Research and development Siemens honors its best inventors

From Siemens | Translated by AI 3 min Reading Time

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The company has honored four female inventors and nine male inventors as "Inventors of the Year." More than half of the awarded innovations use artificial intelligence.

This year, Siemens awarded 13 people with the "Inventors of the Year" prize, including, for example, Ines Ugalde Diaz, who was honored in the Newcomer category.(Image: Siemens)
This year, Siemens awarded 13 people with the "Inventors of the Year" prize, including, for example, Ines Ugalde Diaz, who was honored in the Newcomer category.
(Image: Siemens)

Siemens has honored 13 outstanding researchers as "Inventors of the Year." The company awarded the prize in six categories: Newcomers, Open Innovation, Outstanding Invention, Design and User Experience, the PhD Award, and Lifetime Achievement. The awardees come from Germany, the USA, Spain, and Mexico. Peter Körte, member of the Managing Board of Siemens AG, Chief Technology Officer, and Chief Strategy Officer, says: "This year's winners improve many different areas of our daily lives with their inventions—be it with smarter rail infrastructure, more stable power grids, or patient-friendly mammography devices."

Certain criteria must be met for a nomination: In addition to past successes, such as granted or filed patents, contributions to business revenue, measurable business success, and significance for strategic partnerships are also decisive.

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From robotic arms and power grids to "safety bubbles"

The awarded inventions demonstrate how technology improves everyday life, with artificial intelligence (AI) playing a major role. An innovation awarded with the "Newcomers" prize uses AI to make robotic gripper arms more secure by using precise object recognition. Another winner has made battery production more sustainable: his solution uses sensor data with timestamps to analyze the production history of a material. A Siemens Healthineers inventor also received a "Newcomers" award: with her invention, doctors could utilize a 3D representation of blood vessels and a 4D video that makes the course of contrast agents visible in real-time. This can aid in the planning and execution of interventions on blood vessels.

An "Outstanding Invention" impressed with an AI algorithm that translates building management data into the Siemens standard, reducing effort by up to 70 percent. The other award in this category went to a trio that enables safety-critical rail programs to be run easily and securely in the cloud on standard computers.

AI is also driving the energy transition forward: the "PhD Award" recognized a method that predicts the load on local power grids. Even with limited data, it delivers precise results.

The "Design and User Experience" award went to two UX designers from Siemens Healthineers, who contributed to making workflows for medical staff more ergonomic and examinations more comfortable for patients by designing a new mammography device.

A researcher from Siemens Healthineers has been honored for his lifetime achievements, including the use of AI algorithms for the automatic capture and categorization of tissues, organs, and anatomies. This helps to automate imaging diagnostics and can assist doctors in reading and interpreting clinical images. The second lifetime achievement award went to an inventor who developed virtual safety zones for factory halls. These "Safety Bubbles" indicate the required minimum distance to machines, thus protecting employees from collisions with robots.

This year, for the first time, a startup company was awarded the prize in the "Open Innovation" category: Riiico GmbH, a provider on the open digital business platform Siemens Xcelerator, can transform scan data of entire factory halls into digital twins. The AI individually recognizes, extracts, optimizes, and transforms each scanned object into its digital counterpart. This accelerates the preparation of manufacturing simulations by up to 80 percent.

Research and development at Siemens

The "Inventors of the Year" pool comes from a large base: around 53,000 people currently work in research and development at the company. In the 2024 fiscal year, it recorded a total of 5,250 inventions, which is about 24 inventions per working day and three percent more than the previous year. According to the company, it filed 2,900 patent applications in the past fiscal year and holds around 45,000 granted patents in total. Investments in research and development amounted to approximately 6.66 billion US dollars, representing an increase of three percent compared to the previous year.

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