The Founding Team
The founding team and the origins of the So Sponge project.
So Sponge was born from the collaboration between two researchers: Mélaz Tayakout, professor at UCBL, and Elsa Jolimaitre, research engineer at IFPEN.
Their work focuses on transition aluminas, porous materials based on aluminium oxide. These materials have the ability to condense gases below their saturated vapour pressure through confinement in mesopores.
By exploiting the affinity of these solids for water vapour, they decided to use their thermodynamic properties to capture this vapour through capillary condensation — regulating humidity spontaneously and without external energy input, like a sponge with liquid water.
The project was selected as part of the "Tech4Earth" call for projects, supported by PULSALYS and the University of Lyon, enabling concept validation and a patent filing in May 2021.
During the incubation phase in 2022, the two co-founders welcomed Guirec Courbon, who took charge of structuring the entrepreneurial project, leading to the official launch of So Sponge in early 2023.
Providing sober, robust and sustainable humidity control solutions.
So Sponge is hosted at Axel'One Campus, a collaborative innovation platform dedicated to fundamental research on advanced materials and processes, located at the heart of LyonTech-la Doua Campus in Villeurbanne.
