As part of his first official tour of Saxony, President Joachim Gauck of Germany visited the Technical University of Dresden and met with Novaled AG's founders. President Gauck met professor Karl Leo (TU Dresden/Fraunhofer COMEDD), Dr. Jan Blochwitz-Nimoth (Novaled) and Dr. Martin Pfeiffer (Heliatek GmbH) at the Institute of Applied Photophysics at TU Dresden. Saxony Prime Minister Stanislaw Tillich (l-r), German President Joachim Gauck, and Novaled founders Dr. Jan Blochwitz-Nimoth, professor Karl Leo and Dr. Martin Pfeiffer. Courtesy of Novaled. Novaled develops OLEDs for displays and lighting. Its founders received the 2011 president's award for technology and innovation, the Deutscher Zukunftspreis (German Future Prize), for their research on organic semiconductors and for the successful commercialization of their findings. The annual award is worth €250,000 (about $327,000). "At the beginning there was an idea, a vision, for which we were deemed crazy by a lot of people. Today, the rise of organic electronics cannot be stopped," Leo said. "Organic semiconductors have outgrown basic research and found their way into industrial applications a long time ago. We are very excited about the visit of Bundespräsident Joachim Gauck and his interest in our work." "The interest shown by President Gauck indicates the high value he attaches to pioneering research and to its economic exploitation for Germany," said Blochwitz-Nimoth, Novaled's chief scientific officer. In their laboratories at TU Dresden, the three scientists developed a technology for organic semiconductors that facilitates the production of innovative and efficient components, including OLEDs with dramatically reduced energy consumption and a longer lifetime and organic photovoltaic cells with significantly enhanced efficiency. Novaled spinoff Heliatek makes organic photovoltaic cells and OLEDs for flat panel displays, smartphones and lighting. The company recently opened the first factory of its kind in the world for the production of organic photovoltaic cells in a continuous roll-to-roll process under vacuum conditions and is working with industry partners to launch flexible organic photovoltaic film on the market. For more information, visit: www.novaled.com