Award Ceremony: The new Stars in Berlin’s Deep Tech Sky
Mould hunters, blood sugar lasers, protein designers, anti-hacker architects and underwater robots: these are this year’s Deep Tech Stars from Berlin. On Thursday evening, the awards, with which Berlin honours its most innovative start-ups and companies from the Deep Tech sector, were presented for the ninth time. The awards are endowed with prize money of 10,000 euros each and were presented in the categories “Artificial Intelligence”, “Sustainable & Social Impact”, “Web3.0 – DLT, Blockchain, NFT & Metaverse” and, new this year, “Photonics and Quantum Technologies” and “Robotics”.
From almost 100 applications submitted and a shortlist of 15 nominated teams, one winning team per category was selected by an expert jury. The decisive criteria for the decision were the degree of innovation and the market potential of the technological solutions submitted. Franziska Giffey opened the awards ceremony and honoured the winners in front of around 200 guests.
Franziska Giffey, Senator for Economics, Energy and Public Enterprises: “We are working to make Berlin the number one centre of innovation in Europe. The deep tech sector plays a driving role in this. Today, our city is a growing Deep Tech location where findings for innovative products and applications are emerging from the depths of research. With the awards, we want to make this development and its most outstanding examples visible. The award-winning companies show how diverse the areas of application of the innovations developed are and strengthen our ambition to further position Berlin as a deep tech hotspot. The establishment of a Deep Tech Hub at MotionLab.Berlin in May of this year and the upcoming launch of the Deep Tech Mentoring Programme are further building blocks on this path. I congratulate all the finalists and especially the winners of this year’s Deep Tech Award.”
The Senate Department for Economics, Energy and Public Enterprises has been promoting and awarding the Deep Tech Award since 2015. The award is a flagship event for Berlin’s deep tech scene and emphasises the growing importance of the industry for Berlin as a location for innovation and business.
The winners of the Deep Tech Award 2024 are:
Deep Tech Star in the category “Artificial Intelligence”: Cambrium GmbH
Cambrium is a pioneer in the development of sustainable material building blocks through its AI-supported protein design technology. Their innovative materials such as NovaColl™, a vegan, skin-identical micromolecular collagen, aim to replace conventional materials derived from oil and animal products and make everyday products more environmentally friendly.
https://www.cambrium.bio/
Deep Tech Star in the “Photonics & Quantum Technologies” category: DiaMonTech AG
The Berlin-based company DiaMonTech has developed a device that measures blood glucose levels non-invasively. Their product D-Pocket uses mid-infrared laser technology to excite glucose molecules in the skin. The thermal energy generated by the excitation of the molecules can be measured and the blood glucose level can be determined quickly and reliably.
https://www.diamontech.de/
Deep Tech Star in the “Robotics” category: EvoLogics GmbH
EvoLogics GmbH develops and produces wireless underwater communication systems that are based on bionic concepts and combine advanced technology with findings from nature. The Quadroin, an autonomous underwater vehicle with a streamlined, penguin-like design and camera and sensor systems, enables a variety of underwater application scenarios: The detection of crashed aircraft wrecks, the search for missing persons, detection of aerial bombs or seabed surveying. The fast and manoeuvrable Quadroin can be operated by a single person and can work for ten hours without interruption during a normal survey trip.
https://evologics.com/
Deep Tech Star in the “Sustainable & Social Impact” category: SAFIA Technologies GmbH
SAFIA Technologies GmbH specialises in particle-based rapid test methods for the detection of contaminants in food, with a focus on mycotoxins. Their tests enable the simultaneous detection of several toxins and thus represent a faster, more cost-effective and user-friendly alternative to conventional methods.
https://www.safia.tech/
Deep Tech Star in the category “Web3.0 – DLT, Blockchain, NFT & Metaverse”: Staex GmbH
Staex offers a service package for IoT devices that cannot use a VPN, such as smart meters, IP cameras or chargers for electric vehicles. These devices often face the challenge of being able to connect securely to the internet. A central component of their solution is the encryption of outdated communication protocols (e.g. http) so that communication between the devices or to external endpoints cannot be attacked by hackers. On the other hand, Staex offers a so-called multi-hop architecture that simplifies the construction of complex networks. This enables an improvement in network performance, network reliability and network scalability. Staex thus enables larger and more complex networks with a large number of IoT devices.
https://staex.io/
The application phase for the Deep Tech Award 2025 will start in February next year. Berlin-based companies with an innovative product can be nominated here. You will be informed at the start of the application phase.
