FSU Jena has been awarded as “Gründerhochschule” by BMWi. FSU Jena hosts the K1, a startup incubator department that supports the development and process of startup ideas and foundation of companies.

It offers coaching, evaluation of business plans, support in fund-raising as well as the allocation of office space during the first startup phase.

K1 is funded by EU, the Thuringian governmentand STIFT. By the support of K1 and the supervision and mentoring of Professor Joachim Denzler, the group generated already two successful startups, Enshape (now: Cognex-EnShape GmbH) and ICO-LUX in 2014 and 2018 respectively.

Both companies apply modern machine learning methods to generate new
products and sensors.

DLR offers a central support for technology transfer and marketing such as K1 that support scientists at DLR-DW to develop ideas for startups and in finally setting up a company.