Ando Feyh likes to start with the English opening: white pawn on c4. After that, anything can happen as he ponders, analyzes and puzzles. As a keen amateur chess player, Feyh can plan up to five moves in advance. The game requires strategy, imagination, ingenuity and creativity – themes which run like leitmotifs through this researcher’s life, forming the overlap between his recreation and his work. After all, these are also assets required of the 33-year-old physicist in technological development at Bosch. “I just enjoy solving tricky problems,” he says.

Ando Feyh joined Bosch in 2002 as a doctoral student. His main area of responsibility is sensor technology. One of his latest projects is destined for use in infrared cameras for burglary prevention. New processes, materials and procedures have enabled much more cost-effective manufacture – compared with market alternatives – of an extremely high-performance sensor. The tiny, multi-purpose sensor registers a radiated power equivalent to one billionth of that emitted by a light bulb. Since joining Bosch, Feyh has been responsible for around 50 invention disclosures. “Developments can only be achieved in a team. Here, you have the opportunity to really break new ground,” says Feyh, “and it does unleash something of the pioneering spirit in you.”

Once a week, Ando Feyh still goes to the club in Schwaikheim for chess training with his mates. Thoughts of microsystem technology and radiation sensors are replaced with thoughts of bishops and rooks. And what if Feyh is playing black? Again, the researcher is emphatic: the Sicilian Defense, pawn on c5. Says Feyh: “Chess is like a kind of meditation. I find it a superb way to relax.”