idw – Informationsdienst Wissenschaft
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
idw - Informationsdienst
Wissenschaft
The Matena innovate! Center, an affiliated institute of the University of Bremen, is launching four new projects for up to three years with 1.5 million euros in funding. The goal is to apply excellent foundation research in materials science to marketable applications more quickly.
The Matena innovate! Center was founded in 2024 and is supported by the Joachim Herz Foundation. It picks up where traditional innovation chains fail, whereby research often gets stuck at the prototype stage. Here, it closes the systemic gap in knowledge and technology transfer. The center brings together researchers from the field of materials science with experts in transfer and innovation management. This promotes patenting and the establishment of start-ups from the projects.
Researchers from the MAPEX Center for Materials and Processes at the University of Bremen can initiate project funding together with the Matena innovate! Center through a multi-stage application procedure. The Matena innovate! Center steering group has selected four new transfer projects that have successfully completed this process. This means that seven research projects are currently being supported: Three transfer pilot projects on the production of environmentally friendly zinc-ion batteries, sustainable feed in aquaculture, and novel hydrogen sensors have been running since the beginning of 2025.
Overview of the New Transfer Projects
The goal of the Use Swarf project is to upcycle grinding sludge – a waste product generated during grinding work, especially in metal processing. In Germany, almost 200,000 tons of this waste are generated annually. The participating researchers are developing a process to reuse grinding sludge as a high-quality resource, namely in the manufacturing of wear-resistant coatings.
Use Swarf is coordinated by Dr. Anastasiya Tönjes from the Leibniz Institute for Materials Engineering – IWT. Project partners are PD Dr. Daniel Meyer, Dr. Nils Ellendt, and Dr. Lasse Langstädtler from Leibniz-IWT and the University of Bremen.
The Twinspace project is developing a novel robot system for manufacturing lightweight components in the aviation industry. The process involves automatically laying carbon fibers on top of each other, thereby reducing production costs and increasing energy efficiency. The robot system will also be used to simulate time and material-intensive test runs through simulations and processes in real time. This can be achieved with so-called semantic digital twins. These are digital models of the production plant that combine physical models with data-based AI technologies. In this way, the system combines artificial intelligence with the latest findings from materials science and manufacturing technology.
Twinspace is coordinated by professor Michael Beetz at the AICOR Institute for Artificial Intelligence at the University of Bremen. The project partner is Faserinstitut Bremen e.V. (FIBRE) under the direction of Professor David May.
The Ostenit project is dedicated to a novel optical sensor designed to improve quality and resource efficiency in the surface treatment of steel products. Energy-intensive nitriding processes are the industrial standard for hardening steel surfaces and are essential for many applications in the automotive and aerospace industries. In this project, the scientists are developing a sensor that will, for the first time, enable the layer growing during the nitriding process to be detected directly on the component in the furnace and actively adjusted. Thanks to the new in-process sensor technology, the quality of the surface treatment can be significantly improved. At the same time, direct edge zone monitoring on the component will result in considerable energy savings.
The project is based on close, interdisciplinary collaboration between Professor Andreas Fischer from the Bremen Institute for Metrology, Automation and Quality Science at the University of Bremen (BIMAQ) and Dr. Jérémy Epp and Dr. Matthias Steinbacher from the Leibniz Institute for Materials Engineering – IWT.
The Sustainable Gas Treatment in Steelworks project addresses the immense amount of CO2 produced during steel production and the problem of treating it. Carbon dioxide-containing gases produced during steel production can be converted using catalytic gas treatment. This produces substances that can then be reused as energy sources or raw materials. The project aims to use this catalytic gas processing in combination with hydrogen to produce synthetic fuel. It seeks to prove that this approach makes a clear contribution to CO₂ reduction.
The project is coordinated by Professor Jorg Thöming, head of the Chemical Process Engineering department in the Faculty of Production Engineering at the University of Bremen.
“Make a social contribution to a more sustainable future”
Prof. Dr. Jutta Günther, President of the University of Bremen, emphasizes: “Research into sustainable materials and technologies is a focus of excellence at the University of Bremen. However, our top researchers not only aspire to conduct ambitious research, but also to contribute to solving social problems. This is exactly what the Matena innovate! Center promotes. We are delighted about the new projects and partnerships.”
“We are excited about the outstanding project ideas in the field of materials, technology, and sustainability, and will work with the teams and partners to bring this excellent research to market maturity. We look forward to working together to master the technology transfer to an industry-ready solution and thus also make a social contribution to a more sustainable future,” says professor Kurosch Rezwan, Scientific Director of the Matena innovate! Center and chairperson of the steering group.
"With the projects we are now launching, the teams and Matena are demonstrating how excellent research can be translated into concrete solutions for key challenges – from material upcycling and AI-supported production to energy and CO₂ reduction. With Matena, we are creating the structures to provide targeted support for this approach – at the intersection of laboratory, application, and market," adds Dr. Jan Wedemeier, Managing Director of the Matena innovate! Center.
"Relevant solutions to very specific contemporary problems in the areas of climate protection and resource efficiency are currently being developed in Bremen. The findings on new materials and technologies as well as the sustainable recycling of raw materials are not limited to basic research, but are on their way to market maturity. This is exactly what we want to achieve with our funding for the common good," says Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dr. Sabine Kunst, Chair of the Board of the Joachim Herz Foundation.
Prof. Dr. sc. ETH Kurosch Rezwan, JHS innovate! Zentrum MaTeNa gGmbH, Phone +49 421 218-64930, Email: krezwan@uni-bremen.de,
Dr. Jan Wedemeier, JHS innovate! Zentrum MaTeNa gGmbH, Phone +49 160 1625207
Email: matena@uni-bremen.de
https://www.joachim-herz-stiftung.de/en/research/innovate-center
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Materials sciences
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Cooperation agreements, Research projects
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