2023 Innovation Award: RWTH-Spun Startups Honored
Innovations ensure the future viability of our society. Technical innovations are essential to confront challenges such as climate change, with startups a key driving force here. RWTH-spun startups Accure and Cylib were recently honored with the 2023 NRW Innovation Award.
Accure was founded by Dr. Kai-Philipp Kairies, Dr. Georg Angenendt, and Dr. Johannes Palmerist in 2020. The company emerged from the Chair of Electrochemical Energy Conversion and Storage Systems, which is headed by Professor Dirk Uwe Sauer. Sauer (JARA-ENERGY) and cofounder Kairies accepted the award in the innovation2business category in Düsseldorf on Monday evening. Accure monitors battery performance, safety, and longevity based on big data and the use of AI. "This award means a lot to us," Sauer said, "because we are stepping up to change things with our research." Technologies need to be brought into the industry, says the chair and head of Europe's largest battery systems research group. The achievement was now recognized with the award, the jury stated: "The innovation2business award category honors individuals who have developed a successful business model from outstanding ideas for product or process innovations.” This category always goes to entrepreneurial innovation, where innovators create new products, services, or ways of doing things, while entrepreneurs turn those ideas into viable business concepts. The category is endowed with 50,000 euros, which is earmarked for research activities.
A press release from RWTH Aachen University. Further information and an interview with Prof. Sauer at: https://www.rwth-aachen.de/cms/root/die-rwth/Aktuell/Pressemitteilungen/September-2023/~bdsmon/Innovationspreis-2023-RWTH-Ausgruendung/?lidx=1