Winners of the second Inria hackAtech in Lille

Based on four stages, from ideation to concrete support for projects, the hackAtech aims to strengthen the deeptech potential and validate the technological and business potential of projects sourced throughout the year.

This year again, the hackAtech has resulted in a 54-hour sprint, from 25 to 27 November, during which 120 participants with various profiles (project leaders, researchers, engineers, business profiles and students) challenged each other in teams. Their challenge: to integrate and contribute to the maturation of one of the 11 selected projects by relying on Inria's scientists and on their research work in digital sciences.

Ava Maritime provides a solution to the problem of containers falling at sea. This innovative technical solution is based on a network of interconnected sensors positioned on each container. Coupled with algorithms developed by Inria, it will then be possible to identify the number of the container that has fallen into the water and immediately inform the shipowner and the competent authorities.

The hackAtech was an opportunity to collaborate on the technical aspects of a first model composed of nine sensors and to carry out a first campaign to measure the system's precision. In addition, the opportunity to meet with several business developers highlighted the key points for the commercial success of our solution. We were able to clarify our project roadmap for the coming year. Florian LEBRUN, Ava Maritime project leader

What's next? Carrying on the project within the Inria Startup Studio programme, in order to maximise the chances of seeing a working prototype on board by 2022.

During the hackAtech Sprint, we formed a team of passionate and driven individuals who care about the universal right to privacy. We also achieved some technical goals like testing the multilingual scalability of our solution, designing a platform for branding and marketing. Secondly, the active interactions with the boosters during the event helped us to devise the right strategy to explore the market.

After the hackAtech, our team would love to keep working together and move towards making Nijta a successful enterprise. We are approaching potential clients with our value propositions and investors to help us procure computational resources and/or hire business developers. In parallel, we are working to build a minimum viable solution for demonstrating our core capabilities. Eventually, we will expand the scope of our solution so that people across the globe can easily access voice privacy. Brij Mohan Lal Srivastava, Nijta project leader

IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) is a condition affecting 11.2% of the world's population, which can be extremely incapacitating in the most severe cases. It is characterised, among other things, by abdominal pain and transit disorders. There is no treatment, doctors are powerless and patients are usually left to fend by themselves and try to keep their symptoms under control. Dyjest offers a virtual assistant, presented in the form of a mobile application. It helps them to reduce the intensity of their symptoms by enabling them to identify precisely, and then sustainably change, the behaviours ( i. e. diet, activities) that do not contribute to their well-being.

For a weekend, I was no longer alone in my project. This gives the opportunity to hear new opinions and generates very structuring conversations. Our ideas were challenged by the actors of the startup ecosystem (Euratechnologies, Eurasanté) and by Inria researchers. The Sprint format forced us to move forward on the parts that I hadn't had time to deal with, notably the business model. We also had a very good opportunity because a participant put us in touch with a possible future collaborator working in the pharmaceutical world! I'm thinking of joining an incubator in order to put all the chances on my side. Mehdi Douch, Dyjest project leader

The Dyjest project leader would like to share this adventure with a co-founder. The next steps of the project consist in the creation of a community of beta testers, to co-develop the solution in order to meet the users' needs as much as possible.

Following the Sprint, the Inria HackAtech - Lille 2021 edition is entering its final phase, that of project coaching, which will continue throughout the year 2022 for the winning projects. On the other hand, some of the non-winning projects involved in the hackAtech Sprint have also attracted the attention of Inria and its partners.

An event organised with the support of: the Hauts-de-France Region, the I-Site, the University of Lille, IMT Lille Douai, CNRS, Centrale Lille, the European Metropolis of Lille, EuraTechnologies, Bpifrance, French Tech Lille, Eurasanté, Amiens Cluster, the Hauts-de-France Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI Hauts-de-France), Junia, Skema and the Karafun company.