Philippe Bechtold is a member of the peakPCR project and currently co-founder of the ETH spin-off Diaxxo AG. He obtained his PhD  in Prof Wendelin Stark’s group at the Institute for Chemical and Bioengineering (IBC) at ETH Zurich. His research stretches from coatings of metal surfaces for digital PCR applications to the development of PCR assays for the detection of different diseases. He joined the peakPCR project two years ago and has since engineered the ready-to-use consumables and the sample preparation steps. He holds an MSc degree in chemical engineering from ETH Zurich and has spent an exchange semester at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the USA.