Every year, young people from Germany and around the world find their way to TU Ilmenau. A degree from the university opens up the best opportunities for them in a wide range of professions in science and business. But what path do graduates take after their studies? In our new series, we introduce personalities who have shaped their time at the university - and who are changing the world today with their ideas, knowledge and courage.
To kick off the series, we portray mechanical engineering graduate Philipp Caspari. With his award-winning start-up Healyan, he offers an alternative to drug therapy for Alzheimer’s disease by means of brain training.
More than 9000 kilometers separate the southern Thuringian village of Barchfeld and the US university town of Berkley. TU Ilmenau graduate Philipp Caspari has succeeded in creating a bridge between the two places that combines home and innovation. With his start-up Healyan, he is working in both places to revolutionize Alzheimer’s therapy.
Philipp Caspari laid the foundations for his start-up during his studies at TU Ilmenau. The mechanical engineering graduate recognized the opportunities that the university offered him as early as his bachelor’s degree. Early on in his studies, he set his own priorities and specialized in the fields of electrical engineering, plastics technology, additive manufacturing and biomedical engineering. This knowledge enabled him to develop an interdisciplinary perspective, which today forms the basis for Healian’s innovative technology. In his first two semesters, Philipp Caspari takes part in the Basic Engineering School - a practice-oriented introduction to engineering work. Later, as a student assistant, he taught first-semester students himself and helped to develop new project formats for the Basic Engineering School and PracticING programs. During this time, he developed a small wind turbine and a large-scale 3D printer, which is still in use at TU Ilmenau today. In addition to the opportunity to specialize, Philipp Caspari appreciates the interdisciplinary nature of his studies:
Studying at TU-Ilmenau gave me the opportunity to constantly gain knowledge from leading experts in all’engineering disciplines over and above the normal teaching. Through practical work and the quick access and personal exchange, I was able to build up basic interdisciplinary knowledge.
Top location conditions in Thuringia
At the end of his master’s degree, a DAAD scholarship will take him to one of the most renowned universities in the world - the University of California in Berkeley, USA. He would like to start his doctorate there. Networking with the brightest minds in the world, Philipp Caspari develops the idea of researching non-drug therapies for Alzheimer’s disease. In the end, it was a professor who motivated him to turn his idea into a product and found his start-up:Eric Silver, Professor of Neurology, Ophthalmology and Consciousness Research, made clear to me the need for practical devices for everyday patient use. This is the only way to research the promising treatment approach using audiovisual neuromodulation against Alzheimer’s in long-term studies with hundreds of test subjects. So I set myself the goal of implementing such a system.
Together with his co-founder Leon Yushin and with the help of the Citris Invention Lab at UC Berkeley, the budding entrepreneur researched the start-up conditions in Silicon Valley and compared them with those in his home region - the choice subsequently fell on Thuringia:
We found optimal location conditions in Thuringia: strong technical universities such as the TU Ilmenau, research institutes such as the Fraunhofer IDMT and IIS, CiS Research Institute for Microsensor Technology Erfurt as well as many early-stage subsidies from the state of Thuringia. For a technologically sophisticated start-up like ours, Thuringia is exactly the right location for research, development, production and commercialization, with strong software and hardware expertise.
Together with Laurin Martins (CTO), also a TU Ilmenau graduate, and the Healyan team from Berkeley, Christian Reyes (neuroscientist) and Leon Yushin (financial expert in the start-up), Philipp Caspari is working flat out between Germany and the USA to market the Healyan Glasses for Alzheimer’s therapy. Light impulses in the glasses and accompanying sounds are intended to activate so-called glial cells, immune cells in the cerebrospinal fluid, which in turn purify the brain of harmful metabolic end products (beta amyloid and tau proteins). Just half an hour of brain training a day is said to significantly reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s and slow down the progression of the disease. The special glasses should also help healthy people to improve their performance and sleep:
Our aim is to slow down the breakdown of cells in the human brain as early as possible and thus offer people a longer healthy lifespan. This would make it possible to delay the final stage of the disease and thus reduce the number of people in need of care.
Right study decision for later career path
Philipp Caspari still values and makes use of the proximity to his alma mater today. For Healyan, which has already won several awards , he draws on the TU Ilmenau network and works closely with the university’s partner institutes, including the Fraunhofer IDMT and the Research Institute for Microsensor Technology CiS. The start-up also receives support from the Thuringian Innovation Program TRIP of the Foundation for Technology, Innovation and Research Thuringia (STIFT) of the Free State of Thuringia. Healyan is currently part of the "Medical Forge" medical technology accelerator from Leipzig. For Philipp Caspari, one thing is certain - the decision to study at TU Ilmenau was absolutely right for him:As I have always been interested in natural sciences and at the same time interested in solving real problems for many people, the only option for me was to study engineering. The TU Ilmenau impressed me right from the start with the quality of the teaching, the personal support from top researchers working on solutions to numerous "real world problems".
