We sponsor · Non-profit organisations
data innovation alliance
The network that turns lab-grade data science into things that actually ship - and one of the rooms where Swiss AI gets decided.
- 2016
- founded, as a national data-science network
- 13th
- edition of its flagship conference in 2026
- 700+
- attendees at the 2025 Swiss Conference on Data Science
- 600+
- experts in its national Innovation Booster AI community
The story
Switzerland punches absurdly above its weight in data and AI - and a lot of the connective tissue runs through the data innovation alliance, formally the Swiss Alliance for Data-Intensive Services. Founded in 2016 out of ZHAW's Datalab, it exists to do one unglamorous, essential thing: get research out of the lab and into products.
Its flagship is the Swiss Conference on Data Science (SDS), which began in 2014 as a single one-day workshop and is now an IEEE-co-sponsored conference reaching its 13th edition in 2026 - with 700+ attendees and 50+ speakers at the 2025 edition alone. Around it runs a year-round machine of expert groups, on everything from responsible AI to NLP to data architecture.
Today the alliance is also Innosuisse's 'leading house' for the national Innovation Booster on Artificial Intelligence, an open-innovation engine drawing on a community of 600+ experts across industry and academia. If you want to know where Swiss data and AI is heading, this is one of the rooms where it gets decided.
Highlights
From one workshop to IEEE
Its SDS conference grew from a single 2014 workshop into an IEEE-co-sponsored event, now in its 13th edition.
A national AI engine
Innosuisse's 'leading house' for the Innovation Booster AI - a 600+ expert open-innovation community.
Research meets industry
Members span Swiss universities and companies; the whole point is turning data science into value.
The facts
- What
- The Swiss Alliance for Data-Intensive Services - a non-profit network connecting universities and companies to turn data-science research into real products, services and business models.
- Who
- Founded out of ZHAW's Datalab and led by president Christoph Heitz (ZHAW). Members span Swiss universities and industry.
- When
- Founded 2016; based in Thun.
- Where
- Switzerland.
Why we sponsor it
The hardest gap in technology is the one between a brilliant result and a shipped product. Data innovation lives in that gap - and so do we. The leaders we search for are increasingly the people who can move data and AI from promising to production.
Backing the community that builds those bridges keeps us close to the work, and the people, who matter most. There's a personal thread, too: the alliance was run for years by Gundula Heinatz - who also happens to be one of the chess champions we celebrate elsewhere on this page.