Collective Incubator Receives an Award

The Collective Incubator took over the former Garbe, Lahmeyer & Co. machine factory and has transformed it into a space buzzing with activity. The success of the co-innovation platform with state-of-the-art maker space initiated at RWTH has now been recognized with the 2023 Century Engineering Award from the MSAO Future Foundation. The award is presented to companies and institutions for outstanding engineering achievements in sustainability and innovation with considerable societal impact. The award winners are selected according to continent each time. In 2023, the prize focused on Europe.

Relevance for Society

The Collective Incubator won over the jury by creating a basis for the development of a new generation of founders with societal impact. In the meantime, several successful startups have emerged from the Collective Incubator. Voltfang and cylib, for example, are startups addressing the problem of used lithium batteries. The patented fiber production process developed by the startup FibreCoat enables the cost-effective production of metal-coated fibers. “We are very proud to be able to tackle a new milestone in the history of the Collective Incubator with this award. The increased collaborations and partnerships with other countries and universities is an essential step toward our goal of becoming the largest incubator in Europe,” explained Timon Rochholz, Chair of the Collective Incubator. To this end, the Collective Incubator strives to maintain dialogue and exchange with the other universities supported by the Excellence Start-up Center.NRW initiative and to continuously enhance its services by visiting other incubators in Germany and abroad.

What is the Collective Incubator?

The Collective Incubator is a co-innovation platform that sparks interactions between students, researchers, founders, and companies, promoting entrepreneurship and a spirit of innovation at both RWTH and FH Aachen University of Applied Sciences. With the University and its intellectual, infrastructural, and technological resources nearby, an infrastructure has been created that offers student projects, initiatives, founding teams, and startups an ideal environment for founding and growth. More than 250 teams work on innovative product developments and business models on site. The Incubator offers students a space to design innovation, to network, and to access different specialist areas.

The Collective Incubator e.V. was founded in 2017 as a project of the AStA Students’ Committee. The joint project with RWTH was launched in 2019 with funding from the “Excellence Start-up Center.NRW”.

–  Author: Sven Wamig