Both nominated developments are closely linked to people's everyday lives and represent a kind of digitalization that promotes economic and social progress in equal measure.
Representing Carl Zeiss Meditec on the team are ZEISS experts Dr.-Ing. Michelangelo Masini and Frank Seitzinger, who are joined by Prof. Dr. med. Andreas Raabe from the Swiss Inselspital (University Hospital of Bern). Their development, the ZEISS KINEVO® 900 robotic visualization system, helps enhance the efficiency and efficacy of spinal and neurosurgery. The market-shaping innovation helps doctors to improve patients' quality of life while driving medical progress. Comprising more than 100 innovations and 180 patents, the system marries robotics, digital visualization and modern assistance solutions. The development team worked with global clinical partners to define and develop a 3-in-1 system that unifies microscope, exoscope and endoscope components.
With their project, titled "EUV Lithography – A New Light in the Digital Age," Dr. Peter Kürz from the ZEISS SMT segment, Dr. Michael Kösters from TRUMPF Lasersystems for Semiconductor Manufacturing, and Dr. Sergiy Yulin from the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering (IOF) in Jena, have all been nominated and thus shortlisted for the award. EUV stands for "extreme ultraviolet" light, i.e. light with an extremely short wavelength. The technology can be used to produce much more high-performance, energy-efficient and cost-effective microchips than ever before. After all, effective digitalization requires computing power to continue rapidly increasing: today's smartphones are a million times more powerful than the computer that was taken along on the first Moon landing back in 1969. This is made possible by a microchip that is smaller than a fingertip but has the capacity to accommodate more than ten billion transistors.
The three nominated teams have made a sizeable contribution to developing and preparing EUV technology for industrial series production. The result? A future-ready technology with more than 2,000 patents to back it up, that forms the basis for future technological progress and the digitalization of our daily lives (further information on the nominations: www.zeiss.com/dzp-nomination).
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"We are delighted to have received two nominations for the Deutscher Zukunftspreis. It is a nod to the high innovative power that ZEISS stands for, and it reflects the enthusiasm for development and the courage for innovative thinking that permeates and unifies the segments of the ZEISS Group," says Dr. Ulrich Simon, Head of Corporate Research and Technology at ZEISS, adding: "Scientific breakthroughs are particularly successful when companies and top researchers collaborate in a networked way. Here at ZEISS, the link between science and industry has grown throughout its history and it is firmly anchored in the company's structure.“