MAITHEM AL ANBARI (DUBAI)

An enterprising couple from Germany has ventured into the UAE and made Dubai their base, finding all the necessary resources to establish their company.

For Josefine Lissner and Lin Kayser, Co-Founders of Dubai-based Company Leap71, in the UAE, the sky was the limit, and all they had to do was work hard and innovate, and that’s exactly what they did. They capitalised on the adaptability of the city and made their home, or any café in Dubai, their office.

Aletihad met with the Founders of Leap71, a  software company, and asked them about their company, projects, and life in the UAE.

“We built computational engineering models. It’s a new design approach, and we do various things, such as heat exchangers, electric motors, and rocket engines,” Lissner said.

She added that people used to ask them since they have a software company whether their designs are functional.

Computational  Engineering Models

Lissner said those questions drove them to transform computer coding and create a 3D-printed design that would be tested to prove that the computational model is functional.

“So within about two months, we partnered with the University of Sheffield in the UK and did a completely autonomous engine design. They helped us post-process it and get it to the test stand in the UK, and we ended up test-firing the first liquid rocket engine from the UAE,” the company’s co-founder said.

“The main purpose of going through all of this was to demonstrate that we can generate functional rocket engines in this case because we don’t design them how engineers typically design,” she added.

Lissner compared their practical method to the conventional ones that have been used for a long time. “Engineers usually sit in front of their computer screen and manually draw every little detail. It is a very lengthy process. We are doing a method called computational engineering, where I write computer code, and then I press the button, and the computer automatically generates the geometry.”

“So, I teach the AI what rules to apply, but then it acts autonomously. I only give it a few inputs, like the size of the engine, what materials I want to use, and which propellants I want to use. Then, it creates the final shape completely by itself. And it only takes 10 minutes,” Lissner said.

She asserted that although the process is considered a radical change from the traditional method, no one had ever proven that this output would work.  
Such a method enabled Leap71 to acquire a lot of test data, which were used to feed the AI and better design the engine in the future.

Lissner revealed that their company has several deals with aerospace customers, noting that there will be larger engines and bigger projects coming soon that run on the same computational basis.

Drawing a comparison, she noted the new method is cost effective and saves time compared to traditional engineering approaches where every new design takes several weeks to build and a similar amount of time to modify.\

Why Was UAE Chosen to Start Leap71?

Also speaking to Aletihad, Lin Kayser, the other co-founder of Leap71, delved into the establishment of their company and why they chose to start it in the UAE.

“The evolution of the UAE in the last 20 years is breathtaking, and even today, if we look outside our windows, we see construction going on everywhere,” Kayser said.

“This made it very attractive for us. It is a country of change, so we decided to move here and establish our company. It is a very pleasant place to live and do business. It is very safe and geopolitically neutral, which is important for a high-tech company when you start it today, and it is very inspiring to see the dynamic,” Kayser  added.

Kayser praised the ease in launching a business in the UAE compared to many other countries.

“We moved here two and a half years ago and started the company 15 months ago. We’ve succeeded internationally because we’re from a good starting point,” he elaborated.

Kayser is impressed by how Emiratis champion innovation. “People embrace change. They embrace new technologies. They are very well-versed in what’s going on in the world. There are many cutting-edge initiatives going on in the field of AI, space, etc. We felt it was a more welcoming place in the first instance.” “For example,” he continued, “we cooperate with Future Lab. We also have a couple of government entities here, so we have customers worldwide.” “One project I can discuss is a project to build 3D-printed electric motors, something nobody had ever done before. Some people build electric motor components that are 3D-printed from metal, but we are creating entire motor assemblies. And it has a lot of potential,” he added.

Leap71 also has its presence in Abu Dhabi. “We have a project with the Technology Innovation Institute (TII) in Abu Dhabi in the field of propulsion systems. We are trying to build something really new in satellite propulsion that has never been tried before, and we’re making good progress on that.”