Daniela Marino named Entrepreneur of the Year

Daniela Marino has been named Entrepreneur of the Year at the Swiss Female Innovation Forum. She is the CEO of bio-engineering firm Cutiss. The event, which is organized by Swiss Ladies Drive, awards this prize to innovative start-ups founded by women.

Cutiss is a spin-off affiliated with the University of Zurich (UZH). The bio-engineering firm received this award for its remarkable innovative spirit, according to a press release issued by startupticker.ch. The company develops personalized, permanent skin grafts to treat skin defects including burns. In contrast to the methods used up to now, healthy skin is not grafted onto the injured area. Instead, Cutiss removes a small area of skin tissue from the patients and uses its “denovoSkin” technology to grow this tissue up to 70x its original size. This enables larger skin grafts to be produced, reducing scarring in the process. Cutiss is headquartered in Zurich, although its research department is based in Schlieren. 

The recognition prize is awarded to organizations that tackle current societal issues. This year, it went to Bettina Hirsig. She provides professional support to refugees via her coding academy Powercoders. Refugees are offered a three-month coding program, followed by a six-month internship. The aim is to get qualified refugees into secure, stable jobs in IT departments and companies. So far, more than 100 people have taken part in the scheme and secured places on training courses, internships or IT degrees. Powercoders is active in Bern, Zurich, Lausanne and Basel in Switzerland, in addition to Istanbul in Turkey.