The person
Even as a child, Franziska Kerber was driven by curiosity—a trait she shares with her father, who is a physicist and inventor. Having grown up in Tyrol, she moved to Graz to study industrial design, where she mainly focused on sustainable materials. She is particularly interested in the interface between design, technology, and the environment. “Design goes beyond aesthetics—it can initiate new ways of thinking and create sustainable alternatives,” she says. Kerber was nominated for the European Patent Office’s Young Inventors Prize in 2025 for her final thesis “PAPE”.
The vision
During her studies, the researcher Franziska Kerber focused primarily on sustainable electronics. She noticed that sustainability often ends with the plastic housings of the appliances. This gave rise to PAPE, an alternative concept for the covers of WLAN routers or smoke detectors, for example: “It is based on pressed paper fibers that are biodegradable, recyclable and at the same time functionally stable,” she explains. A return system is intended to close the material cycle. Kerber’s aim is to further develop PAPE and bring it into real-life applications so that it can also assume social responsibility.