ZPI is an open hardware project developing a minimalist alternative to traditional LED indicators in electronic devices. The goal: to eliminate unnecessary energy consumption and reduce the cognitive load caused by constant device signaling. Sounds easy? The prototyping phase will show and tell about the mechanisms and learnings. Stay tuned!

How we will achieve real-world impact

ZPI challenges industry norms by demonstrating how removing something as seemingly small as an LED indicator can significantly reduce power usage across millions of devices. By prototyping a no-power alternative and openly sharing design files and test data, ZPI inspires hardware manufacturers, designers, and consumers to rethink what digital minimalism and sufficiency can look like in practice.

Team

• Miranda Moss
• Urs Gaudenz

Contact and Website

• Website
• GitHub

QLever is an open-source knowledge graph engine designed for speed and scale, capable of handling billions of facts with full-text and spatial search. It is already used by projects like UniProt and OpenStreetMap to make complex data accessible and explorable.

With QLever Federation, we are tackling the next big challenge: enabling researchers and institutions to query massive datasets directly, without copying them locally. This avoids redundant data storage, reduces network traffic, and significantly cuts energy use. If adopted widely, this approach could save up to 7.2 GWh per year, enough to power 2,400 Swiss households.

How we will achieve real-world impact

By reducing the need to duplicate and host large datasets in multiple places, QLever Federation addresses a hidden inefficiency in research infrastructure: the digital equivalent of unnecessary commuting. During the prototyping phase, we will measure energy savings and explore generalizable patterns to guide wider adoption of sustainable, federated knowledge graphs.

Team

• Adrian Gschwend
• Johannes Kalmbach
• Hannah Bast
• Ludovic Muller

Contact and Website

• Website
• GitHub

WildCamera partners with conservationists to redesign wildlife monitoring tools. It aims to replace proprietary camera traps with open, sustainable alternatives—supporting local biodiversity monitoring and endangered species protection across Europe. This hardware approach aims also at setting an example and prototype for sufficiency in hardware approaches related to conversations and sustainability overall.

How we will achieve real-world impact

WildCamera creates tools in direct collaboration with conservationists, ensuring the hardware is field-ready and grounded in actual monitoring needs. The open-source nature of the system allows for wide adoption and further development, while sufficiency-focused design principles model new standards for sustainable technology in environmental protection and beyond.

Team

• Will Robertson
• Urs Fässler
• Goedele Verbeylen
• Susan Kerwin

Contact and Website

• Email (tba)
• Website (tba)
• GitHub (tba)

impACT is a collective challenge designed to motivate at institutional – rather than just individual – level to adopt sustainable practices and reduce carbon footprint. Through a fun, app-based approach, it aims at fostering positive behavioral change and engagement around climate action, including at policy and governance level.

How we will achieve real-world impact

impACT aims to expand beyond individual behavior change by targeting entire organizations and institutions—encouraging sustainable practices through gamified participation. By engaging large groups through accessible digital tools, the project fosters cultural shifts in how climate action is understood and practiced, potentially influencing policy and governance frameworks over time.

Team

• Camille Ory
• Sébastien Lapaire
• Romain Franc
• Justine Allimann
• Lucile Charmillot
• Charlotte Ory

Contact and Website

• • Website

As a detective, players have to solve a mysterious case in Antarctica: a scientist has disappeared from the research station “Crossroads”. At different locations, and through dialogues with people from all over the world, players gradually unravel the mystery.

We live in a multicultural and multilingual world and different views shape our thinking and behaviour. This can lead to stereotypes and discrimination. As a project in the field of interculturality, “Crossroads” wants to contribute to social cohesion. With a research-based, story-driven and playful approach, attention is drawn to the cultural diversity of our world – in the classroom and beyond.

Team

• Robbert van Rooden
• Robin Burgauer
• Rouven Bühlmann
• Christof Chesini

Contact and Website

• Email
• Website
• GitHub

The consultation procedure is a fundamental, but lesser known integral part of Swiss democracy. While in theory the consultation procedure is open to everyone including private citizens, almost only organized interests make use of this right. An important reason is the high barriers to participation: The process is paper-based, formal, and time-consuming.

We bring consultations to the citizens. Our project would like to offer barrier-free and digital access to federal and cantonal consultations and thus facilitate and promote participation within this political procedure.

Demokratis.ch is a web platform for all who want to make their voices heard on specific issues. All necessary documents, information and tools are provided on our platform in order to allow participants to successfully take part in the Swiss legislative process.

