Wallisellen/Dübendorf ZH – MIRO Analytical, a spin-off of Empa, has received an Innosuisse Certificate. It confirms that the start-up is ready for sustainable growth. The device developed by MIRO can measure ten greenhouse gases and air pollutants simultaneously.
MIRO Analytical has been awarded an Innosuisse Certificate. It confirms that the spin-off from the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research(Empa), founded four years ago, has made remarkable progress in Innosuisse ‘s so-called Core Coaching program and is ready for sustainable growth.
MIRO founders Morten Hundt and Oleg Aseev, while still at Empa’s Air Pollutants/Environmental Technology department, have developed a device that can measure ten greenhouse gases and air pollutants simultaneously. It costs less than ten individual ones, each of which can measure only one gas. The method they devised is based on laser absorption spectroscopy and combines multiple quantum cascade lasers. All the instruments MIRO now produces are manufactured in the laboratories in Wallisellen. This year, the company expects to make a profit for the first time, Hundt said in an Empa media release.
In the very first year of its existence, the start-up was funded for an initial two years by the European Space Agency ESA in its Business Incubation Centre Switzerland. In the same year, MIRO won an EIC Accelerator Grant under the EU’s Horizon 2020 funding program.
In 2020 and 2021, funding was added from the Technology Fund and the Swiss Climate Foundation. In the meantime, MIRO has also been able to win customers such as the Jülich Research Center and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Empa also uses one of the MIRO instruments in its 140-station Integrated Carbon Observation System. Another is used for climate research in an aircraft of the German Aerospace Center. mm
