(AGENPARL) – STUTTGART mer 22 giugno 2022

Awarding ceremony for young entrepreneurs on eve of the 73rd Max Planck Annual Meeting

A special occasion requires a special location: in a former church in the heart of Berlin-Charlottenburg, the young team of the start-up Meshcapade was presented with the newly established Start-up Award jointly presented by the Max Planck Society and the Stifterverband. Around 100 invited guests followed the award ceremony and the spirited debate on the challenges of technology transfer in Germany. The event was a festive prelude to the 73rd Annual Meeting of the Max Planck Society, which is being held in Berlin from 22 to 23 June.

“It started as an experiment, now we have the chance to open up new industries with our avatars,” said CEO Naureen Mahmood when asked how Meshcapade, the start-up she co-founded, planned to use the prize money of 50,000 euros. Founded in 2018 from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, the 15-member team led by Mahmood and Talha Zaman, co-founder and CFO, develops digital 3D human doubles – with promising opportunities for the fashion, gaming and film industries, but also for areas of medicine and healthcare. In addition to equipment, the company plans to invest in new employees to expand the team, which currently consists of 15 people. “Success is based on the people who work for us,” explains Naureen Mahmood. She wants to promote a remote working culture and increase the proportion of women in the technology industry.

Prior to the official presentation of the award certificates, Max Planck President Martin Stratmann, Cornelius Riese, Vice President of the Stifterverband, and Thomas Sattelberger, Commissioner for Transfer and Spin-offs from Science, took the opportunity of the award ceremony for a lively discussion on topic of technology transfer.

Fostering an entrepreneurial mindset

“In order to motivate young talents in science to found new companies, we need an entrepreneurial mindset,” said Sattelberger.  Scientific entrepreneurship was also inspired by the joy of creation. “There is still not enough buzz in our research system. Something really has to change here,” Sattelberger continued. The new start-up prize from the Max Planck Society and the Stifterverband is an important step towards fostering such a buzz and promoting an entrepreneurial spirit. President Stratmann made it clear that the Max Planck Society opens up diverse innovation spaces: “It is the young people who shape our research organisation. Our 9,000 doctoral students and postdocs create spaces of innovation throughout the Max Planck Society. One such vibrant innovative hub is Cyber Valley in Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg, where Meshcapade is based. In order for Germany to attract more international talent, Stratmann said that the legal framework conditions had to change. He criticised hurdles in the funding of research projects, such as the German Besserstellungsverbot, where employees in the same salary category cannot be offered different payment levels. Cornelius Riese, Vice President of the Stifterverband, also addressed the requirements of a start-up culture.

Further highlights on the agenda 

The Senate meeting on Thursday will come with a special announcement: the Chair of the Presidential Search Committee, Andreas Barner, will present the Commission’s proposal for a successor to President Martin Stratmann, who is stepping down from office in June 2023.

The Annual Meeting also has also some other highlights in store for the Max Planck community. The plenary assembly, for example, will be shining a spotlight on the two Nobel Prizes 2021 to Klaus Hasselmann and Benjamin List. The latter will answer questions from Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim in a live discussion on location. The science journalist, chemist and influencer Nguyen-Kim has been a member of the Senate of the Max Planck Society since 2020.  

Berlin unites the Max Planck Society’s history and future

“The capital of Berlin has always had a very special significance for the Max Planck Society. It is the founding site of our predecessor organisation, the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, and there are few places in Germany where our historical roots can be felt as strongly as in the Harnack House, our conference venue in Dahlem,” says President Martin Stratmann. The Max Planck Society maintains five Institutes and one research centre at its Berlin location: the scientists at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Infection Biology, the MPI for Human Development, the MPI for the History of Science, the Fritz-Haber-Institute the MPI for Molecular Genetics and the Max Planck Research Unit for the Science of Pathogens with the 2020 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Emmanuelle Charpentier, help drive the dynamics of research based in the capital.

Note: This article was updated on June 22nd, 2022..

Fonte/Source: https://www.mpg.de/18819535/max-planck-hv-2022