Eloïse Minder, winner of the 2023 Bourgogne-Franche-Comté National Pépite Grand Prize

A career marked by competitions

Eloïse Minder has always wanted to start her own business, ever since her first year in Master of Science MTI3D Master of Science . She has participated in several competitions, including Les Entrep' de Bourgogne and the Défi Chal'enge. For the first competition, the challenge was to develop virtual reality business meetings featuring avatars gathered around a table, while the second involved creating an augmented reality simulator for Framatome.

She is also participating in the “IEEE 3DUI Contest,” organized as part of the IEEE VR conference in April 2021. She and a fellow Master of Science student Master of Science mentored by Frédéric Mérienne and Jean-Remy Chardonnet to develop a rehabilitation tool for people affected by COVID-19. Their application, named “Rebirth-20,” allows users wearing immersive glasses to perform a series of exercises in a virtual world. These physical exercises—involving movement, breathing, and relaxation—are based on those used in cystic fibrosis rehabilitation. Virtual Reality immerses the user in a bubble, a cocoon, where they can escape to the sounds of nature. The app also serves as a prevention tool, with a virtual guide helping users learn how to limit the spread of the virus. Invisible in the real world, the virus is modeled in the virtual world. 

Building on this momentum, she is now pursuing her second year of Master of Science the PEIT and PEPITE BFC programs.

During PEIT, I had many discussions with stakeholders and realized that I had focused my project on a very technical issue that didn't really suit me. I also understood that I needed to better understand how people can communicate naturally and fluidly in Virtual Reality. In fact, PEIT allowed me to refocus my project on a subject that really interests me.

Laval Virtual and the IVRC Award marked a turning point in his entrepreneurial project.

The turning point came when shepresented the "Rebirth-20" project at Laval Virtual. She won second prize in the "IVRC Award" student competition and then the honorary prize at the latest edition of the Interverse Virtual Reality Challenge (IVRC) in Japan. Interverse Virtual Reality Challenge (IVRC) in Japan. 

Following these two challenges and with her Master of Science ) degree in hand, she is pursuing her doctoral studies with the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté Region, which offers the "Researcher-Entrepreneur Pathway" grant. She is also participating in the PEPITE Bourgogne-Franche-Comté initiatives and launching the business creation project "OCTOPUS." This project offers training and tools to support existing training programs through the use of Virtual and Augmented Reality, targeting the healthcare sector and cleanrooms.

At the same time, she wants to start a second business related to her thesis. She wants to use these three years of doctoral study to develop her project, which will be related to her thesis title at LISPEN: "Optimization of social interactions in Virtual Reality."

Watch the portrait of Eloïse Minder filmed in June 2023.