Empa

Empa and BASE (Basel Agency for Sustainable Energy) launched a data-science driven mobile app that aims to minimize the loss of food production and lower greenhouse gas emissions by enabling access to cooling facilities and allowing smallholder farmers to monitor the shelf-life of their produce. After successfully implementing the app "YourVCCA" in India, the team has recently expanded the project into Nigeria where they have cemented key partnerships with public and private stakeholders in the industries of technology, data science and financing.

The research project CircuBAT aims to create a circular business model for the production, application and recycling of lithium-ion batteries used for mobility purposes. Seven Swiss research institutions and 24 companies are joining forces to look for ways to boost sustainability in all stages of a battery’s life cycle. The project is part of the newly launched Flagship Initiative of Innosuisse, the Swiss Innovation Agency.

A bandage that releases medication as soon as an infection starts in a wound could treat injuries more efficiently. Empa researchers are currently working on polymer fibers that soften as soon as the environment heats up due to an infection, thereby releasing antimicrobial drugs.

To meet the challenges in cities related to climate change and increasing urbanization, new approaches to transforming urban space are needed. One possibility are so-called Superblocks, large-scale city blocks with little or even no motorized through traffic inside them. An Empa study has analyzed the potential of different cities to be redesigned according to this principle.

Kurt Heutschi, a senior scientist in Empa's Acoustics / Noise Control lab, explains what noise does and why we perceive sound so differently.

Radiation therapy is one of the cornerstones of cancer therapy. However, some types of tumor respond little or hardly at all to radiation. If it were possible to make tumor cells more sensitive, treatment would be more effective and gentler. Empa and ETH Zurich researchers have now succeeded in using metal oxide nanoparticles as "radiosensitizers" – and in producing them on an industrial scale.