Excellence with passion
ELDA STUDENT PROJECT: A STARTUP IN THE MAKING?
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Last 29 September the Trophées Pépite Ecrin awards ceremony was held. A ceremony that rewarded the best entrepreneurial student projects. On this occasion, ISAE-SUPAERO students won a prize of 2,000 euros for their ELDA project, a decision-support tool to detect avalanche risks using pictures taken by drones.
Pépite Ecrin is a scheme run by the University of Toulouse whose mission is to support and promote student entrepreneurship in Toulouse and the Occitanie region.
So 4 former MGPIE Mastère students (class of 2022) from the Institute won an endowment of 2,000 euros with their ELDA project. Meeting with Julie Aubert, spokesperson for the project.
Could you tell us about the ELDA project?
We are 4 co-founders from the same course at ISAE-SUPAERO (Nicolas Guibal, Charlotte Brenac, Lucas Parisi and Julie Aubert). The idea of the ELDA project came about while having creativity and brainstorming sessions during our MGPIE Mastère classes. These sessions enabled us to find something we liked in common: mountains. As adventurers seeking out challenges, we have already been confronted with a feeling of danger in the mountains especially in unstable snow conditions.
The ELDA project was born out of a desire toreduce the number of fatal accidents in the mountains which led us to focus on the problem of avalanches and how to optimize artificial snow production.
As a first step, ELDA wants to offer a decision-support platform to identify and anticipate avalanche risk zones in order to provide more safety, information and productivity to the people who live and work in mountain regions. It also wants to address the energy issues affecting ski resorts by providing a solution to optimize the production of artificial snow.
In the long term, we would like the ELDA platform to be certified by insurer companies as a reliable and indispensable platform for securing the ski resorts. Our ambition is to be located on the large mountain ranges, both in France and abroad. We also want to diversify and focus on other natural hazards.
Can you tell us about your recent award?
We won the Pépite award which aims to support and help innovative business creation projects carried out by student entrepreneurs.
We are very proud to be one of the regional winners of the 2022 Pépite award. The €2,000 prize money from the Pépite award will be used to file the company’s articles of incorporation.
What are the prospects for ELDA?
ELDA is working on filing the company’s articles of incorporation in order to be able to sign a partnership agreement with the Serre Chevalier ski resort in the Alps. At present, the ELDA project is hosted at Innovspace, on the ISAE-SUPAERO campus.
Our next goals would be to expand our test areas to all large French and European mountain ranges in order to be ready to sell our solution by winter 2024.
