Cinetis’ history started at the Médiathèque Valais in Martigny in 2003. Its director, Jean-Henry Papilloud, was looking for an economically viable simple method to digitize its film archives. Two researchers at the University of Applied Sciences in Sion, Switzerland, notably Jean-Pierre Gehrig, embraced the project, and developed a first prototype of a new scanning device.

Prof. Antoine Perruchoud at HEV in Sierre came across the technology and decided to include it into his entrepreneurship program, called Business eXperience. Pierre Ihmle, a strategy and innovation teacher in this program got fascinated by the idea and pushed further until he founded Cinetis SA in 2005 together with Jean-Pierre Gehrig.

Cinetis’ mission is make film stock accessible and useable in numerical form for its clients.

Its vision is to become a major actor in this field in Switzerland and in Europe.

Management team

Pierre Ihmle and Jean-Pierre Gehrig

Dr. Pierre Ihmle Chairman and co-founder

Pierre Ihmle has a dual scientific and management career in top institutions in the USA and in Europe. Pierre worked several years as a project manager for McKinsey & Co, a management consultancy. Pierre is regularly involved in teaching programs at INSEAD and IMD, and teaches strategy, entrepreneurship, innovation and finance classes at various universities (EPFL, HES-SO). He is on the Advisory Board of Spectraseis, a geophysical start-up in Zurich. He serves on the Board of 2 non-profit organizations.

Pierre Ihmle holds a degree in natural sciences from the ETHZ in Zurich and a Ph.D. in geophysics from M.I.T. in Cambridge, USA

Jean-Pierre Gehrig CEO and co-founder

Jean-Pierre Gehrig is an expert in high speed communication interfaces. He is an electrical engineer by training with several year of experience in software development and in embedded system design acquired at University of applied sciences in Sion. He serves as a DSP software consultant to Oculix, a firm developing non-invasive methods for blood-flow measurement in the eye. He led the development of several film scanner prototypes. He co-founded Digi8 which provided film digitalization services in Western Switzerland and which is now absorbed by Cinetis SA.

Jean-Pierre Gehrig holds a B.Sc. in electrical engineering from the University of Applied Sciences in Sion, Switzerland.