AIT India 2025/26: LAYERED
Meet Selen Ercan Jenny, one of the ten participants in the 2025/26 edition of the Academia-Industry Training India programme.
Interview with Selen Ercan Jenny
“LAYERED addresses the challenge of providing surface coating/finishing to building structures by its novel spray-based printing-in-motion technology. We develop and employ a learning-based optimization and adaptive control approach that enhances efficiency and precision.”
What problem does your startup solve, and why is it important to you personally?
LAYERED addresses the challenge of providing surface coating/finishing to building structures by its novel spray-based printing-in-motion technology. We develop and employ a learning-based optimization and adaptive control approach that enhances efficiency and precision.
LAYERED GmbH was incorporated in 2024 as a startup company coming out of ETH Zurich and NCCR DFAB in Switzerland. The technology has its roots in numerous research projects (one being my PhD research project) and collaborations at ETHZ, including the labs GKR, RSL and ASL as well as SUPSI (Laboratory of Automation, Robotics and Machines) at a later state. The project has continuously included co-working approaches in tandem with local surface coating/finishing contractors, and several other players from the construction/automation industry, who are now transitioning to be the first clients/pilot adopters of our technology.
What inspired you to become a sciencepreneur, and what has been your biggest “aha!” moment so far?
I have always been interested in science-based research since my early years of studying. I moved to Singapore to work at the Singapore-ETH Centre (Future Cities Lab) for an application-oriented project, which was in the field of construction robotics. This was the first step in me starting to become an entrepreneur and seeing the major potential of transferring research to real-world applications. It also highlighted the potential of transforming a traditionally slow-moving industry, namely construction, and making building processes safer, more efficient, and more sustainable.
What unique perspective does your academic background bring to your startup?
Putting crucial emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches, building on technological advantages and advancement. My academic background gave me over 10 years of experience in leading interdisciplinary construction robotics projects in Switzerland and Singapore. I am now advancing ML-driven fabrication processes, autonomous robotic systems on work sites, and XR-based developments at LAYERED. Having the experience in research collaborations and on-site technology validation allows me to ensure the scientific and technical rigour of LAYERED’s innovations.
What’s one surprising lesson you’ve learned since launching your startup?
How important and difficult it is to find the right team and right partners (most of the time right points of contact) to drive the innovation effort forward!
If you could host a dinner with three innovators (past or present), who would they be and why?
I will have to adopt a contemporary perspective in answering this question, as most of the time, in the current phase of my life, most of my innovative inspiration and exchanges come from great colleagues, collaborators, project partners, and industry partners’ R&D teams. Therefore, I am grateful for the ecosystem we are in. I would very much like to continue to enjoy spending more time in this context and enter into more informal exchanges (as these are the source of most interesting ideas and innovation steps!).