Siemens honors the 12 "Inventors of the Year" 2018

The CAIPIRINHA technique for faster and better MRI scans developed for Siemens Healthineers by scientists Mark Griswold and Peter Jakob is a good example for the importance of open innovation. Peter Jakob (55, r.) is professor of experimental physics at the University of Würzburg, an internationally renowned talent hotbed for MRI researchers. Mark Griswold (42) is professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, US, specialist in magnetic resonance imaging hardware, MR fingerprinting and quantitative imaging.
Both inventors met back in the 90s and started collaborated research in MR. For his doctoral thesis, Griswold invented the famous GRAPPA method, a precursor of the Caipirinha method, and one of the first parallel imaging methods, at University of Würzburg. After that Jakob and Griswold developed Caipirinha, a technique for MRI scans which Siemens Healthineers uses by way of licence. Caipirinha is a combined data acquisition and reconstruction method that allows the images that were taken at the same time to be separated again, which greatly improves their quality. Both researchers stress that they close friends. Their collaboration with Siemens Healthineers continues to this day. Jakob and Griswold are being honored with an Open Innovation Award.

Passengers traveling on Rhine-Ruhr Express trains in Germany will soon benefit from improved cell phone reception – thanks to a trio of inventors from Vienna. Connections keep breaking up because train carriages act like giant Faraday cages, from which radio waves simply bounce off. Mehrdad Madjdi (56,r.), Lukas W. Mayer (38,m.) and Andreas Demmer (32,l.) have developed a special structure for windows coating that reduces their shielding effect and considerably enhances cell phone reception. The invention is the result of successful cooperation between the divisions Mobility and Corporate Technology in Austria. The inventor trio was honored with an Outstanding Invention award.

Wind farms or oil and gas production facilities are installed at sea with the help of jack-up constructions, services and drilling rigs. To firmly anchor the legs of these artificial islands to the seabed, Vemund Kaarstad (55) from Process Industries & Drives in Oslo, Norway, has invented an automatic control unit complete with the corresponding control strategy. The control unit ensures that the legs are not damaged or broken off entirely when these constructions, which weigh thousands of tons, are lowered or raised above the water. Kaarstad's system is already in operation on more than 70 jack-up platforms. The inventor received the award in the Outstanding Invention category.

During their search for a new composition of the ceramic thermal insulation layer of gas turbine blades, Werner Stamm (65,r.) and Arturo Flores Renteria (44) from the Power and Gas Division were the first to use a computer simulation based on density functional theory. They were thus able to come up with an innovative material mixture that – in theory – meets all the requirements without having to conduct lengthy experiments. This mixture is now being tested in practice. The research duo has been working together for years: Stamm in Mülheim an der Ruhr and Flores Renteria in Berlin. While Stamm, as a physicist, is responsible for the groundwork, mechanical engineer Flores Renteria above all makes sure of the practicability. They received the award in the Outstanding Invention category.

Launching a new product on the market takes some perseverance. Jean-Mary Martel (40) knows how you can keep motivating yourself on such a long road: The Principal Key Expert at Siemens Energy Management in Regensburg, Germany, runs ultramarathons of up to 100 kilometers and divides the distance up into smaller sections in his mind. The development of a smart arc fault detection device for low-voltage equipment also comprised milestones like this, culminating in a very successful market launch. Martel received the award in the Talents category.

Production methods are changing: new materials and technologies such as Additive Manufacturing can allow components to be produced more efficiently and effectively. But the traditional software programs for design do not even nearly exhaust the potential. Inventor of the Year Suraj Musuvathy (36) develops new algorithms at Corporate Technology in Princeton, New Jersey, aimed at catapulting design into the future. As a design basis, the new programs create lattice structures whose geometries are 100,000 times more complex than previously possible. The inventor has been honored with the Inventor of the Year award in the Talent category.

China is one of the most important markets for power transmission and distribution. At Corporate Technology in Peking, Jilong Yao (39) has developed several devices that integrate related technology into power grids. These include a safety device that protects transformers and a measurement device that transmits sensor readings using optical fiber, as well as modular solid-state transformer with power electronics. His technologies are being used around the globe. Yao's work is proof of the world-class research taking place at Siemens in China. This extremely versatile researcher has now moved on to the topic of drivetrain for robots. Yao received the award in the Talent category.