Under the motto “Maximum Perspective,” the Hessen Bergstraße regional competition of Jugend forscht took place at BASF Lampertheim on February 21, 2026. The MakerLab participated with five projects. Three won first place and qualified for the state competitions in Darmstadt and Kassel.In addition, the students received four special prizes, including a two-week research internship at BASF, as well as the school prize “MINTSPACE.”
Maren Teltschik and Larissa Rado (German high-school branch) investigated how the painkiller diclofenac can be removed from drinking water in their project “Painkillers from the Tap?” Their work was awarded first place in Chemistry and the BASF research internship.
In Technology (Jugend forscht junior), Liang Künzler won first place with his concept of a solar-powered drone that produces hydrogen in the stratosphere.
Jenna Ronald (International branch) presented her project “Interplanetary – Life under Gravity,” developing a gravity simulator to study how plants might grow in space under artificial gravity.
Hendrik Schmalenberger received second place in Chemistry and the special prize from the Center for Chemistry for his work on improving sodium-ion batteries as a sustainable alternative to lithium-ion batteries.
Philipp Hechler also won second place in Chemistry for developing climate-neutral variations of Roman cement and a testing method to compare them with conventional Portland cement.
The MINTSPACE school prize was accepted on behalf of the MakerLab team by the project supervisors Dr. Dietmar Scherr, Dr. Stephan Künzler, and Dr. Petra Leidert.
Special thanks also go from the participating students and the entire project team to all financial sponsors over the past years (Sponsorpool Hessen, Sparda-Bank Hessen, Lions Club Seeheim an der Bergstraße, VCI, the school's international and German support association, European funds) as well as the companies/institutions that donated materials for the projects (BCD Chemie GmbH, micromod Partikeltechnologie GmbH, IBU-tec advanced materials AG, Mitsubishi Chemical Specialty Polymers and Resins, HiMedia, neoFroxx, Verbandskläranlage Bickenbach).
Your project supervision team:
Stefan Netzer, Christian Munteanu, Dr. Stephan Künzler, Dr. Dietmar Scherr, Ramkumar Ganesa, Matthias Penteker und Dr. Petra Leidert