In the event of the 200th anniversary of H.C. Ørsted’s discovery of electromagnetism, Consibio was selected to represent AU’s entrepreneurs at the official opening event, where they also had the opportunity to tell HRH Crown Prince Frederik about their company.Photo: Mikal Schlosser / HCØ2020
The three founders of the student startup, Consibio, have all completed their studies and can now call themselves Civil Engineers in Chemistry and Biotechnology from Aarhus University. Since they started their company, they have been part of the incubation environment in ORBIT Lab at AU School of Engineering. Now, they are ready for the next step in their entrepreneurial journey as a part of Incuba, Navitas.
The company was founded in 2017, and since then the three founders have been part of ORBIT Lab at Katrinebjerg. Alongside their studies, they have developed their company and their product Monesco, which stands for Monitor, Estimate and Control.
Sustainability in focus
Consibio’s founders Søren Jessen Kjær, Emil Jakobsen and Johan Egsgaard Thomsen have high ambitions to contribute to the green transition. Together, they have developed a system that can measure e.g. humidity, temperature, pH and CO2 concentration via sensors. These are connected to modules that make it possible to adjust the temperature or CO2 concentration – e.g. in insect production, which is often referred to as a future food source.
Via a simple user interface, users can control what the system needs to adjust to achieve a given effect. In insect production, it is possible to optimize production by creating the optimal conditions for farming insects, for example by adjusting humidity, temperature and CO2 concentration and maintaining them at the optimal levels in relation to the type of production the system is connected to.
Furthermore, the system continuously collects data that the founders – with their professional backgrounds in chemistry and biotechnology – can translate into insights. These insights can be used for continuous optimization of various forms of production, to increase productivity and lower production costs and to reduce emissions and environmental impact.
In addition to insect production, Consibio also contributes to projects in urban farming, sustainable food production, biological air purification and greenhouse solutions. Although the company is young, and the three founders until recently had full-time studies alongside the company, they are already involved in several projects abroad – e.g. the Netherlands and China.
The three founders of Consibio, from left: Johan Egsgaard Thomsen, Emil Jakobsen, Søren Jessen Kjær. Photo credit: Lars Kruse.
Rewarding environment for student entrepreneurs
The starting point for the three fellow students was that they would use their knowledge of biological processes to create a simple platform – a platform that does not require insight into biological processes for the user. For the three founders, however, the simple platform would prove to be the biggest challenge. They were experts in the complex knowledge on which the platform was to be built, however, they had limited experience with both hardware and software. Precisely for this reason, they applied to become the student incubation environment in ORBIT Lab, where they, among other things, have had access to people with useful knowledge of hardware and software.
Johan Egsgaard Thomsen explains:
“It has been very rewarding for us to be part of the incubation environment in ORBIT Lab. Both in relation to technical sparring in the technical development of our platform, which consists of both software and hardware, but also in relation to the networking aspect. Some of the projects we have participated in have materialized because companies visiting ORBIT Lab were introduced to our company and approached us subsequently.”
Henceforth, Consibio can be found at Navitas 05.048. They are keen to maintain contact with the tech and incubation environment at Katrinebjerg – e.g. they will give a tech talk and act as judges in a hackathon in ORBIT Lab in collaboration with Toitware, October 27th.
Learn more about Consibio via their website and this video.