The developer of the world's smallest heart pump is awarded the Aachen Engineering Prize

The award ceremony for Dr. Thorsten Sieß, CTO of Abiomed, will take place on September 6, 2025 at Aachen City Hall.
It is only a few centimetres short - including the housing - and can not only prolong life after a heart attack, but save it. The Impella heart pump has now been successfully used 350,000 times worldwide to help hearts and patients recover from heart attacks with cardiac shock. The little lifesaver has its cradle in Aachen: Dr. Thorsten Sieß, an alumnus of RWTH, developed it and used the idea to set up his own company. Today, he is Chief Technology Officer at Abiomed, which builds, sells and further develops the Impella heart pump. The company has been part of the US group Johnson & Johnson since 2022.

In recognition of his impressive journey from university to entrepreneurship, his perseverance in difficult times and the success of the heart pump, which is now used worldwide, Dr. Thorsten Sieß will be awarded the Aachen Engineering Prize by RWTH and the City of Aachen in a ceremony on Saturday, 6 September 2024, in the presence of Ina Brandes, Minister of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, in the Coronation Hall of Aachen City Hall. Prior to this, he will give a keynote speech to RWTH graduates at the university's major graduation ceremony in the dressage stadium in Aachen's Soers.

"Dr. Thorsten Sieß stands for the tireless entrepreneurial and engineering commitment with which he implemented his idea of placing a pump and motor together in a cardiac catheter. With his efforts, he has clearly made a significant contribution to the positive perception and further development of engineering," said Professor Ulrich Rüdiger, Rector of RWTH Aachen University, explaining the decision.

"I am particularly pleased that this year's engineering prize goes to a company that was founded and successfully established here in Aachen. Dr. Thorsten Sieß represents Aachen as a first-class start-up location for future technologies. Our city is a really good place for excellent engineers," says Aachen's Lord Mayor Sibylle Keupen.

Dr. Thorsten Sieß co-founded Impella CardioTechnik AG (later Impella CardioSystems) in 1997, which was taken over in 2005 by the company Abiomed, which began developing the first artificial heart in 1981. He was initially Manager of Research and Development and is now Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of the company.

The Aachen Engineering Prize is a joint award of RWTH Aachen University and the City of Aachen - with the kind support of the Association of German Engineers VDI as the prize sponsor. Every year, a personality is honored whose work has made a significant contribution to the positive perception or further development of engineering or science. This is the eleventh time the award has been presented. The first winner was Professor Berthold Leibinger (died 2018), shareholder of TRUMPF GmbH + Co. He was followed by Professor Franz Pischinger, founder of Aachen-based FEV Motorentechnik GmbH, the astronaut Thomas Reiter, the long-standing Director of the Machine Tool Laboratory WZL at RWTH Aachen University, Professor Manfred Weck (died 2024), Professor Emmanuelle Charpentier, microbiologist and co-inventor of the CRISPR-Cas9 gene scissors and now Nobel Prize winner, the entrepreneur Hans Peter Stihl, the technology pioneer Sebastian Thrun, the science journalist Dr. Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim, former BASF CTO Dr. Melanie Maas-Brunner and, last year, Airbus CTO Dr. Sabine Klauke.