Technology Transfer Prize Ceremony 2025
AI generated image © HZB
This year’s Technology Transfer Prize Ceremony will take place on October 13 at 2 pm in the Lecture Hall, BESSY II Building, Adlershof.
Every two years, the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) honors outstanding achievements in technology transfer with its Technology Transfer Prize, endowed with a total of 10,000 euros. The award recognizes and promotes the contributions of HZB employees and former employees who have successfully transformed scientific research into practical applications—new products, services, or processes that make a tangible impact.
This year, HZB received 15 impressive applications, demonstrating the creativity and entrepreneurial spirit across the institution. From these, an independent jury selected six outstanding projects that will compete for the main prize:
- ULTEON – Proof-of-Concept and Spin-off Incubation to Help Reboot PV Manufacturing in Germany and Europe
Dr. Siddhartha Garud, Dr. Kevin J. Prince - Development of a Miniaturized and Portable Quantum Sensor for the Detection of Free Radicals in Several Industrial Applications
Dr. Michele Segantini - ClearWater
Dr. Carsten Walter, Dr. Prashanth W. Menezes - NEPTUNE – Revolutionizing Liquid Phase Analytics by Nanoscale Electrochemical Probes
Dr. Neha Jha, Dr. Martin Munz - Raster-Röntgenmikroskop mit Photoelektronendetektion zur nanoskaligen Oberflächencharakterisierung
Prof. Dr. Gerd Schneider, Dr. Stefan Rehbein - The Constant Light-Induced Magneto Transport (CLIMAT)
Dr. Artem Musiienko
The Technology Transfer Prize Ceremony not only honors scientific excellence but also celebrates the spirit of innovation and collaboration that drives HZB’s mission. Importantly, it’s not just the jury that decides—the audience will also have the opportunity to vote and help determine the winner of this year’s prize.
The event will be held in English. All colleagues are warmly invited to attend, celebrate the finalists, and take part in choosing the winner.
Programme
2:00 p.m. – Welcome
• Bernd Rech, Scientific Managing Director
• Moderation and Introduction: Jan Elmiger, Technology Transfer and Innovation
2:10 p.m. – Short presentations by the finalists
3:00 p.m. – Jury deliberation / Coffee break
3:30 p.m. – Award ceremony
4:00 p.m. – Finger food buffet
Event Details and registration
Date: 13 October 2025
Time: 2:00 pm
Venue: Lecture Hall, BESSY II Building, Adlershof
- BESSY II: Phosphorous chains – a 1D material with 1D electronic propertiesFor the first time, a team at BESSY II has succeeded in demonstrating the one-dimensional electronic properties of a material through a highly refined experimental process. The samples consisted of short chains of phosphorus atoms that self-organise at specific angles on a silver substrate. Through sophisticated analysis, the team was able to disentangle the contributions of these differently aligned chains. This revealed that the electronic properties of each chain are indeed one-dimensional. Calculations predict an exciting phase transition to be expected as soon as these chains are more closely packed. While material consisting of individual chains with longer distances is semiconducting, a very dense chain structure would be metallic.
- Did marine life in the palaeocene use a compass?Some ancient marine organisms produced mysterious magnetic particles of unusually large size, which can now be found as fossils in marine sediments. An international team has succeeded in mapping the magnetic domains on one of such ‘giant magnetofossils’ using a sophisticated method at the Diamond X-ray source. Their analysis shows that these particles could have allowed these organisms to sense tiny variations in both the direction and intensity of the Earth’s magnetic field, enabling them to geolocate themselves and navigate across the ocean. The method offers a powerful tool for magnetically testing whether putative biological iron oxide particles in Mars samples have a biogenic origin.
- What vibrating molecules might reveal about cell biologyInfrared vibrational spectroscopy at BESSY II can be used to create high-resolution maps of molecules inside live cells and cell organelles in native aqueous environment, according to a new study by a team from HZB and Humboldt University in Berlin. Nano-IR spectroscopy with s-SNOM at the IRIS beamline is now suitable for examining tiny biological samples in liquid medium in the nanometre range and generating infrared images of molecular vibrations with nanometre resolution. It is even possible to obtain 3D information. To test the method, the team grew fibroblasts on a highly transparent SiC membrane and examined them in vivo. This method will provide new insights into cell biology.