Out of research, into self-employment: at present two junior researchers from the University of Stuttgart are following this path. Since 1st February 2011 Johannes Eckstein and Dr. Daniela de Oliveira Maionchi have been sponsored using funds from the EXIST founders’ grant. Their business idea sounds promising, especially since they are pioneers on the German market with this idea. In this respect they want to couple simulations of multi-body systems (these are complex mechanical systems) with particle dynamic simulations and offer these to customers from the service industry. The pair get their decisive impulses for successfully setting up a company through their cooperation with „Stuttgart Research Centre for Simulation Technol-ogy“ (SRC SimTech) and Institut für Technische und Numerische Mechanik (ITM).
What happens when liquids are filled poured into packaging? How do motor vehi-cle wheels
interact with the roads they are driving on? As simple as these ques-tions may seem, as complex and
CPU intensive are the demands on a computer simulation to give reliable answers to these questions.
Due to time and cost reasons but also due to a lack of know-how, models and procedures are
frequently used in industrial practice to solve such problems, but they do not provide any
sat-isfactory results. This is where the work of Johannes Eckstein and Daniela de Oliveira Maionchi
starts. „We couple multi-body simulations with particle simulations“, is how the 29 year old
engineer explained the service approach to the start- up project and adds: „The simulations we
calculate provide much more realistic results than is usual today in the industrial sector.“
To do this they use two software tools, the calculations of which they combine to make a
common simulation with the help of a module they have developed. Along with the commercial software
Simpack, which was made available to them free of charge by the operating firm of the same name
during the foundation phase, Eck-stein and his partner use the program Pasimodo. The particle
simulation software was developed at ITM, which is managed by SimTech research professor Prof.
Peter Eberhard. In general both founders of the new business are firmly anchored in ITM und in SRC
SimTech. de Oliveira Maionchi, born in Brazil, arrived at ITM four years ago in the framework of a
guest stay; Eckstein had already been work-ing as a student at the Institute since 2006. Along with
Prof. Eberhard and Prof. Peter Meinke, their two mentors also come from ITM. Finally, there is an
intensive cooperation with SRC SimTech, which is based on the interdisciplinary exchange with the
numerous experts from the excellence cluster integrated in the research centre.
The prospects of success for setting up a company in nearly nine months are good. Eckstein
and de Oliveira Maionchi have broken into a business segment where they are currently still
unrivalled on the German market. A reason for this is the computing powers that have increased
sharply in recent years. „The implementation of such coupled simulations as we want to offer them
has only become economically viable recently“, says the doctor of physics, who last worked as a
project manager at „Automotive Simulation Center Stuttgart“.
A further factor contributing towards a successful market launch at the end of 2011 could be the diverse range of applications of the simulations they offer. In this way potential customers can come from the automobile or railway industry just as much as from the process engineering or aerospace industry. However, the founders are hoping for good contacts to representatives from industry resulting from their co-operation with the Industrial Consortium SimTech i.V. linked to the SRC SimTech. Leading simulation researchers and developers from the region of Stuttgart join up with the users of the relevant software in this respect in order to exchange experiences and to initiate development trends.
For further information and interview questions please contact Felix Jansen (SRC SimTech), Tel. 0711/685-60097, email: felix.jansen@simtech.uni-stuttgart.de, www.simtech.uni-stuttgart.de
About SimTech:
Together with the excellence cluster „Simulation Technology“ (SimTech), the Uni-versity of
Stuttgart was successful in November 2007 in the competition of the excellence initiative of the
federal and state governments, who are looked after on the federal level by the German Research
Foundation (DFG).
The excellence cluster SimTech is the central core of the „Stuttgart Research Centre for Simulation Technology“ (SRC SimTech), which the University of Stuttgart already set up in April 2007 using the university’s own funds. SRC SimTech is a cross section centre and thus a linking element between the faculties. The diverse areas of expertise of the University of Stuttgart are bundled and further developed in the cluster in the field of simulation technologies. This is to enable Stuttgart to be positioned as an internationally leading location in this field in the long term.
Along with the broadly based basic research, teaching with own courses of study and a graduate
school with over 80 doctoral students, the transfer to industrial ap-plication is also promoted.
Notable firms, including Daimler and Bosch, support SimTech ideologically and financially.
