An innovative fight against the bacterium Clostridium difficile
Mattias Ivarsson is committed to fighting a nasty bacterium at the root of many hospital-acquired infections. He just completed his PhD on the topic and presented his ideas, as well as his plan to develop his own biotech company, as a finalist in the Falling Walls Lab in Berlin - part of the 25th anniversary events surrounding the fall of the Berlin wall. ETH News met up with the cosmopolitan engineer before his trip to Berlin.
What a year it’s been!" he said, looking relaxed and with the hint of a tan, Mattias Ivarsson sat across from me at the Café Des Amis in Zurich and told me about the past few months. The 27-year-old biomedical engineer had just returned from his honeymoon in Mauritius. Shortly before his honeymoon, he successfully defended his dissertation at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences at ETH Zurich and received a Pioneer Fellowship from ETH Zurich to develop his research into a product for the market. He was also one of the Venture Leaders 2014, chosen by venturelab, the national training programme for innovative high-tech start-ups. As if the year hadn’t been eventful enough, the amateur saxophonist’s funk and soul band, "Lying Eight" released its first album this past summer.