"Hessen Ideas" honors start-up ideas at Hessen's universities

State Secretary Ayse Asar: "I am thrilled by the diversity, practicality and inventiveness shown to us here this evening. All the teams tackle problems they have encountered in their scientific, industrial or even private everyday lives and offer solutions to them - very often these are also resource-friendly and sustainable. Our 'Hessen Ideas' competition shows how many ideas are bubbling away at our universities. With the award, we would like to express our appreciation to the teams for their inventive spirit and their entrepreneurial actions. At the same time, the award motivates them to develop the business idea further. The 'Hessen Ideen' network will support all participating teams in the further implementation of their ideas. I warmly congratulate all the award winners on their success."

The first prize of 5,000 euros was awarded to Raul Acuna, Robin Ziegler and Victor Jimenez from Darmstadt Technical University with their "Caliberation" project: the team has developed a dynamic, fully automated process that can significantly simplify the time-consuming and expensive process of camera calibration. Sandra Moritz, Alisa Schmidt, Jonathan Gail, Sandra Martens and Tobias Tschang from Justus Liebig University in Giessen received the second prize of 3,500 euros for the "PlasmaPanel" project: The team has declared war on multiresistant germs with a new sterilization method. The third prize of 2,000 euros went to Simon Schild von Spannenberg, Till Fabian Kaupe and Max Frederik Luh from Darmstadt Technical University for their "SprayPatternator" project: The team developed a system that examines spray processes for errors and optimizes them - for example, in spray cooling in the forging industry or in agriculture. The audience award was won by Katharina Rückert, Louisa Zoé Wenkemann, Sebastian Seibert and Dominique N. Gerlach from the TU Darmstadt with their project "NAKT": The team has developed a sustainable, chemical-free and reusable care cloth for exfoliating and removing makeup.

The "Hessen Ideen" competition for university start-up ideas was held for the fourth time this year. It is aimed at university members with an affinity for start-ups who are still at the beginning with their idea for a company. The 13 participating universities in Hesse submitted a total of 28 ideas for the competition. Various experts evaluated the projects, while users voted for their favorite idea at www.hessen-ideen.de. The idea was well received. This was well received: around 5,000 votes were cast. In this way, eleven business ideas made it to the finals and presented themselves to a jury, which decided on the winners.

The evening of the awards ceremony also saw the presentation of teams of founders who will receive the Hessen Ideas Scholarship from January 1 next year. The scholarship is aimed at university members and graduates who are in the early stages of developing their knowledge-based business idea. Since April 2018, creative minds can receive a living allowance for six months during the elaboration of their knowledge-based business idea. In parallel, the grant recipients go through the "Ideas Accelerator," a coaching and qualification program in which they are made fit for starting their own business. So far, 43 start-up projects have been funded with the scholarship; the first start-ups have now been established.

"Both the 'Hessen Ideen' competition and the 'Hessen Ideen Stipendium' are part of the 'Hessen Ideen' initiative, with which we motivate potential founders from universities to embark on the path to entrepreneurial independence and provide concrete support in the transition from an initial entrepreneurial idea to a convincing business concept. We are supporting this initiative with 2.9 million euros," said State Secretary Ayse Asar.