MotionLab.Berlin

🫂 Meet the team: Ulli, Lead IT & AI Infrastructure at MotionLab.Berlin. Behind every smooth day in a tech-driven lab is someone making sure the digital backbone stays rock solid. Ulli provides first-level support for our staff and colleagues, keeping systems configured, managing cable infrastructure, and troubleshooting network setup whenever something tricky needs resolving. His take on what makes MotionLab.Berlin special: 💬 "Being up here overlooking the floor gives me a sense of what MotionLab.Berlin is really about. I love seeing people handle tough, weird situations with different creative approaches to make something. What's special is that spontaneous spirit of sharing, having a quick chat, and feeling like you're truly part of something." 👀 His favorite spot in the lab: The Gallery overlooking the entire prototyping hall—the perfect vantage point to watch our community collaborate, solve complex engineering challenges, and build. Thank you, Ulli, for keeping our networks connected, our tech running smoothly, and our community supported every single day! 🔗 Curious about the team keeping MotionLab.Berlin moving? Visit our website or send us a message to connect.

A lecture hall feels like a pretty good place to talk about where deep tech starts. 🎓 On 28 October, Berlin Deep Tech Nexus is heading to Technische Universität Berlin for Meetup #13 — bringing researchers, students, founders, industry and ecosystem builders into the same room. That mix is what makes the Nexus special. Different parts of Berlin’s deep-tech ecosystem get to see what each other is working on, make connections early and follow how ideas and companies evolve over time. This time, there’s a lot to get curious about: 🧪 CIYANO — fossil-free chemicals for biomaterials 🛰️ gEICko from TU Berlin’s Chair of Space Engineering — technology for capturing and docking with uncooperative spacecraft 📡 Open Radio Systems — programmable radio infrastructure 🚀 Soltrac - Space Solar Solutions — deployable wings for satellites 🤖 VIRAS Solutions — manufacturer-independent robotics platforms We’re especially excited to see Ciyano back on the Nexus stage. They were part of our Hardtech Innovation programme at MotionLab.Berlin and they presented at Deep Tech Nexus a year ago. We’re looking forward to hearing how far they’ve come since. Come for the technology. Stay for the conversations and the people you didn’t know you needed to meet yet. 📅 28 October · 18:00 📍 TU Berlin, Einsteinufer 25 🎟️ Register to book your spot → https://luma.com/04wd1rzw MotionLab.Berlin is one of the proud partners behind Berlin Deep Tech Nexus, together with Science & Startups, Berlin Partner für Wirtschaft und Technologie GmbH, Deep Tech Berlin and Polish Tech.

From expanding our international footprint in New York to leveling up our prototyping floor in Berlin, September was a milestone month across the MotionLab.Berlin ecosystem. Here is a look back at how our community brought the energy last month! We kicked off with EIT Urban Mobility Drive Berlin, bringing urban mobility innovators together in the lab to accelerate sustainable transformation. A big thank you to Jennifer for moderating, and to Bliq, LEAP4, and ENYRING GmbH for taking the stage and showcasing their solutions on the floor throughout the day. Our Hardtech Innovation Batch 5 founders also gathered for an inspiring Fireside Chat, opening up candid conversations about the realities of navigating early-stage scaling, market integration, and commercial growth. A special thank you to Olivia Suchy from Ucaneo and Nicolas Jalby from Orbisens® for taking the stage and sharing their firsthand perspectives with the cohort September also took us global with Deep Tech in Motion in New York during Climate Week NYC alongside Berlin Partner für Wirtschaft und Technologie GmbH. From joining key meetups at New York Tech Meet Up, New York City Economic Development Corporation, Columbia University, and Newlab, to pitching alongside partners like SOSV HAX, our cohort represented Berlin's hardtech ecosystem on an international stage. Back on the lab floor, Paul unboxed our latest machinery upgrade—the xTool Official F1 Laser Engraver. This portable dual-laser unit expands our prototyping infrastructure, with Corinna already leading member onboarding workshops so everyone can leverage high-speed precision across metals, plastics, wood, and acrylics. To wrap up an incredible month, we co-hosted WE Day with Würth Elektronik Group. Bringing together our hardtech community, this day was packed with technical insights, hardware development exchanges, and strong community connections. From local prototyping breakthroughs to global ecosystem bridges, thank you to our team, partners, mentors, and members for driving hardtech forward every single day. 👉 Swipe through the carousel above to relive the highlights from September! ℹ️ The 'Hardtech Innovation Accelerator' is funded by the European Union (European Social Fund Plus) and the State of Berlin.' 📸 Photos by: Philipp Maximilian Czampiel

