tech&fest 2025

Ming Shan Digital Experience
ANT. Image © EPFL+ECAL Lab / Marvin Merkel
tech&fest 2025
Ming Shan Digital Experience
ANT. Image © EPFL+ECAL Lab / Marvin Merkel
tech&fest 2025
Ming Shan Digital Experience
ANT. Image © EPFL+ECAL Lab / Marvin Merkel
tech&fest 2025
Ming Shan Digital Experience
ANT. Image © EPFL+ECAL Lab / Marvin Merkel
tech&fest 2025

At tech&fest 2025 in Grenoble, the EPFL+ECAL Lab presents two design research projects that open new perspectives for successful innovation in the well-being and healthcare fields. The transition from technological performance to widespread adoption by all stakeholders involved in new therapies is a critical challenge. Design plays a key role.

Well-being and the mind.
One specific research track of the EPFL+ECAL Lab is on altered states of consciousness, with a view to improving well-being using technology. The Ming Shang Digital Experience project combines the practices of Taoism, a culture dating back thousands of years, with contemporary design and technology to support meditation. Whilst using the deck, meditators receive individual biofeedback in real time in the form of light and sound. Moreover, the three decks sonically harmonise to support collective meditation. The device is now installed and active in the temple of Europe’s largest Taoist centre. Its design and impact were the subject of a publication at SIGGRAPH conference and recognised by the Swiss Design Prize. The results of this research will also soon be used in a medical project aimed at alleviating syndromes of dementia.

Tinnitus: design at the heart of the therapeutic process.
Almost a billion people worldwide suffer from tinnitus. In the majority of cases, the noise experienced does not come from the ear, but from the brain, which considerably limits the possibilities of treatment. A new therapeutic approach consists of training the area of the brain that generates this noise to carry out other tasks. This involves a series of exercises for patients that includes seeing a visualisation of their brain activity. This visualisation is at the heart of the process: stimulating, without distracting, comprehensible without overloading cognitive activity, and capable of generating commitment over several sessions. The transdisciplinary project Advancing Neurofeedback in Tinnitus combines both medical research and design research. The EPFL+ECAL Lab was thus able to create an initial general framework for the visualisation of brain activity. The initial results were published at the end of 2024, and trials with patients will begin in 2025. The project is mainly funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Health is one of the main pillars of development for the EPFL+ECAL Lab, with contributions in the field of the use of artificial intelligence for diagnostic tools and the treatment of pain, delirium and nutrition.