Sports Drive Innovation, Unite People

Pascal Vuilliomenet's hard work and dedication to EPFL earned him the School's 2023 Outstanding Commitment Award. His colleagues lauded his skills as a silo breaker and as someone ready to "roll up their sleeves" and explore real-world applications. "I'd say that description suits me well," he says, adding that he also sees himself as a "bridge-builder."

Vuilliomenet, who obtained his engineering degree in Yverdon-les-Bains, is a strategic project manager at EPFL. He heads the Discovery Learning Labs as well as the Sportech initiative - a vast program to build a sports network encouraging technological innovation with implications for society in general. Vuilliomenet came to EPFL over 20 years ago to join the Composite Materials Laboratory. He soon got involved in large, cross-disciplinary projects, including the Alinghi and Hydroptère boats and the Solar Impulse aircraft. He views sports as the ideal testing ground, sitting at the crossroads of performance, innovation and teamwork, but with economic and public policy dimensions too. EPFL, for its part, plays a central role in bringing all these areas together. "Even though none of our labs has the word 'sports' in its name, nearly 50 of them are working on topics related directly to sports," says Vuilliomenet.

We caught up with the enthusiastic project manager, who spoke with us openly about his ideas.

Why did you choose sports as the cornerstone of your work at EPFL?

Sports offer fantastic opportunities for experimentation. High-level athletes are what first come to mind - professionals who give it their all and constantly push their limits to gain a fraction of a second. They're always willing to try out the latest technology, making them incredible drivers of innovation. But sports breakthroughs aren't intended for only a happy few. I believe that everyone can benefit from them for personal improvement - an elderly person who manages to continue living independently, for example, or a disabled individual who regains lost mobility. That's why our Sportech initiative aims to include all segments of society, from elite athletes to your everyday Joe. What's more, technology developed for high-level sports often makes its way into other fields.

Can you provide an example?

One example is hydrofoils[the winglike structures underneath a boat that lift it out of the water at high speeds]. We developed high-performance models for the Hydroptère, and these models really caught on after they were used for the boats in the America's Cup. Now even some passenger ships are equipped with hydrofoils, which significantly reduce their fuel requirements. Something similar happens with Formula 1, when new technology tested on the racetrack is eventually applied to normal cars.

You're fond of saying that, when it comes to sports, Lausanne has an ecosystem unlike any other in the world.

Yes. Our ecosystem is incredibly vibrant and packed into a small region. The multinationals I speak with often tell me they already have contacts at other universities, such as MIT and France's école Polytechnique. But I explain that in Lausanne they can partner up with experts in healthcare, design, sports science, composite materials and more, use state-of-the-art infrastructure like the Vaudoise Aréna, interact directly with national and international sports federations and the International Olympic Committee, and benefit from a dense startup network - all within a 40-kilometer radius. That's when they realize our region really does have something special to offer. And when you add network-building associations like the Lausanne Olympic Capital Foundation and ThinkSport, then I think you really can say Lausanne is one of a kind. We've got everything it takes to be the Silicon Valley of sports.

Watch the Lake Geneva presentation videoshown at the 2024 VivaTech conference in Paris.

How do you encourage these different organizations to team up?

It's a big challenge. As humans, we have a natural tendency to work in silos, focused on our own goals and constraints, including both budgetary and political. But university researchers have a little more leeway to invest their time and energy in these kinds of partnerships. Sporting events, by establishing firm deadlines, are helpful at uniting people around a common goal and honing their efforts. Take Athletissima or the Lausanne 20k - they're perfect opportunities for testing and improving technology from year to year. Larger-scale events like the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics have also been excellent catalysts for getting researchers, startups and public-sector organizations to join forces.

Can you tell us about one particularly successful partnership?

I'd say our partnership with the Vaudoise Aréna is a good example. Even before it was built, we were in talks with its owners about how it could become a hub of innovation. And later, we used the arena for a project with the Lausanne Hockey Club, the startup Dartfish and Prof. Alexandre Alahi at EPFL's Visual Intelligence for Transportation Laboratory, to study how hockey players move on ice. This project brought together a startup that was developing a new product with a research lab that provided insights into how to improve it and a hockey club that gave valuable feedback. It covered all the bases. More recently, Bearmind has developed a smart hockey helmet that can prevent brain trauma. These are examples of exactly what we want to do: turn such infrastructure into a testing ground where all sports-industry stakeholders can collaborate.

It sounds like these are long-term endeavors.

An ecosystem like Lausanne's wasn't built in a day - it takes more like a decade. If you want to bring different disciplines together, you've got to set up a mechanism that makes the collaboration worthwhile for everyone. And you have to build a solid business model, which is no mean feat.

Sports are also an important economic engine.

The sports market in Switzerland is huge. It's given rise to startups such as Bearmind, Senbiosys, OptiZone and Performance Mouthguard, as well as established companies like Nidecker, Stöckli, Pomoca, Mammut and On. Our universities are training the engineers who will become the lynchpins of that market. The international sports federations based in Lausanne are interested in working with local startups, which spurs innovation. It's a virtuous circle that we need to keep developing.

Does this virtuous circle extend to issues concerning society as a whole?

Yes. The most obvious one is public health. Today, non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and cancer account for a big share of healthcare spending. And we know that exercise and healthy eating can be effective at preventing those diseases. The problem is that many initiatives address people who are already active. Building a modern sports facility by the lake, for instance, wouldn't reach people who are intimidated about entering a gym in the first place. So at EPFL, we're working on more inclusive measures. For example, Stéphane Joost is developing interactive mapping applications that can help urban planners build pleasant paths in their cities to encourage walking and running. We're also in talks with the City of Lausanne on potential plans to turn the Beaulieu site into a sports and health center open to everyone.

Is education also part of your approach?

Yes, and it's an aspect that often gets overlooked. We've used major sports events, such as the Solar Impulse's around-the-world journey and the Winter Youth Olympics in Lausanne, as opportunities to develop educational materials explaining the math and physics behind the sports and technology. These materials were designed to fit in with the academic curricula for schools in French-speaking Switzerland. From a child's perspective, a lecture on set theory can be pretty boring. But if you explain how the theory is used to design solar aircraft and submarines, with all the underlying mathematical models, the topic becomes much more tangible and stimulating. As part of this initiative, we invited local classes to take part in events at the end of the school year where they could meet some of the athletes. That gave meaning to what the children studied in class and helped us get important messages across. We could do something similar with the issue of public health: use chemistry and physiology to explain the importance of good nutrition. And here too, we could combine that with concrete learning experiences to reinforce the message.

So all the ingredients are there, we've just got to put them together?

Yes - and that's the hardest part! In our work at EPFL, we're basically building a house of cards: it may be getting bigger, but it's also quite fragile. Pull out the rug and it all comes tumbling down. We need to cement the various parts together - and that's what we hope to do by building networks and fostering innovation.