Max Planck spin-off Meshcapade wins new startup award

The founding team of Meshcapade ( from left to right ): Talha Zaman, Naureen Mahmood, Michael Black © Meshcapade GmbH - Newly established prize by the Max Planck Society and the Stifterverband aims to promote start-up culture in science Meshcapade, a start-up from Cyber Valley is planning nothing less than a minor revolution: their SMPL technology makes it possible to automatically create accurate and realistic humans in an easily accessible 3D format using a wide variety of data sources, such as images, sensor-based devices and body measurements. The resulting avatars have facial expressions, can reproduce subtle gestures as well as realistic movement, and are compatible with all major 3D visualization programs. It is expected that the technology will eventually be used in the fashion, gaming, and film industries, but it also has enormous potential in the medical and healthcare fields due to the ease with which real, life-like humans can be recreated in 3D. Meshcapade was founded in 2018 by Naureen Mahmood, Talha Zaman, and Director Michael Black of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen. Mahmood is the CEO of the company, which now employs around 15 people. "We are proud to be the first team to win the new Max-Planck-Gründungspreis," she says. "We hope it will get more people interested in our great technology and the innovative work being carried out in our region.