Elaborate aims to save time for researchers

The image shows team members Sahand Salimi, Nina Knauf, Loïc Talide, and Sabin Bhandari.

ImageEvelinn Appelkvist

It was at the Innovation Boot Camp event that Sahand Salimi, Sabin Bhandari, and Nina Knauf, all pursuing a master's in Human computer-interaction and user experience, first met Loïc Talide, a PhD in molecular biology. Together they discovered how much time researchers are forced to spend on documentation rather than on actual research. By conducting dozens of interviews with researchers, the picture became clear: the documentation was often incomplete, inaccurate and difficult to use afterwards.

– When we met Loïc we learned about his frustrations with lab documentation. It felt strange that documentation is still mostly physical, with messy handwriting, missing info and poor organisation. After Innovation Boot Camp, we interviewed lots of researchers and saw it's a huge issue: not just a missing tech solution, but difficulties collaborating with the current documentation system too, says Nina.

The team works in the lab.

ImageEvelinn Appelkvist

With Elaborate, the team wants to change this. Together, they are creating a digital notebook for research documentation, built on scientific methodology and designed to adapt to researchers’ workflows. The goal is to make documentation an integrated and natural part of the research process, rather than a time-consuming sidetrack.

– I have worked in academic research labs and biotech companies for more than 10 years and nothing has been more frustrating to me than keeping up with my work documentation. I always felt that this process was a workload added on top of my work and not something that helped me during my work, says Loïc.

Lab environment and two 3D printers.

ImageEvelinn Appelkvist

The team is now testing the first version of their tool together with active researchers. And with support from the Innovation Office, they are continuing to further develop the tool, aiming to make researchers’ daily work more time efficient. In 2025, they also won first prize and SEK 30,000 from Nordea at Uminova Innovation’s Startup Program, marking a key milestone for the idea’s development.

– With Elaborate, we want to make each note more valuable and more usable so that lab documentation is not viewed as an archiving method anymore, but rather as a dynamic tool every researcher can use to share their results and produce their output literature, the team states.

Innovation Boot Camp is an annual multi-day event where participants can develop ideas together in teams with support from coaches and innovation advisors within the innovation support system. It provides participants with a space to test ideas, challenge themselves and explore new collaborations.