The design of turbomachinery is increasingly supported by optimization techniques based on computational fluid dynamics. The aim is to find an optimal shape for a turbomachinery component (e.g. fan, compressor or turbine). Optimization does not only allow to design a component exactly meeting the specified operating conditions, but also allows to generate unconventional designs that provide novel insight into the complex flow phenomena inside turbomachinery components. In order to find optimized turbomachinery components, the flow solver TRACE is used as a aerodynamic evaluation tool, inside the optimization toolkit AutoOpti, together with in house tools for parametric design of the blade shape Bladegenerator, the mesh generator G3DHexa and the post processing utility POST. As all these tools are developed and applied in-house the optimization process is ideal for creating unprecedented turbomachinery components in the frame of innovative research projects.