Ideathon | Event Recap

November 11-12th | Student Project House ETH Zürich

On November 11th & 12th 2022, the Student Biolab hosted its inaugural Ideathon in “Plastic degradation and biopolymer design” at the Student Project House, Zurich. In this competition, our sponsor Nestlé posed a challenge to participants in the domain of sustainable packaging. The participants, a multidisciplinary cohort of students ranging from mechanical engineers, biologists to computational chemists, split into 12 teams and had 20 hrs to develop a novel solution to biodegradable packaging.

Winning Teams

Team members: Ayush Deep, Johanna Wahn, Louisa Selbert, Caroline Eigenmann, Ramón Calvo González

Team Crush laid out an approach that optimizes PHA polymer design by using machine learning to predict PHA candidate structures with desired barrier and degradation properties and directed evolution on PHA synthases to produce these desired candidates.

1st Place | CHF 3000 | Team Crush

2nd Place | CHF 1000 | Team Polypac

Team members: Gordon Köhn, Oliver Siontas, Jan Nelis, Emre Gürsoy

Team Polypac proposed a nature inspired plastic (NIP) that consists of several layers to achieve the desired properties. The inside and outside layers would have increased hydrophobicity with a hydrophobin coating, while the inside PLA layers inside would have a “rugged, Villi-inpsired” structure to promote the formation of bacterial colonies that degrade PLA.

3rd Place | CHF 1000 | Team Twisted DNA

Team members: Stefan Chrin, Juan P. Garrido, Marlene Lutz, Quirin Weiss

Twisted DNA proposed to design a derivative of PLA which should have a high humidity barrier and can be selectively degraded through “molecular switch” sidechains. The proposed amide switch is structurally similar to Serine and should be easily accessible by serine peptidases found in the soil but not by compounds typically found in food and beverages.

Event Schedule:

Students had 1 night to work with their team, network with experts, research, and develop their pitch. On Saturday, teams had 5 minutes to pitch their solution to a panel of judges. Ultimately, 3 winners were selected.

Download Event Program

The Challenge:

The challenge outlined a problem for students to design in sustainable packaging. They were tasked to develop a packaging solution that would both protect food & degrade on time.

Download Prompt

Ideathon Judges

Dr. Hannah Kleyer

Microbiologist, Established the Laboratory for Biodegradation, Nestlé
Ph.D. , Environmental microbiology, ETH Zurich
Prof. Dr. Michael Sander

Professor In Environmental Chemistry, ETH Zurich
Ph.D., Chemical & Environmental Engineering, Yale University
Haritha Sanapala

Director, Strategy and Planning Bio R&D Innovation, Lonza.
MSc, Biological Sciences and MBA, Warwick Business School, UK.
Dr. Violette Bourg

Scientist, Nestlé Institute of Packaging Science, Nestlé
Postdoctoral fellowship at Ecole Polytechnique de Montréal
Ph.D, Materials Science, Ecole des Mines d'Alès
Dr. Johannes Zimmer

Team leader, Biodegradable Packaging, Nestlé
Ph.D, Material science and engineering, Technische Universität Dortmund
Dr. Michael Hausmann

Scientist, Material Science, Nestlé Institute of Packaging Nestlé
Ph.D. , Materials Science and Engineering, EMPA/ ETH Zurich
Dr. Eleonora Secchi

Group Leader at Dep. of of Civil, Env. and Geomatic Eng., ETH Zurich