The AIT poster AIT AIT AUSTRIAN Institute of Technology specifically promotes entrepreneurial thinking and innovation spirit among young researchers-and thus creates the basis for future spin-offs and technology-driven startups. The focus is on research projects with clear application potential and perspectives for economic exploitation.
“Innovative research has to work real and enable scalable business models. This is exactly what we promote with the poster award,” emphasizes Alexander Svejkovsky, Managing Director of AIT. “Our goal is to encourage young talents to further develop their ideas directly in the context of market, application and social benefits and to think about the possibility of a successful spin -off at an early stage.”
Elf Diplomand: Inside, dissertant: Inside and junior scientists from six AIT centers presented future-oriented projects with application potential in digitization, sustainability, mobility and life sciences at the Poster Award 2025. The best work was awarded on May 27, 2025 at a solemn Award Ceremony.
The long-term collaboration with the Lower Austrian startup incubator Accent and the Venture Capital Fonds Tecnet Equity brings entrepreneurial know-how and promotes the transfer of research into marketable applications.
“Research results are the basis for future innovations and economic value creation. We support the scientists: inside the AIT to develop suitable exploitation strategies at an early stage and identify suitable financing. This knowledge of economic implementation should be conveyed to young talents as early
“Excellent research only fully unfolds your potential when it is communicated in an understandable and targeted manner. As a high -tech incubator, Accent helps to convert innovative technologies into sustainable business models – and thus paves the way from research to a successful startup.” Adds Michael Moll, Managing Director of Accent Inkubator GmbH.
“As a leading research institution, we deliberately take on an active role in the design of a strong Austrian innovation ecosystem,” explains Svejkovsky. “The Poster Award is an important component in order to successfully convert technological innovations from research into economic practice.”
First place: Revolutionary approach to reducing iridium in PEM electrolysers
This year’s first place in the AIT Poster Awards goes to Martin Krammer from the Center for Energy for his outstanding contribution to sustainable hydrogen production. In his award-winning poster, he presents a pioneering solution for one of the central challenges of proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolysis: the dependence on expensive and rare platinum metals-especially iridium.
With an innovative procedure, Martin succeeds drastically to reduce PGM consumption by up to a factor of 10 – an important step towards reducing costs and resource optimization. In addition, the manufacturing process is scalable and able to produce ultra -thin, nanostructured catalyst layers. Despite the significantly lower use of materials, these impress with high efficiency and stability.
This groundbreaking work lays the foundation for a scalable, cheaper and more environmentally friendly PEM electrolysis technology-and also opens up new applications in related areas such as fuel cell technology.
Second place: miniaturized quantum detector for quantum communication
Emmily Zaiser from the Center for Digital Safety & Security achieved second place with a compact, inexpensive and powerful balanced homodyne detector. Through clever use of standard components, this new detector is ideal for integrated systems in quantum communication, quantum computing and random number generation and enables broad technological scaling.
Third space: Canal emulator improves reliability of V2X technologies
Anja Dakić, also from the Center for Digital Safety & Security, convinced with her channel emulator that realistically simulated radio connections between vehicles under laboratory conditions. This enables reliable tests of the vehicle-to-everyding (V2X) technologies, reduces complex practical tests and contributes significantly to traffic safety and efficient mobility.
Spin-offs as a driver for technological innovation and economic success
“In recent years we have successfully founded seven spin-offs on AIT, two in the last year alone, others are in concrete preparation,” explains Sveajkovsky. “Our spin-off topics range from life sciences to digital platform economy to innovative solutions for urban development and infrastructure. This spectrum illustrates how usable and wide our research is.”
Cooperations with universities, funding agencies, incubators and industrial partners are primarily decisive for the sustainable success of the spin-offs. “We are creating a targeted networks in order to make the transition from research on economic implementation optimally and to build up long -term successful business models. This networked procedure is essential in order to establish innovations from the AIT effectively and scalable on the market,” concludes Svejkovsky.