Swiss Alumni Gathering

Join us for an evening at Pier 17 and mingle with other alumni from Swiss universities.

Alumni of Swiss universities and Swiss startups with ties to Swiss universities will participate in the event for an enriching exchange on how the Swiss mindset and culture is beneficial or hindering for one’s professional pursuits in the San Francisco Bay Area.

We are going to explore this in a dynamic discussion between Swiss alumni who have been living in and experiencing the San Francisco Bay Area for many years as well as Swiss entrepreneurs with ties to Swiss universities, who are currently exploring entering the US market with their startup.

The event is a collaboration between Swissnex in San Francisco, the ETH Zurich Alumni Association, and the EPFL Alumni Association. *

Join us for this discussion, followed by food, drinks and plenty of opportunity to mingle and network!

Program

5:30pm – Doors open
6:00pm – Introductory talks by Swiss University Alumni & Swiss entrepreneurs
6:30pm – Moderated panel discussion
7:00pm – Q&A with the audience
7:30pm – Food, drinks, networking
8:30pm – Event ends

Add to Google calendar

iCal / Outlook

Event start time

Switzerland + San Francisco
5:30PM
California
5:30PM
USA
7:30PM
Boston and New York
8:30PM
Brazil
9:30PM
China
8:30AM
India
6:00AM
Switzerland
2:30AM
Boston
8:30PM
San Francisco
5:30PM

*This event is open to alumni of all Swiss universities

Bios

Bio

Chauncey Graetzel
EPFL Alumni Association
Chauncey Graetzel received his Diploma in Micro-technology from EPF Lausanne in 2004 and his Ph.D in Robotics from ETH Zürich in 2008. He started his career in industry as Head of Research at Optotune, a Zürich-based company developing electro-mechanical optics.

After moving to the Bay area in 2014, he became Principal Engineer at Auris Health, working on medical robotics for lung cancer treatment.

Auris Health was acquired in 2019 by Johnson & Johnson, where Chauncey is currently Director of Robotics & Controls. In his free time, Chauncey loves doing outdoor activities with his wife and three children.
Bio

Julia Bislin (Moderator)
Science and Academia Program Manager at Swissnex in San Francisco
Before joining Swissnex in San Francisco in 2021, Julia worked with a variety of Silicon Valley startups in their ideation and early development phase. Her international experience further comes from being a foundation board member and a volunteer teacher at Pro Diamantina, a Swiss foundation helping unprivileged minors in Minas Gerais, Brazil. As a Programs Associate at Swissnex, Julia has a strong focus on empowering students and researchers, as well as female entrepreneurs.
Bio

Krishnan Thyagarajan
Research Area Manager for the Sensors, Devices and Systems Group at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)
Krishnan Thyagarajan is a research area manager for the Sensors, Devices and Systems group at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), a Xerox company, and leads teams for multi-year multi-million-dollar projects, in the domains of healthcare, climate change, and food security.

He recently helped launch a startup to help preserve food and medicines for extended periods of time at sub-zero temperatures, without freezing. His projects have been funded by diverse agencies across the globe and his work has been featured in the MIT Technology Review, Science, IEEE Spectrum, Popular Mechanics, and GeekWire.

Krishnan obtained his B.S. in Physics from the University of Delhi (India), and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Physics from EPFL, Switzerland, before spending a few years as a Swiss National Science Foundation Fellow at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena.
Bio

Marcos Monteiro
Co-Founder Veezoo
Marcos studied Maths at ETH and co-founded the startup Veezoo with his brother JP. Marcos is the CEO of Veezoo and is responsible for sales internationally.
Bio

Michael Duller
Field-CTO Datometry, ETH Zurich Alum
Michael is an Engineer-turned-Product Manager-turned-Field CTO at Datometry, a Series B startup that has pioneered Database Virtualization.

Since 2015, Michael has contributed to the design and implementation of Datometry’s flagship product Hyper-Q and has led its implementation and support at Global 500 corporations. Before joining Datometry, Michael was a researcher at Oracle Labs.

Before moving to the Bay Area, he graduated from ETH Zurich with a PhD in Computer Science in 2011, where he also completed the diploma program in Computer Science.

Michael’s two daughters are native San Franciscans and his wife and he enjoy exploring parks and playgrounds with them in and around the city.
Bio

Simone Severini
VP Revenue at Modulos AG
Simone graduated at the Politecnico di Torino in Electronics Engineering and recently gained an Executive MBA at MIP Politecnico di Milano.

He has two decades of experience covering senior management roles in Sales and Marketing in Fortune 500 companies such as Vodafone, Nokia, Qualcomm, Lear and US west coast tech startups. Currently he works as VP Revenue in an ETH Zurich spinoff (Modulos AG) where together with world’s AI experts is commercializing a unique AI platform designed to simplify adoption.

He travelled extensively for business across 40 countries and currently enjoys his time in Southern Switzerland with his wife and three daughters.
Bio

Steve Hinske
Co-Founder & CEO at Smartest Learning
Highly driven (Ed)Tech enthusiast with a strong background in digital technologies, and how to use AI, AR/VR, etc. to improve people’s lives. 20 years tech experience, 10 years corporate digital & IT strategy (Deloitte, Sulzer), PhD in Computer Science from ETH Zurich, MBA from IE Business School.