Karine Chammas, aged 22, UNIL
• Florence Ettlin, aged 23, EHL
• Sumaia Hashimi, aged 24, UNIL
• Nicolas Hilico, aged 20, EPFL
• Nathan Lacroix, aged 22, EPFL
• Gabriella Valavicius, aged 25, UNIL
• Valentin van Sprolant, aged 23, EPFL

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:

• Pierre Vandergheynst, Vice Provost for Education, EPFL
• Déborah Philippe, Strategy Professor, Vice-rector Careers and Society, HEC Lausanne
• Florent Ledentu, Director of the Institut Interdisciplinaire du Développement de l'Entreprise, HEIG- VD
• Julien Guex, Assistant Director, Vaud Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Foundation for Technological Innovation (FIT)
• David Narr, Coach, Genilem
• Joao-Antonio Brinca, Head of Strategy & Organization, BCV
• Christian Jacot-Descombes, Head of Media & Information, BCV

Contact

Christian Jacot-Descombes, Press Officer
Tel.: + 41 21 212 28 61
Email: [e-mail]