The Innovation Funds of the Helmholtz Centres are a special grant from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), advertised by the Helmholtz Association . They provide the transfer points at the appropriately funded Helmholtz Centres with additional budgets, e.g. for the implementation of their own innovation projects and the establishment of transfer bonus systems. At the GFZ, a number of innovation projects have been developed and validated, in particular through the Innovation Fund, which has been established since 2016.

These include the following innovation projects:

• Fluid sensor development: Test setup for the validation of a patent application
• MCGS - Minimum cost GNSS sensors: technological development of a geodetic sensor
• Autosampler: Conception and technological development of an automatic water sampler
• UAS / Research Drones: Applications for Terrain Contour Tracking and Quasi-Active Thermography
• GNSS Sensor Tiny Black: technological development of a geodetic sensor  
• App Development: Soil Gas Sensors  
• Groundwater Monitoring: Use Cases for WaMoS 
• gfzrnxQC – Extension of the gfzrnx software to include quality assurance within the processing of RINEX files
• RIMurban - Further development of a 2D hydraulic model for urban flood simulation with considerable model efficiency
• CoSa - Experimental simulations for energy generation by means of CO2 phase transitions in salt mines