Fabia Gozzo made a beamline at the Swiss Light Source SLS of the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI into one of the world’s leading facilities and today she is making her knowledge available to industry with her spin-off.
In spring 2012 Fabia Gozzo faced an important decision: security or risk? After 12 years, she had resigned from her job at the Paul Scherrer Institute to move to Brussels with her family. Her husband had taken a post as vice president of a company. The two had previously agreed to emigrate if one of them got such a one-of-a-kind offer.
Fabia Gozzo was looking for a job too. Soon she had an offer for a position as laboratory head at a Brussels-based institute for nano- and microelectronics. The position would have been a comparable to the one she had held up to that point at PSI. Then I asked myself: For that, do I want to burden myself with the trouble of this big relocation?
, Gozzo says today. She found the answer was no. And instead, she founded her own firm: Excelsus Structural Solutions.
She had long had the idea of offering her experience in the analysis of material structures, which she had gained at the Swiss Light Source SLS, to the pharmaceutical industry. With the synchrotron light, the smallest devation from the desired solid structure in drugs can be detected – so their effectiveness can be improved. Gozzo and PSI signed an agreement for regular commercial use of a beamline at SLS. Now all Gozzo needed was customers. She gave herself two years to see if it would all work out.
>Read more on the Swiss Light Source at PSI website
Image: Fabia Gozzo is CEO and founder of Excelsus Structural Solutions.
Credit: Scanderbeg Sauer Photography