In the TU Darmstadt Ideas Competition 2012, Walter Schäfer and Prof. Cameron Tropea took first place with their start-up idea “Entwicklung von optischen Messgeräten zur Sprayanalyse” – the development of optical measuring instruments for spray analysis. The university newspaper hoch3 reported on the winners in its February 2013 issue.
- Award: 1st place, TU Darmstadt Ideas Competition 2012
- Start-up idea: Development of optical measuring instruments for spray analysis
- Winners: Walter Schäfer, Prof. Cameron Tropea (Institute of Fluid Mechanics and Aerodynamics)
- Certificate: Darmstadt, 10 December 2012
- Press: hoch3 – the newspaper of TU Darmstadt, February 2013, page 9
What hoch3 Reported
Under the headline “Tröpfchen, Apps und Energie – Die besten Geschäftsideen des Jahres” (droplets, apps and energy – the best business ideas of the year), hoch3 presented the winners of the competition in its “Ausgezeichnet” (awards) section.
- Winning project: A measuring instrument for the optical analysis of droplets was named the winner of the Ideas Competition 2012. According to the article, the method is needed in freeze-drying and in painting processes.
- The technical idea: Established methods were unsuitable for non-transparent particles and for droplets of suspensions and emulsions. Walter Schäfer, then a doctoral student at the Institute of Fluid Mechanics and Aerodynamics, had further developed known methods so that such particles can also be measured reliably and with little instrumentation effort in technical systems.
- Strong competition: The idea prevailed against 80 other business ideas from students, graduates and researchers of TU Darmstadt. With 81 entries, participation had nearly tripled compared with the previous year.
- Prize: First place came with prize money of 3,000 euros.
- Organizer and sponsors: The competition was run by the TU Darmstadt start-up advisory service, which had invited ideas to be pitched to an expert jury every year since 2007. The 2012 competition was supported by Umicore, Sparkasse Darmstadt, ISRA VISION, Merck KGaA and Software AG.
From Idea to Company
The award-winning start-up idea marked the step from doctoral research to a company: in 2013, ai-quanton was founded as a spin-off of TU Darmstadt. Background on the technology behind the winning idea: TU Darmstadt Ideas Competition 2012 – First Place for Optical Droplet Analysis. Earlier in 2012, the measurement technique had been presented at ACHEMA: ACHEMA Daily 2012 – Measuring the Size and Velocity of Particles and Droplets.