Team

• Fabian Ligibel
• Marc Beauverd
• Maximilian Igl
• Jonas Schmid
• Lorenz Schäfer
• Florian Schulz

Contact and Website

• Email
• Website
• GitHub

What is the problem you intend to solve?

Current internet search is dominated by Big Tech with their opaque ranking algorithms and advertisement based economic models. Search is about selling ads and collecting personal data and not finding and exploring information. This defines and shapes the narrative of who can see what as well as what remains invisible. The result: reinforced filter bubbles, polarization and a surveillance race.

Why do you think it needs to be solved?

We think that free access and pluralism of information als well as inclusion and privacy are prerequisites for an open democratic society.  This is not possible with the current search paradigms.

How will you solve it?

By rethinking search. Instead of a linear list of top hits we see the process of Internet  search as a recursive exploration and propose a new multi-modal model for search: re:search. Instead of a one size fits all query model we offer a multitude, including for power users an expressive predicate logic based language. Rather than deploying secret and opaque rankings we offer a user selectable range of open  algorithms that are 100% open source, transparent, and community driven. Instead of costly and energy hungry data centers we also have an alternative model for computation based on decentralization and user participation. This frees search from its dependency upon advertising and allows it to focus on what matters: information discovery. To make this all happen and scale we also propose a democratic organization structure: the DAO.

Team

• Ole Müller
• Yoel Zimmermann
• Edward Zimmermann
• Murod Saymudinov

Contact and website

• Email
• Website
• GitHub

What is the problem you intend to solve?

The organization phase is widely described as the biggest barrier to travel for people with motor disabilities. Information is not centralized and search tools are not adapted to a tourist context. As a result, people with reduced mobility reduce the number of trips they make or even give up traveling.

Platforms already exist, which gather accessible places in Switzerland. However, these platforms do not take into account individual mobility constraints and are not adapted to a tourist context. There are also turnkey stays and group stays. In the first case, the stays are not very flexible and often too expensive. In the second case, they force users to stay in a circle of people with reduced mobility. In both cases, the offer is restricted and based only on their mobility constraint, ignoring their personal preferences.

Why do you think it needs to be solved?

The social inclusion of this part of the population also involves leisure activities. Offering them the possibility to plan their stays in a simple way contributes to this.

It is also necessary to promote local tourism in order to face the current ecological challenges. It is not acceptable that a whole part of the population renounces to make stays in their own countries for lack of information and adapted planning tools.

The accessible tourism market is extremely receptive to all solutions that can facilitate their stays. The market for accessible tourism in Europe is estimated at 89 million euros in 2025. It is necessary for Swiss destinations to equip themselves with effective tools in order to capture a share of this market.

How will you solve it?

We are developing a tool that allows users to plan a stay in Switzerland based on their mobility constraints and personal preferences (region, budgets, type of activities, types of restaurants, etc.). At the moment, we use accessibility data from Pro Infirmis, and tourism data that we retrieve via the Trip Advisor API and Google server requests.

In practice, the user enters information about his mobility constraints and preferences. Ideas for trips are proposed to them, which they can then personalize.

In the future, we will enrich the model with new data, such as open data from the National Tourist Office and the Swiss Federal Railways. We are also considering research projects to define standards for the collection of data from public spaces and pathways.

Team

• Elodie Auer
• Denatsha Shan
• Aurélie Savioz
• Alain Fresco
• Quentin Girard
• Sinan Ucak

Contact and website

• Email
• Website
• GitHub

A large part of the Swiss population does not have voting rights and needs to wait for 10 or more years to acquire them. Turnout for referendum votes among naturalized Swiss is very low which means that migrants arriving in Switzerland lost interest in Swiss politics in such a scenario. We therefore suggest to make Swiss referendum politics more accessible with the help of baloti – a voting platform for Swiss national referendum votes in 10-12 widely spoken languages among migrants.

We there will build a user friendly platform where migrants can practice direct democracy in a secure way. We will create a nice UI/UX responsive web project with tigh integration to Electis – an open source next-generation voting system. To make it a successful we plan to team up with famous media outlets among migrants such as Swissinfo. They will help us to push baloti to our target audience.

Team

• Thomaskutty Sebastian
• Prof. Dr. Uwe Serdült
• Kaj Maring
• Fiona Hilpertshauser
• Pedro Cordeiro

Contact and Website

• Email
• Website
• GitHub