Synthetic biology - Opportunities are blooming and applications getting closer to us all.

Synthetic biology, world-famous now for the engineering of Covid 19 vaccines, could touch more and more aspects of our lives, from food and agriculture, to medicine, biofuels, or sustainable energy to cite only a few.

Synthetic biology is a fast-growing field of science involving engineering life for human benefit, ranging from producing your steak to fertilizing grounds, or reducing our carbon footprint. It is poised to revolutionize most industries, in the short or longer term, as illustrated by the Boston Consulting Group:

Synthetic biology is (re)designing life and making money in the process. According to Synthetic Biology Global Market Report 2022, the global synthetic biology market is expected to grow from $10.07 billion in 2021 to $13.11 billion in 2022. Forecast for 2026 is as high as $33.63 billion.

The field of synthetic biology has its own innovation-encouraging competition, iGEM, in which a project from the SIH already participated. While it is late to register to the 2022 iGEM Competition, we will focus our efforts in getting UNIGE's innovation rocking at iGEM 2023.

If you're interested in the topic of synthetic biology, regular updates are given by Builtwithbiology.

Quantum is the next hype!

🖥 Of all the fields that are gaining momentum in both academic research and the world of start-ups, Quantum Technologies is certainly one of the most promising. In Geneva, we are fortunate to have one of – if not the – world leaders in quantum cryptography, ID Quantique, a UniGE spinoff from the lab of Prof. Nicolas Gisin.

According to many researchers and industrialists, Quantum Technologies, and in particular quantum computing, will change the world in the next 10-20 years. A recent article by Steven Blank, a very famous entrepreneur evangelist and Adjunct Professor Stanford University, summarizes the main Quantum Market Opportunities.

We are only at the beginning, but everything could accelerate very quickly. For example, we can note that “In the last six months quantum computing companies IonQ, D-Wave and Rigetti went public at valuations close to a billion and half dollars.”

🚀 Regarding investments, it is undeniable: private investments have more than doubled between 2020 and 2021, reaching $1.7 billion. A very detail study has been reported by McKinsey & Company in last December.