At the INNOVACE, the competition for young academic designers of ACE Stoßdämpfer GmbH, there was a premiere at the fifth edition:

For the first time, the jury made its decision on the winning design on the evening of the award ceremony. In an exciting final held at the company's headquarters in Langenfeld in the Rhineland, Paul Gipser from the Technical College, specializing in mechanical engineering at the Dresden Vocational School Center for Electrical Engineering was crowned the winner of INNOVACE 2022. His elaboration and presentation of a concept for the integration of a braking function in the hinges as active slam protection for windows and doors prevailed over the work of Suman Shrestha, a student of mechanical engineering at RheinMain University of Applied Sciences, Rüsselsheim. The winner was awarded a trophy and prize money of 5,000 euros by Dr. Peter Kremer, Managing Director of ACE.

"We are very pleased that this year, for the first time, the Innovation Award, which we launched in 2017, goes to a candidate from a technical school," says Toni Riediger, who is in sales at ACE and the Stabilus Group and has also been a contact person for the students and their accompanying teachers since the beginning. Dieter Wohlschlegel, Engineering Manager of ACE Stoßdämpfer GmbH, and the third member of the jury besides Niklas Backhausen, Development and Innovation Manager at ACE, and Toni Riediger, adds: "The solution presented by Paul Gipser to integrate two of our components in the hinge in order to achieve the desired protection of windows and doors against slamming has convinced us. We will continue to support Mr. Gipser in further elaboration as part of his final thesis in 2023." Dr. Peter Kremer praised the depth of detail of the winning work and expressed his great satisfaction with the quality of the concepts and elaborations submitted: "We congratulate all participants in INNOVACE 2022 and, in addition to Paul Gipser, would like to thank especially Suman Shrestha and Professor Dr.-Ing. Christian Jochum from RheinMain University of Applied Sciences, Rüsselsheim, as his academic supervisor for a final on eye level and two excellent presentations."Together with the parent company Stabilus, ACE Stoßdämpfer GmbH aims to develop the presented concepts with the young academics into production-ready solutions that will be of particular interest to companies from the building technology sector and their suppliers.

ACE will also host the INNOVACE student competition in 2023. The team from Langenfeld is working on the call for proposals for the sixth round and will publish more details in time in the trade press and on the company homepage:

www.ace-ace.de/de/news-presse/ace-awards.html