The Lohn Award panel dignified outstanding efforts and merits of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Walter Kuntz with a special award. He founded the first Steinbeis Transfer Center under the roof of the new Steinbeis Foundation in 1983. He managed the Steinbeis Transfer Center Microelectronics and Systems Engineering in Furtwangen and the Steinbeis Transfer Center Medical Electronics in Freiburg.
He clarified two significant elements of successful Steinbeis technology transfer with his career and development of his two Steinbeis Transfer Centers. Compatibility and efficiency of research and education with transfer entrepreneurship and flexibility of the rising complexity of technologies with a range from electronics, microelectronics up to nano technology.
The successful “technology transfer a la Steinbeis” needs transfer competent and willing “heads”. Walter Kuntz was a stark outrider – namely since the beginning of the new Steinbeis Foundation in 1983. Already when he was a “pure” scientist he developed his outstanding transfer abilities. He didn’t only focus on scientifi c publications and patents. An important element of his activity was the concrete appliance of scientifi c awarenesses – both in a practice related education and in the industrial appliance. Walter Kuntz founded the fi rst specialized Steinbeis Transfer Center of the Steinbeis Foundation with the “Transfer Center Microelectronics”. In 1988 he set a further milestone with the foundation of the Steinbeis Transfer Center in Freiburg. This Steinbeis Transfer Center is acting in the field of medical electronics.
The Steinbeis Transfer Center Microelectronics and Systems Engineering in Furtwangen realized projects in the area of microelectronic circuits, data transfer, miniaturization, programming, safety and reliability engineering.
At the Steinbeis Transfer Center Medical Electronics were electronic and software projects in the field of medicine realized. These included the following solutions: