Jörg Schwarzbich Inventor Award

J.-Prof. Dr. Sabrina Backs

Juniorprofessorin für Gründungsmanagement/Gender im Gründungsprozess

E-mail: sabrina.backs@uni-bielefeld.de
: Homepage
Telephone: +49 521 106-67617
Room: UHG V9-142

Since 2019, the Bielefeld University Society (UGBi) and Bielefeld University have jointly presented the Jörg Schwarzbich Inventor Award. This award honours outstanding scientific inventions and innovations that have the potential to make a lasting difference to people's lives. The award winners come from various disciplines and are honoured for work that combines both scientific excellence and practical applicability. The award, which comes with prize money of 40,000 euros, is one of the most prestigious honours at Bielefeld University. The focus is on projects that are not only theoretically forward-looking, but also offer concrete solutions to current social challenges.

Award winner 2024

The 2024 prize winners are Prof Dr Thorsten Kaiser and Dr René Staritzbichler with their idea for a novel development of improved procedures in laboratory diagnostics. The jury awarded the prize due to the great innovation in diagnostics and because the patent has already been granted and the method is in use. Further information can be found here: https: //aktuell.uni-bielefeld.de/2025/01/20/zukunft-der-labormedizin-ausgezeichnet/

Awarding of prizes

Application: All members of Bielefeld University can be nominated - students as well as employees and professors; a team of several inventors is also possible. Both own applications and recommendations are permitted. However, in order to be considered, the invention must be (or already be) protected by industrial property rights such as a patent, utility model, design or trade mark or a company must be founded with the invention. The selection criteria for the award are the level of invention, practical application, market potential and clearly recognisable benefits for the economy and society.

The deadline for applications starts on 1 March and ends on 30 April. Applications can be submitted here.
Jury: The members of the jury are the founder Jörg Schwarzbich, Herbert Vogel and Dr Birgit Vemmer as well as Prof. Dr Reinhold Decker, Prof. Dr Armin Gölzhäuser and JProf. Dr Sabrina Backs from Bielefeld University.
Award ceremony: To date, the award has been presented at the Annual General Meeting of the Bielefeld University Society. For 2024, the prize has been awarded at the Rector's annual reception. Further information can be found here: https: //aktuell.uni-bielefeld.de/2025/01/20/das-war-der-neujahrsempfang-der-rektorin-2025/. From now on, the award ceremony will take place at this event.
About the founder Jörg Schwarzbich: Since 2019, Bielefeld entrepreneur Jörg Schwarzbich has made it possible for the Universitätsgesellschaft Bielefeld (UGBi) to receive the annual prize money of 40,000 euros. The money from ROLLAX Kugellagerfabrik, a company of Jörg Schwarzbich Holding GmbH, is channelled into the Jörg Schwarzbich Inventor Award.

Jörg Schwarzbich is an inventor himself and is registered with the German Patent and Trade Mark Office in Munich with a large number of patents in the three-digit range. With his numerous patented key inventions and company start-ups, he epitomises the fact that the innovation process is driven by people - people with a spirit of discovery.