Meshcapade receives Max Planck Foundation Prize

The prize is still completely new: With it, the Max Planck Society and the Stifterverband want to promote the start-up culture in science.

The Tübingen-based start-up Meshcapade has received the Max Planck Start-up Prize from the Stifterverband. The company has developed a technique to automatically create 3D figures of people more precisely and realistically. Data sources such as images, sensor-based devices and body measurements are to be used for this purpose. The prize money the company is now receiving is 50,000 euros.

The result when the technology is applied: Avatars that will have their own facial expressions and reproduce subtle gestures and realistic movements. They are compatible with all standard 3D visualization programs. The technology is aimed primarily at the fashion, gaming and film industries. But according to the founders, it should also offer enormous potential in medicine and healthcare. The reason is that it can recreate real, lifelike people in 3D.

The company has long been in the Max Planck context: founders Naureen Mahmood, Talha Zaman and Michael Black had launched it in 2018 out of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen. Black is a director at the institute, and Mahmood serves as CEO for the company, which now has about 15 employees. "We're really proud to be the winning team of the Stifterverband's first newly aligned Max Planck Startup Award," she says, "It means a lot to us and will hopefully bring even more attention to our great technology."

The Stifterverband initiative of companies and foundations supported the redesign of the original science award for research. The award will be presented to the winning team on June 21, 2022, in Berlin. From now on, it will go to a successful spin-off from the Max Planck Society every two years. A jury chaired by Klaus Blaum, Vice President of the Max Planck Society, will then select the winning team from the applications received.