Privacy policy

Privacy policy

Version of 12 October 2026

1. Scope

Thank you for visiting the website of the Foundation for Technological Innova-tion (Stiftung für technologische Innovation – STI). The protection of your per-sonal data is important to us. Below, we inform you about how we handle your data when you use the website sti-stiftung.ch. We comply with the re-quirements of Swiss data protection legislation, in particular the Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP).

2. Controller

The controller responsible for data processing on this website is:

Stiftung für technologische Innovation STI
c/o Bern University of Applied Sciences – Engineering and Computer Science
Quellgasse 21
CH-2502 Biel/Bienne
Switzerland

For any data protection matters, please contact:

Katja Jeanbourquin
Phone: +41 32 321 62 37
Email: katja.jeanbourquin@sti-stiftung.ch

3. Processing of personal data

Personal data means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person.
Processing means any handling of personal data, in particular the collection, storage, retention, use, modification, disclosure, archiving, deletion or destruc-tion of data.

a) When visiting the website for information purposes

When you use our website for information purposes only, i.e. if you do not register or otherwise provide us with information, we do not process any personal data other than the data transmitted by your browser to enable you to visit the website. These are:

  • IP address of the requesting device
  • Date and time of the request
  • Time zone difference to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)
  • Content of the request (specific page)
  • Access status/HTTP status code
  • Amount of data transferred in each case
  • Website from which the request originates (referrer URL)
  • Browser type and version
  • Operating system used
  • Language and version of the browser software

b) When you contact us

If you contact us, we process the personal data you provide to us (e.g. sur-name, first name, email address, postal address, telephone numbers). Where necessary, we also obtain personal data from publicly accessible sources, e.g. the internet, press publications, the commercial register, etc.

If you wish to use our services, you can click on the relevant buttons on our website and will then be visibly redirected to the website of our partners (in particular Berner Kantonalbank BEKB or be-advanced AG). From that point on, the privacy policies of those websites apply.

4. Purposes of data processing

We process personal data for the following purposes:

  • Handling your enquiries
  • Fulfilling our obligations when you use our services
  • Operating and administering the website
  • Compliance with legal and any other applicable requirements.

We reserve the right to use selected data in anonymised form for other pur-poses (in particular statistical analyses).

5. Cookies

Our website uses cookies. Cookies are small text files that your browser stores on your device. They contain, for example, information on language preferences, session data or pages visited. You can generally prevent the use of cookies by disabling the storage of cookies in your browser.

6. Web analytics

a) Use of Matomo (formerly Piwik) for web analytics

This website uses Matomo, an open-source software for the statistical analy-sis of visitor access. Matomo uses so-called “cookies”, text files that are stored on your computer and enable an analysis of your use of the website.
The information generated by the cookie about your use of this website is stored on our server. The IP address is anonymised before storage by storing only the first two bytes of the IPv4 address, e.g. only 192.168.xxx.xxx (xxx = not stored). This allows a very rough geolocation, but no conclusions can be drawn about the current location of the internet connection.
The information generated by the cookie about the use of this website is not passed on to third parties. You can prevent cookies from being stored by ad-justing the settings of your browser software accordingly; please note, how-ever, that in this case you may not be able to use all functions of this website to their full extent.
If you do not agree to the storage and use of your data, you can deactivate this here. In this case, an opt-out cookie is placed in your browser that pre-vents Matomo from storing usage data. If you delete your cookies, the Mato-mo opt-out cookie will also be deleted. The opt-out must be reactivated when you visit our website again.

b) Local integration of web fonts (Google Fonts)

For the uniform display of fonts, this website uses so-called web fonts (Google Fonts), which are hosted locally on our server. When you open a page, your browser loads the required web fonts directly from our server into your browser cache in order to display texts and fonts correctly.

No connection to Google servers is established. Consequently, no data (such as your IP address) is transmitted to Google.

7. Social Media

Our website contains a link to our LinkedIn page. As soon as you click on it, you enter the LinkedIn environment, to which the privacy policy of that provider applies.

You can find LinkedIn’s privacy policy here: LinkedIn Privacy Policy.

8. Disclosure to third parties

In the context of processing personal data when you visit our website, your personal data will not be transferred to third parties for purposes other than those listed without your consent.

Personal data may be disclosed to search engine operators, where applicable to operators of the analytics tools mentioned, and to manufacturers/suppliers (website developers and operators, support).

9. Your rights

Under Swiss data protection legislation, you have the following rights:

  • The right to request information about the personal data we process about you;
  • The right to request the rectification of inaccurate personal data or the completion of incomplete personal data we hold about you;
  • The right to request the deletion of the personal data we hold about you, insofar as the processing is not necessary for the performance of our contractual obligations and/or our statutory retention obligations, for the exercise of the right to freedom of expression and information, for rea-sons of public interest, or for the establishment, exercise or defence of our legal claims;
  • The right to withdraw any consent you may have given (for example for a newsletter or similar) at any time. As a result, we may no longer continue any data processing based on such consent in the future;
  • The right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. You may do so with the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC).

10. Data security

During your visit to our website, we use the widely used SSL/TLS protocol (Se-cure Sockets Layer / Transport Layer Security) in conjunction with the highest level of encryption supported by your browser. As a rule, this is 256-bit encryp-tion. You can tell whether an individual page of our website is transmitted in encrypted form by the closed key or padlock symbol in the address bar of your browser.

We also use appropriate technical and organisational security measures to protect your data adequately against accidental or intentional manipulation, partial or complete loss, destruction or unauthorised access by third parties.

11. Retention period

We retain your personal data for as long as we consider necessary or appro-priate to comply with applicable laws (in particular retention obligations) and to fulfil our obligations, or for as long as it is necessary for the purposes of the processing.

12. Validity and amendments to this privacy policy

This privacy policy is currently valid and dated 12 October 2026. As our web-site and the services offered through it evolve, or due to changes in legal or regulatory requirements, it may become necessary to amend this information. You can access and print the current version of this privacy policy at any time on the website under “Privacy policy”.