🎥 A week of Climate Week NYC, in 90 seconds. Our top takeaway: climate tech is starting to sound a lot less like idealism and a lot more like economics. The same shift came through in everyone's reflections afterwards. 💬 Dr. Till Strunge, CEO of Kalz: "Conversations have moved from 'is this possible?' to 'when can we build it?'" 💬 Ucaneo came home with the same impression: "The conversations have moved from 'if' to 'how, and at what cost?'" 💬 Franziska Ehrhardt of Berlin Business Office USA saw the same momentum, with technologies moving "from breakthrough to real-world scale through strategic partnerships and cooperation." Three things stayed with us: ■ Cities can be testbeds, not just customers ■ Hardware still faces a steeper funding wall than software ■ Resilience stops feeling theoretical when you walk out of a panel into a flooded street 💬 Marianna, who led the delegation: "I'd love to see much more experimentation in public spaces and more opportunities for startups to test solutions that could actually change daily life in Berlin." And a word about the group itself: a phenomenal line-up of founders, and one we were so proud to take to New York. Seeing Ucaneo and Spark e-Fuels exhibiting at Newlab was a highlight. Thank you all for representing Berlin so well. And to everyone who hosted us, opened doors, and shared their perspective: Newlab, New York City Economic Development Corporation, SOSV HAX, NY Tech Alliance, German American Chamber of Commerce, Inc. – GACC New York, Gotham Foundry, and Berlin Business Office USA. Thank you. 🔗 Thinking about your own international next step? Our Deep Tech in Motion 2027 delegations are already taking shape. Sign up for the waitlist at the link in the comments. ℹ️ Deep Tech in Motion is supported by the Senate Department for Economics, Energy and Public Enterprises and co-funded by the European Union.

Builders gonna build. 👷 And now we're hiring a Tech Talent Ecosystem Manager to help us build the next generation of deep tech talent. Around here, someone has a good (or crazy) idea, and most of the time nobody asks why. We ask how we do it, we ask what it needs, then we find a way to make it happen. Our Tech Talent Program is where that attitude gets passed on. Twice a year, engineering students jump in the deep end: 12 weeks, a real hardware challenge, and a real company waiting on the result. Batch 9 kicked off this week with 25 of them. They'll leave knowing what it takes to build something that actually gets used, and then plenty of them will go on to build a lot more. As our Tech Talent Ecosystem Manager, you'd shape and scale the program, turn our alumni into a talent pool our founders count on, and be the person students, professors, startups, and 100-year-old manufacturers all trust. You'll need to think strategically while also rolling up your sleeves, and occasionally you'll help move a few chairs. That's just how things work around here. We do it because we believe in it. So, if you want more from your job than a salary, and you want to go home knowing you gave someone their start, come build with us. Hit the link in the comments, drop us a DM, or tag someone who'd be perfect. 📸 A little throwback to our Munich trip with the Tech Talent students. And huge shout-out to Ali Salama for all the incredible work he's done getting the program to where it is today.

Is Europe already too late for robotics? Watch enough humanoid videos and it’s easy to think so. Alexander S. Gerfer, CTO of Würth Elektronik eiSos GmbH & Co. KG, thinks believing that may be the bigger risk. So we asked a better question: what race are we actually in? Alexander S. Gerfer, Will Fischer, Frederik Wegner, David Hanson, PhD and Fridtjof Gustavs took it on at WE Day. The conversation ran from robot form factors and funding clocks to Skunk Works, sex robots and what we might eventually owe the machines we make. Build Notes #01 is out, our new monthly dispatch from the MotionLab workshop floor 👇 What do you think Europe should be racing for?

"This is exactly the device I wished I had during my PhD." Dr. Lukas Porz said that about ILLU LAB, which his company ILLUTHERM launched today. The problem he's describing is one every materials scientist knows. A conventional lab furnace heats the air and the walls first, then waits for the sample to catch up. That's hours per experiment. ILLU LAB puts high-intensity blue light straight into the material instead, so the heat happens exactly where it's needed. A few experiments a day turn into a hundred. And while ILLU LAB launches today, the next chapter is already taking shape at MotionLab.Berlin. Five students are kicking off their ILLUTHERM challenge as part of Batch 9 of our Tech Talent Program. Over the next 12 weeks, they'll design and prototype a modular chamber that enables heating under vacuum and protective gas. That means tackling temperature, pressure and leak-tightness simultaneously, with a prototype that will be tested at ILLUTHERM's lab. A company launches its first product, and five students start engineering the next step on the very same day. That's what we call a good Tuesday. Congratulations to Lukas and the whole ILLUTHERM team. We can't wait to see what comes next! 🚀 #ILLUTHERM #TechTalentProgram #DeepTech #Hardtech #MotionLabBerlin

