AWI spin-off: Synera and charting the ‘optimal course to the product’
Millions of years of their daily struggle for survival in the ocean have shaped tiny diatoms into perfect lightweight structures. Their delicate silicate shells represent a compromise that has been highly optimised by evolution: while they offer sturdy protection against the chewing apparatus of voracious zooplankton crustaceans, they are also as light as possible so as to prevent them sinking into the depths of the ocean – and thus away from the sunlight so essential for their survival.
The AWI working group Bionic Lightweight Design has examined the construction and functional principles of diatom shells down to the most minute details and applied the findings to products in the aerospace, mechanical engineering and automotive industries. This has led, for example, to the development of three-legged foundation structures for large offshore wind turbines, which save a great deal of weight and construction costs compared to conventional products, while remaining highly stable and individually adapted to the respective location.
Drawing on its expertise in marine research and biomechanics, the working group headed by Christian Hamm developed the bionic product development process ELiSE (Evolutionary Light Structure Engineering), which ultimately led to the AWI spin-off Synera in 2018. Over the following eight years, Synera – headquartered in Bremen with a branch in Boston – has developed into a successful company with around 100 employees, which has only recently, in April, secured €35 million in investment funding. In mid-May, the company was also awarded the German Innovation Award 2026. Since 2024, its client base has not only included Airbus, BMW and Arianespace, but also the US space agency NASA.
These successes are based on a sophisticated system: Synera offers software that automates the lengthy product development process, thereby significantly speeding it up. To this end, the programme pools the knowledge of all the staff involved – for example, regarding raw material prices, existing product tests or the environmental impact of individual materials. It also links up the individual steps in product development by way of low-code: work orders are displayed on the screen as graphical elements and can be connected with a click of the mouse – thereby activating algorithms in the background without users requiring any in-depth programming knowledge themselves. In this way, the programme creates an optimal “path to the product” step by step, tailored to a company’s specific needs. If a detail changes – whether this pertains to the dimensions of a component, the price of a material or the material itself – the software automatically calculates how the data changes throughout the entire process. This significantly accelerates product development: users report increases of up to 76 per cent.
In 2025, Synera has also integrated AI agents into this process: they take on time-consuming tasks such as design adjustments or repeated mechanical analyses – and do so around the clock if required, which further speeds up product development considerably. When several agents are linked together, they are also capable of engaging in teamwork. Consequently, the time required for complex processes – such as cost calculations across the entire process chain – can be trimmed down from weeks and days to just a few minutes. In December 2025, Synera was acknowledged and awarded by the international management consultancy Frost & Sullivan for this integration of AI agents into product development.
Innovative process development tools are also available on the Synera digital marketplace and can be integrated into customers’ own process chains. This includes the Synera add-in AutoRib, developed by the AWI team led by Aniket Angre. “Reinforcing surfaces with rib structures is a very common application in the aerospace and automotive industries,” explains Christian Hamm. “Our AutoRib tool proposes a structurally optimised and bionically inspired rib network for stiffening any surface. The data obtained can then be used directly for manufacturing.”
For the head of the AWI working group Bionic Lightweight Design, the Synera story exemplifies the successful technology transfer from basic research to the private sector – and back again. “The AWI spin-off Synera builds on our experience in lightweight construction development and brings this knowledge to international customers such as Airbus, Hyundai and NASA,” as Christian Hamm underlines. “There, it ensures more sustainable processes that save costs and materials. We, in turn, gain access to precisely these customers by way of the digital marketplace and our own products such as AutoRib, and generate revenue that flows back to the AWI and into our research. This cycle of knowledge benefits all parties: the research institution, the spin-off company, the industrial customers and, ultimately, all of us – the product users.”
