Biosciences Innovation Day: Europe

Following on the success of last year’s Innovation Day, Thermo Fisher’s Life Sciences Solutions business segment held its second Innovation Day Europe on May 11 at its Darmstadt, Germany, site.

This event, which was focused around our Biosciences business, provided our customers with the unique opportunity to network with like-minded scientists, innovators, and entrepreneurs, as well as with researchers, business development managers, and executives from Thermo Fisher. By sharing their innovative ideas during this one-day event, participating scientists also had the chance to advance the commercialization of their technology in partnership with us.

We received more than 30 innovation submissions and 12 were invited to present during the event to a panel comprising representatives from Life Sciences Solutions Business Development, In-Licensing and Partnering, Licensing and Commercial Supply (LCS), and Global R&D teams. The presentations covered a wide range of innovations like single cells on demand, novel methods for neural reprogramming, and microchip sequencing.

"The notion of open innovation is continuing to gain ground within Thermo Fisher, and a great proof point is the terrific event we hosted in Darmstadt. We had absolutely superb presentations from 12 companies—the highest caliber of innovative ideas presented at these events so far—and countless others that attended to learn and network,“ said Erik Tyrrell-Knott, Director, Business Development, Biosciences. "Innovation Day Europe felt like a big win for our customers, our brand, our Europe-based colleagues, and ultimately the Thermo Fisher business, because many of these opportunities will likely drive incremental revenues.” 

In all, there were 47 attendees at the Innovation Day event, including panel participants, internal stakeholders, academic researchers, technology transfer agencies, early stage start-ups, and mature biotechnology companies.

The overall quality of the submissions was outstanding, so a significant number of the submitted innovation ideas—not only those selected for presentation—are currently under evaluation and being considered for commercialization in partnership with Thermo Fisher.

Besides the presentations, there was plenty of time throughout the day for one-on-one and follow-up meetings, multiple networking and feedback sessions, as well as a lab tour in our Customer Experience Center in Darmstadt.

This event is a perfect platform not only for showing how active Thermo Fisher is in the academic and biotech communities but also demonstrating that the company is not only a supplier but also the partner of choice for technology commercialization.

This is also reflected by the positive customer feedback we received after the event:
“Thank you very much for the organization of this amazing event. It would be great if you could invite us again for next year’s Innovation Day.”
Hans-Jörg Heß, AGCT GmbH

“We enjoyed the day immensely. The caliber of the presentations was excellent and we very much enjoyed seeing what other companies are doing. We found the opportunity to network invaluable as we were able to explain our instrument and meet with relevant people in Thermo Fisher. We want to thank the staff of Thermo Fisher again for a wonderful day.”
Susan Treacy, Syntec

“To us, the Thermo Fisher Innovation Day was an important event to present our innovative immunoassay technology to a panel of industry experts. As we are in our pre-seed phase, fully engaged in validating our technology and prototype development, getting feedback on how our envisioned products fit into the reality of the immunoassay market was very valuable. The discussion with the jury, directly after presenting, gave us essential insights into the important points to consider when translating the prototype into a real product (e.g. scalability of production, stability of the assay components). Discussions during the networking session got us in touch with people interested in testing and validating our technology with their applications. From our point of view, getting real-world feedback from industry experts and winning validation partners were the most valuable outcomes of Innovation Day.” Norman Gerstner, Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf