The spin-off PoLightFilters took first place at the Demo Day of the North Rhine-Westphalia accelerator program HIGH-TECH.NRW. The team impressed a high-caliber jury with optical filter technology developed at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and accepted the €10,000 prize from NRW Minister of Economic Affairs Mona Neubaur. Angle-stable optical filters from Cologne-based research PoLightFilters develops angle-stable thin-film optical filters for precise imaging and sensor systems. The technology enables reliable spectral filtering even at large angles of incidence, thereby opening up new applications in areas such as fluorescence microscopy and endoscopy, LiDAR systems, industrial monitoring, as well as diagnostics and sensor technology. The team’s goal is to enable the next generation of miniaturized medical imaging—a field in which maintaining image quality becomes increasingly challenging as devices continue to shrink. The technology stems from research conducted by the group led by Prof. Dr. Malte C. Gather at the Humboldt Centre for Nano- and Biophotonics (HCNB) / Institute for Light and Matter and is based on work carried out as part of the ERC Advanced Grant HyAngle. The founding team currently consists of Elena von der Heyden, Andreas Mischok, Emma Puttock, and Ahmed Gaber Abdelmagid. Since 2024, the startup initiative has received approximately 1.1 million euros in funding through the federal government’s EXIST Research Transfer Program and is also supported by an ERC Proof-of-Concept project. Ten Deep-Tech Teams at Demo Day in Essen The Demo Day on June 3, 2026, at the TÜV NORD Campus in Essen marked the conclusion of the eighth batch of HIGH-TECH.NRW. Ten selected deep-tech startups from North Rhine-Westphalia presented their solutions to an expert audience from industry, investment, science, and politics. HIGH-TECH.NRW is the first accelerator in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia specifically targeting hardware- and technology-driven startups in research-intensive fields. As the program’s patron, Mona Neubaur, Minister for Economic Affairs, Industry, Climate Protection, and Energy of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, presented the prize money. The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry extends its warmest congratulations to the entire PoLightFilters team on this success.
