CTI Start-up USA

swissnex San Francisco's Gioia Deucher head the CTI mandate. CTI Start-up is an initiative of the Swiss Innovation Promotion Agency (CTI). swissnex San Francisco partners with CTI to make long-term workspaces available for entrepreneurs-in-residence. We welcome CTI Start-up companies and help them with their US market entry efforts by brokering valuable introductions within our network and providing advice on navigating Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. Seventeen CTI start-ups came to the swissnex office in 2010 (compared to 13 in 2009), with many returning more than once. We launched the US Market Entry CAMP in September in cooperation with swissnex Boston to both speed up and smooth out the transition into the US market through tailored activities built around each company’s unique needs and goals. The three-month work stay program is supported by CTI and GEBERT RÜF STIFTUNG. Find out who are the current participants of the US Market Entry CAMP.

Nestle Innovation Partnerships

Nestlé’s Innovation Partnership Group identifies, evaluates, and adds value to the company and to its customers through the co-development of innovation with external partners, called “Open Innovation.” In 2007, the Group opened the Innovation Partnership Desk at swissnex San Francisco to identify strategic partnerships within the realms of Nestlé’s core business: nutrition, health, and wellness. In addition to the day-to-day work of intensifying Nestlé’s open innovation activities, swissnex San Francisco hosted a roundtable on design in business in 2010, moderated by former Bloomberg BusinessWeek editor for Innovation and Design, Helen Walters. We also served as Nestlé’s hub for connecting to the other swissnexes, as well as to the global network of Swiss Science and Technology Counselors, in their search for innovation partnerships.

Pro Helvetia

The swissnex San Francisco mandate with Pro Helvetia, the Swiss Arts Council aims to develop a stronger presence on the West Coast of North American for cutting-edge Swiss artists and projects fusing art and technology.

Our collaboration came to full bloom in 2010 as we presented our most ambitious project yet, Milieux Sonores: Sound and Imaginary Spaces, an exhibition from Marcus Maeder and the ICST Zurich shown at Gray Area Foundation for the Arts in San Francisco. We worked with an increasing number of important West Coast organizations this year such as the San Francisco Art Institute, California College of the Arts, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Jose Museum of Art, and others and oversaw major exhibition tours including Design Preis Schweiz and EPFL+ECAL Lab's Sunny Memories, which showed in San Francisco, New York, and Boston with support from Lombard Odier Private Bankers, the Center for Architecture, The Laboratory at Harvard, and swissnex Boston.

 EPFL

2010 was the first full calendar year of our targeted communications mandate with the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). As of September, our work to broaden the university’s international press outreach in North America resulted in more than 300 articles in English-speaking media by September, at least 50 (in publications including Popular Science and Fast Company) directly traceable to our efforts. We enabled the university’s first social media channels, with hundreds of active followers on branded Twitter and Facebook pages by the end of the year, making EPFL the leading Swiss university in social media usage. Our work in 2010 led to two separate panel discussions featuring EPFL professors being approved for the American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Meeting—the largest in the world—in early 2011, with both professors invited to participate in a press briefing in front of the world’s science media.

Canton de Vaud - Higher Education

We work with the Swiss Canton of Vaud to promote their educational institutions locally and to facilitate their cooperation with local colleges and universities. We maintain a dedicated workspace in our office for Vaud officials and collaborators traveling to the Bay Area, and make ourselves available to assist official delegations led by cantonal ministers. As part of our work to promote higher education in the region, we stay alert to new education trends and provide our mandate partners with this and other high-level information to benefit their programs.

EPFL A³

A³ is the association that brings graduates of EPFL together from all departments and all degrees. The group allows alumni to stay in touch, both socially and professionally, and to stay connected to EPFL. It also publishes an online directory for its members, all of whom receive a lifetime e-mail address. In December 2009, the association launched a joint program with swissnex San Francisco with the arrival of Simon Lépine, who began a six-month intensive effort to reconnect with EPFL graduates in North America, survey and update alumni information, and organize regional alumni events in the San Francisco Bay Area and elsewhere in the U.S.

HEC Lausanne

HEC Lausanne, the school of business and economics of the University of Lausanne has a presence in San Francisco. Starting in March 2011, its External Affairs Representative has the mission to promote its faculty and its research programs to the economic and academic communities of the region. The objective is to develop sustainable relationships in the areas of exchange studies, common programs, internships, etc.

ETH Zurich

swissnex San Francisco works on behalf of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) to promote and extend the reach of the university in California. We also receive and plan official ETH Zurich delegations and report trends and relevant information to university officials. 

University of Geneva

In 2010, University of Geneva's Louise Roux, supported the International Relations office by participating at university fairs and organized meetings for UniGE delegations and the alumni office by building a sustainable network including organization of networking events.

UZH Alumni

From November 2009 until May 2010, University of Zurich had a desk at swissnex San Francisco to bring together UZH Alumni on the West Coast and keep them informed about their alma mater. Learn more.

World Knowledge Dialogue

The World Knowledge Dialogue Foundation (WKD) was established in 2005 to bridge the gap between the natural/technical and the human/social sciences.  A transdisciplinary symposium held in Switzerland every two years brings together top researchers and opinion leaders to address this disconnect. swissnex San Francisco worked closely with swissnex Boston and the Swiss Embassy in Washington DC to identify potential speakers and actively promote the WKD to select contacts, thereby strengthening US participation at the 2nd WKD symposium held in September 2008.