A jury consisting of four top-class IT decision-makers selected the best business
idea at the 8th Heidelberg Innovation Forum on 20th October 2009. The winner
is Prof. Christoph Cremer of the Kirchhoff Institute of Physics in Heidelberg.
He was awarded the "Best Business Idea" bwcon award by the business
initiative Baden-Württemberg:
Connected for his innovation - the world’s fastest light microscope for
the three-dimensional analysis of whole cells in the nanometre range. It exceeds
all previous resolution limits in microscopy, limits that were previously regarded
as unsurpassable.
33 researchers, developers and founders presented their ideas on the topic
visualisation and simulation technologies to investors and decision-makers from
industry. Six of the business solutions presented at the Innovation Forum in
Heidelberg came from the academic world. TLB, as patent exploitation agency
of the state of Baden-Württemberg, supports university researchers in the
patenting and marketing of their ideas as well as managing their application
for the annual Innovation Forum.
Prizewinner Prof. Christoph Cremer, Dr. Tilmann Schad (bwcon board of directors)
and MFG managing director Klaus Haasis (© EML) The bwcon award for the
best innovation was given for the third time in a row to inventors and cooperation
partners supported by TLB. The jury decided to award the "Best Business
Idea" bwcon award for particularly promising business ideas to Prof. Christoph
Cremer for his groundbreaking "Vertico SMI" light microscopy. The
Heidelberg researcher's patented method enables the presentation and analysis
of cells with a 2D spatial resolution of 10 nanometres and 40 nanometres in
3D in far-field images. The Vertico SMI has thus become the world's fastest
super-resolution microscope in the world, taking only two minutes from image
acquisition to the complete processing of objects in the nanometre range to
the final image. It takes less than three minutes for the more complex two-colour
co-localisation 2CLM.
The award includes personal business mentoring under the Coach & Connect
programme, which the bwcon business initiative has set up to support high-tech
business ideas on the road to becoming marketable products and services.
The Heidelberg Innovation Forum is organised by MFG Baden-Württemberg
and the European Media Laboratory. The members of this year's jury were: Dr.
Joachim Bernecker (business angel and active member of cyberforum e.V. of the
Karlsruhe Technology Region), Dr. Björn Momsen (High-Tech Gründerfonds
consultant), Dr. Andrew Reddick (Director of the National Research Council Canada),
Dr. Tilman Schad (member of the business initiative Baden-Württemberg:
Connected e.V. board of directors).
Posted November 3rd, 2009
