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The win­ning teams of the 2025 Innov­a­tion Contest

11.07.2025

The annu­al NEU­LAND innov­a­tion com­pet­i­tion gives sci­ent­ists at KIT the oppor­tun­ity to present their prom­ising research pro­jects to an expert jury from industry. The jury eval­u­ates the sub­mis­sions in terms of their innov­a­tion poten­tial and selects the win­ning teams. Prizes are awar­ded in two cat­egor­ies: the Idea Prize and the Tech­no­logy Trans­fer Prize. The lat­ter was rein­stated after a one-year break and restruc­tur­ing in 2025. Fol­low­ing the award, the win­ning pro­jects will be act­ively sup­por­ted by KIT’s innov­a­tion man­age­ment on their way to mar­ket­able application.

We con­grat­u­late the teams on their out­stand­ing achieve­ments and wish them every suc­cess in the fur­ther devel­op­ment and imple­ment­a­tion of their ideas.

1st place ​“Reac­TUNE: Auto­mated react­or design for the industry of tomorrow”

Reac­TUNE is an innov­at­ive soft­ware tool for the auto­mated design of react­or geo­met­ries in chem­ic­al pro­cess engin­eer­ing. The solu­tion reduces the pre­vi­ous design effort from sev­er­al months to just 45 minutes and gen­er­ates ready-to-use 3D print files. The soft­ware com­bines com­puter-aided design with numer­ic­al sim­u­la­tion, open­ing up new pos­sib­il­it­ies for the effi­cient, applic­a­tion-ori­ented devel­op­ment of com­plex react­or struc­tures, even for users without in-depth spe­cial­ist know­ledge. Already suc­cess­fully tested in meth­an­ol syn­thes­is, the team is cur­rently plan­ning the expan­sion of the soft­ware and a spin-off.

Award win­ners: M.Sc. Mert­can Kaya, Prof. Dr. Chris­toph Klahn

Insti­tute of Micro Pro­cess Engin­eer­ing (IMVT)

You can find an illus­tra­tion of the pro­ject in the short film: https://​www​.you​tube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​a​y​_​O​T​X​HlbRc 

2nd place ​“Hybrid extru­sion print­ing: struc­tured meat sub­sti­tutes from the 3D printer”

The hybrid extru­sion print­ing pro­ject opens up new aven­ues in the pro­duc­tion of plant-based meat altern­at­ives. The pro­cess com­bines indus­tri­al extru­sion with the pre­ci­sion of 3D print­ing to pro­duce tex­tured products such as plant-based steak or schnitzel. This innov­at­ive tech­no­logy allows the tar­geted repro­duc­tion of meat-like tex­tures and offers a sus­tain­able solu­tion to the increas­ing demand for altern­at­ive pro­tein sources.

Award win­ners: Markus Fisc­her, Dr. Nico Leister, Laur­ids Pernice

Insti­tute of Bio- and Food Pro­cess Engin­eer­ing (BLT, LVT)

You can find an illus­tra­tion of the pro­ject in the short film: https://​www​.you​tube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​_​B​4​b​t​G​p4yM4 

3rd place ​“CeraMMAM: Multi-mater­i­al ceram­ics for high-tech applications”

With the CeraMMAM pro­ject, the team at the wbk Insti­tute of Pro­duc­tion Engin­eer­ing has developed an innov­at­ive bind­er sys­tem for the addit­ive man­u­fac­tur­ing of multi-mater­i­al ceram­ics. This enables max­im­um pre­ci­sion and opens up new fields of applic­a­tion in medi­cine, mech­an­ic­al engin­eer­ing and aerospace. The approach offers great poten­tial for the pro­duc­tion of com­plex, func­tion­ally graded ceram­ic components.

Prizewin­ners: Chant­al-Liv Lehmann, Johannes Schubert, Prof. Dr. Fre­derik Zanger

Insti­tute of Pro­duc­tion Engin­eer­ing (wbk)

You can find an illus­tra­tion of the pro­ject in the short film: https://​www​.you​tube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​0​s​L​T​9​2​iiH2I 

Tech­no­logy trans­fer prize for tri­ti­um analysis

The ​“Micro-Raman sys­tem for the detec­tion of hydro­gen iso­to­po­logues” pro­ject was awar­ded the trans­fer prize. The sys­tem was developed at the Insti­tute of Astro­particle Phys­ics togeth­er with the indus­tri­al part­ner smolsys ltd. from Switzer­land. It is used for the pre­cise ana­lys­is of hydro­gen iso­topes and is inten­ded for future use in tri­ti­um mon­it­or­ing in fusion react­ors and in heavy water analysis.

Prizewin­ners: Dr. Robin Größle, Dr. Alex­an­der Marsteller, Dr. Flori­an Priester

Insti­tute for Astro­particle Phys­ics (IAP) — Tri­ti­um Labor­at­ory Karls­ruhe (TLK), com­pany part­ner: smolsys ltd. Switzerland

You can find an illus­tra­tion of the pro­ject in the short film: https://​www​.you​tube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​h​b​d​q​m​a​14sH4 

Thanks to sup­port­ing com­pan­ies and the jury

Our sin­cere thanks go to the ded­ic­ated jury mem­bers and the com­pan­ies whose sup­port made the Innov­a­tion Con­test 2025 possible.

Sup­por­ted by: KIT Found­a­tion

In cooper­a­tion with: KIT Cam­pus Trans­fer GmbH (KCT), Schleich­er Found­a­tion, Chris­ti­an Bürk­ert Found­a­tion, BW Bank

Source

KIT Neu­land

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