Published on July 23, 2020
Innovation Day NEULAND 2021 in retrospect
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For years, the Innovation Day NEULAND has been an integral part of the KIT calendar and of many people interested in technology and start-ups. On June 30, for the first time the Innovation Day took place in a purely virtual format for spectators. In digital presentations and exciting livestreams, this year's Innovation Day offered a diverse and varied program, which was well-received by a record number of about 1,200 digital guests. The eventful day was rounded off by a virtual 3D environment where participants could extensively inform as well as exchange information in the networking lounge or at booths of sponsors, start-up projects and technologies of KIT. More information can be found here.
"During the Innovation Day, we at KIT can get in touch with our community from business and science, but also involve our students", said Prof. Dr. Thomas Hirth, Vice President for Innovation and International Affairs at KIT, at the official opening together with Dr. Thomas Schneider, Managing Director of Development at TRUMPF Werkzeugmaschinen GmbH + Co. KG.
CEO of SICK AG gives keynote speech on digital transformation
The first keynote of the day was given by Dr. Robert Bauer, Chairman of the Executive Board of SICK AG, on the topic: "Sensor intelligence: Driver of digital transformation". In his presentation, Dr. Bauer addressed the question of how SICK AG is developing in the course of digital transformation. In doing so, he showed how and for what purpose SICK AG is using sensor intelligence to try to build bridges between innovations in specific fields of expertise and how digital transformation has also been anchored in the company's corporate culture.
Honoring the most outstanding innovations and industry cooperations
Following the keynote, there was reason to celebrate at the award ceremony of the NEULAND Innovation Competition: The winners of the two categories "Idea Award" and "Transfer Award" were announced. First place for best idea was won by Prof. Dr. Ute Schepers, Institute of Functional Interfaces (IFG), Prof. Dr. Pavel Levkin, Institute of Organic Chemistry (IOC) and Institute of Biological and Chemical Systems - Functional Molecular Systems (IBCS-FMS) and Prof. Dr. Stefan Bräse from the Institute of Organic Chemistry (IOC) for their project "LONGCOVIDMA: High-throughput testing of new efficient agents against LongCovid and Covid19 brain infections". First place in the Transfer Prize went to the spin-off of KIT Aquarray GmbH for the development of their droplet micro array technology.
More information on the nominees is available here.
The winners of the category "Idea Award" together with Prof. Dr. Thomas Hirth (3.f.l). (Image: Magali Hauser / KIT)
Prof. Dr. Thomas Hirth (1.f.r.) poses with the winners of the "Transfer Award" category. (Image: Magali Hauser / KIT)
Founder teams compete for the jury's favor
After the lunch break, the founder pitch of KIT-Gründerschmiede took place, where for the first time two international teams from Chile were allowed to prove themselves. The teams of Catavis, femfeel, GoQuantum (Chile), MARA Solutions, safeAD and Suncast (Chile) only had three minutes, to impress with their business idea. An expert jury consisting of Dr. Max Riedel (Zeiss Innovation Hub @KIT), Moritz Luck (SilverScale Capital), Dr. Gernot Berger (High-Tech Gründerfonds) and Alin Semenescu (Sparkasse Karlsruhe) then asked questions and evaluated the pitches. In the end, the team of Catavis had two reasons to be happy: The spin-off of KIT was ranked first in the jury's evaluation and also won the audience award.
More information on the participating teams and the founder pitch can be found here.
Managing Director for Development at TRUMPF gives keynote speech on co-creation
In the late afternoon, the second keynote of the day was given: Dr. Thomas Schneider, Managing Director of Development at TRUMPF Werkzeugmaschinen GmbH + Co. KG, dedicated his keynote to the topic of "Local thinking - global delivery: How tomorrow's products emerge from cooperations". Here, he gave an introduction to innovative technologies that are products of local cooperations and used these examples to explain the added value that co-creation adds to the emergence of global innovations. "That's what we want to cover today: Exciting challenges and transformations that need long breath. Long breath and success, trust of the partners, in each other, in their competencies, to achieve excellence with it." Moderated by Katrin-Cécile Ziegler, the presentation led into a concluding discussion with Prof. Dr. Thomas Hirth from KIT.
We would like to thank the event sponsors TRUMPF, ABB AG, Robert Bosch GmbH, Deloitte GmbH, Mercedes-Benz AG, SAP Next-Gen, Siemens AG, Carl Zeiss AG, startup bw and the Ministry of Economics, Labor and Housing Baden-Württemberg for their support. Furthermore, many thanks go to the sponsors of the founder pitch SilverScale Capital, Carl Zeiss AG, Sparkasse Karlsruhe and High-Tech Gründerfonds as well as the sponsors of the innovation competition NEULAND Deloitte GmbH, Robert Bosch GmbH, ABB AG and Baden-Württembergische Bank.
We are already looking forward to Innovation Day 2022! If you have praise or suggestions about Innovation Day, please feel free to email us at neuland@kit.edu.
The Innovation Day NEULAND 2021 was supported by:
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