The NEULAND Innovation Contest offers KIT scientific employees the opportunity to present their daily research work to an independent jury of industry representatives. The jury evaluates the most promising ideas and projects on the basis of a point system. The winners of the two categories "Idea Award" and "Transfer Award" will receive prize money of up to 3,000 euros. In addition, all participants of the contest can expect funding for their product ideas from the KIT Innovation Fund.

The award already exists at KIT since 2013. The annually recurring numerous applications for participation distinguish the high diversity of ideas and willpower to contribute to innovations of the scientific employees at KIT.

This year, the jury again met digitally and - even though it was not easy to choose among the many ideas and projects worthy of being awarded - selected its favorites.

In the Idea Award section, the following three ideas have been nominated for the award out of 18 submitted:

*Note: The order shown is based on the timing of receipt of the ideas. It is not an indication of the rankings.

Nominations of the category IDEA AWARD*

• „Bio-Inspired Heterometallic Polyoxometalate-Based Water Splitting Catalysts for Energy Conversion/Storage Processes“ by Dr. Masooma Ibrahim and Prof. Pedro de Oliveira
  Institute of Nanotechnology (INT)
• „Catavis – Rethink Chemistry“ by M.Sc. Patrick Bitterwolf, M.Sc. Sandra Kröll, Dr. Ahmed Zoheir, Prof. Dr. Christof Niemeyer and Dr. Kersten Rabe
  Institute for Biological Interfaces 1 (IBG 1)
  About the project: The vision of Catavis is the realization of a future-oriented, green chemistry. Learn more here.
• „LONGCOVIDMA: High-throughput testing of new efficient agents against LongCovid and Covid19 brain infections“ by Prof. Dr. Ute Schepers, Dr. Nicole Jung, Prof. Dr. Pavel Levkin, Prof. Dr. Stefan Bräse, Dr. Claudine Herlan, Dr. Anke Deckers and Dr. Anna Popova
  Institute for Biological and Chemical Systems - Functional Molecular Systems (IBCS-FMS) und Institute for Functional Interfaces (IFG)
  
  The Transfer Award honors application-oriented developments that were further developed for the first time last year in cooperation with industrial partners as part of transfer projects. Of the five cooperation projects submitted, the following three convinced the jury the most:

Nominations of the category TRANSFER AWARD*

• „RE3ASON (Renewable Energies and Energy Efficiency Analysis and System OptimizatioN) Modell“ by Prof. Dr. Wolf Fichtner and Dr. Kai Mainzer
  Institute of Industrial Management and Production (IIP) in cooperation with greenventory GmbH
  About the project: The RE3ASON model can be used to perform analyses to achieve sustainability goals, e.g. to determine energy demand and renewable energy potentials in communities.
• „Aquarray“ by Prof. Dr. Stefan Bräse and Prof. Dr. Pavel Levkin
  Institute for Biological and Chemical Systems (IBCS) in cooperation with Aquarray GmbH
  About the project: The spin-off Aquarray GmbH has brought a novel, innovative product to market with its droplet micro-array technology, which has the potential to become a game-changer in the field of high-throughput screening and at the same time to do something in terms of sustainability through lower reagent consumption.
• „Development of a user-friendly cost-optimizing planning tool for nuclear decommissioning projects considering material flows for resource planning (NukPlaRStoR)“ by Prof. Dr. Frank Schultmann, Dr.-Ing. Rebekka Volk and M.Sc. Marco Gehring
  Institute of Industrial Management and Industrial Production (IIP) in cooperation with RODIAS GmbH
  About the project: Development of a user-friendly cost-optimizing planning tool for nuclear decommissioning projects taking into account material flows for resource planning (NukPlaRStoR).

A total of 6 great projects that deserve a festive award ceremony! We are pleased to be able to present the award winners live again this year, although under limited conditions. The Innovation Day will be broadcast live from the ZEISS Innovation Hub @KIT on June 30, 2021.

Join us on our digital innovation journey and look forward to other exciting program items in addition to the award ceremony. You haven't registered yet? You can do so right here.

See you at the digital Innovation Day NEULAND and keep your fingers crossed for the nominees!