From curiosity to innovations: Katrin Benkert’s story

Innovation doesn't begin with a flash of genius. For Siemens Energy's 2025 Inventor of the Year, Katrin Benkert, it begins with curiosity, collaboration and the persistence to keep searching for better solutions.

Katrin Benkert can trace her fascination with materials science back to her childhood. With a father working in technical ceramics, Katrin has strong memories of the smell of the factory and laboratories: a mixture of machines, powder, dust and lubricants that clung to the air during weekend visits. She remembers watching huge machines press powder into small components, fascinated by the precision involved.

The experience sparked her curiosity about how things are made. Decades later, as a materials scientist in Siemens Energy's research & development organization, she focuses on developing and evaluating materials to eliminate sulfur hexafluoride (SF₆), one of the power grid’s most potent greenhouse gases, from switchgear technologies. Her work on more sustainable electric power transmission and distribution technologies earned her Siemens Energy’s 2025 Inventor of the Year award.

Collaborating with colleagues from different disciplines also plays a central role. "If you have a team with different skills and backgrounds, ideas come from different angles. That's one of the most important drivers of innovation."

Katrin’s father worked on the technical side of ceramics, which involves creating highly refined ceramics for mechanical, thermal and electrical uses. Inspired, Katrin went on to do internships in Canada and France, the latter at a ceramics factory in Limoges, the town synonymous with exquisitely crafted porcelain. There, she became fascinated by the precision involved, such as the exactness required in placing a handle on a porcelain cup or in glazing the plates.

After completing her studies, she joined Siemens Energy, where she started working on piezoelectric ceramics. Over the following years, she moved across very different technological fields, including solid oxide fuel cells, corrosion in HVDC water systems, and, eventually,  environmentally friendly switching technologies. “I’m more of an all-rounder than a specialist,” she says. 

That breadth of experience continues to shape her work. Rather than approaching problems from a single perspective, she enjoys connecting knowledge from different disciplines and applying lessons learned in one field to challenges in another.

One of the things she values most about Siemens Energy is the trust she received early in her career. "From the beginning, I was given responsibility for my own projects. There were clear goals, but also the freedom to find my own way of achieving them."

"We’re developing solutions that help make the energy system more sustainable without compromising performance and reliability." As renewable energy becomes a larger part of the energy mix, electricity systems must become smarter, more flexible and more efficient. Katrin is excited to contribute to this transformation.

“We are only at the beginning of a major change. It will be fascinating to see how the energy system evolves over the coming years,” she says.

Over the course of her career, this approach has resulted in 76 patents, while several of the projects she's worked on have made their way into the company's products and manufacturing processes. 

By its nature, research and development produces more dead ends than breakthroughs. Far from being dispiriting, this is an essential part of the process. For Katrin, numerous tests that don’t work are vital to direct researchers towards the solution. It can be frustrating, she admits, and dogged persistence is needed. Over her years at Siemens Energy, she has learned that solutions do eventually show up, so it is important to keep working and never give up. To Katrin, real failure is not a bad test result, but rather, not asking the right questions of the result, and losing sight of the original objective in pursuit of something more interesting.

Away from work, Katrin enjoys spending time in the garden and nature, plays piano, practices yoga, sees friends, while also drawing strength from time spent alone. “I’m never bored alone, never.” It is often in these private, unfocused moments that she has moments of clarity. “If your head is too focused on getting an idea, that doesn’t always work. For me, it helps to be a bit more relaxed.”

More than three decades after following her father through ceramics factories, Katrin still likes visiting manufacturing sites to see how new products are made. The difference is that some of the technologies being produced now contain ideas she helped create.