Alexander S. Gerfer needed ten components. Not ten thousand. Ten. Enough to build the next batch of prototypes for his startup. The distributor couldn't supply the other seven, and the manufacturer would only sell him 50,000, delivered in six weeks. He needed them in three. He opened his WE Day keynote with that story yesterday. It explains why, as CTO of Würth Elektronik eiSos GmbH & Co. KG, one of Europe's leading electronics manufacturers, he now spends a good portion of his time making sure nobody else is stuck the same way. Anyone who has built hardware knows some version of that story. One part that stops everything. One choice you don't find out was wrong until you're already trying to scale. His message: "You don't have to take these steps alone." That's the whole reason we work with Würth Elektronik. And if you're a member who hasn't used it yet: samples and components, PCB and EMI questions, pre-compliance testing, an engineer to call when a problem runs past what you know. Please do. It's sitting there waiting for you. Yesterday you could see why it works. Nobody was selling anything. Just engineers who build this stuff for a living, working through the questions in the room. EMC and switching supplies, connectors and thermal, wireless in industrial environments, robotics. The panel picked up the same idea from another angle. Will Fischer talked about the American notion of a skunkworks: take smart people, strip out the unnecessary friction, give them resources, let them build. David Hanson, PhD responded that from what he can see, MotionLab.Berlin already has "a kind of skunkworks culture where people can come in and build things." We'll take that. Thank you to the Würth Elektronik Group team, Thomas Waldmann, Lorandt Fölkel, @René Linde and Kevin Elert. To Kai Peters from Analog Devices. To Will Fischer, Frederik Wegner and David Hanson, PhD for joining the panel with Alexander S. Gerfer and Fridtjof Gustavs. And to everyone who came with a prototype, a question, or something they'd been chewing on for weeks. This is what we want more of. People around the machines, helping each other build better hardware. 📸 Photography: Philipp Maximilian Czampiel

Everyone is talking about AI. Almost nobody is talking about the thermal budgets, power electronics and connectors that decide whether a robot actually stands up and walks. That's the panel we're hosting at WE Day this Thursday, and we're ridiculously excited about it. From Component to Creature What does it actually take to make Physical AI work in the real world? One question, broken into four: What must the components become? Alexander S. Gerfer, CTO, Würth Elektronik eiSos GmbH & Co. KG — five decades of making the parts that everything else is built from. How do you turn parts into a machine that works? Will Fischer, Founder & CEO, Fischer Innovations — engineer, patent agent and MBA, and the lead engineer on North America's first 100-tonne direct air capture plant. What happens when you send that machine where no human can follow? Frederik Wegner, Founder, Cerepal.ai — six-legged robot swarms built to walk into minefields. And what changes when the machine has to work beside people instead? David Hanson, PhD, Founder & CEO, Hanson Robotics Limited — the most human-like robots anyone has built. Moderated by Fridtjof Gustavs, Co-Founder & CEO of MotionLab.Berlin. From a connector to a creature, in four steps and 45 minutes. 📅 Thursday 24 September, MotionLab.Berlin 🎟️ 80 places Bring the problem you've been stuck on. Registration in the comments 👇

New machine alert on the MotionLab.Berlin prototyping floor! When the shipment arrived, Paul couldn't wait to crack open the box and get his hands on our newest addition—the xTool F1 Portable Dual Laser Engraver. A huge thank you to the team at xTool Official for sending this incredible tool our way and helping us continuously expand the prototyping infrastructure we offer our community! Packing a 10W diode laser and a 2W 1064nm infrared laser into a single compact unit, the xTool F1 lets our members engrave and cut across 300+ materials—from metals, plastics, and acrylics to wood, leather, and glass—with insane galvo-laser speed right at the workbench. Now that the machine is officially calibrated, we are taking you straight from unboxing to hands-on building. Corinna is leading practical onboarding workshops to get you trained, certified, and ready to incorporate laser engraving into your hardware development. Ready to add high-speed precision to your hardware stack? Book your spot for the next xTool F1 workshop on our platform and start bringing your physical designs to life! 👉 Book xTool workshop: https://lnkd.in/dv3dbuW7