Insights into the different transfer pathways
Cooperation and Utilization
CLEWATEC: Competence Center for Clean Water Technology at HZDR (A Helmholtz Innovation Lab)
The Clean Water Technology Lab – CLEWATEC is a Helmholtz Innovation Lab located at the Department of Experimental Thermal Fluid Dynamics at Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf. CLEWATEC is an interface between research and industry where new ideas for sustainable water treatment are continuously tested and developed into breakthrough technological applications.
Relationship Management
Career Center as Career Advice
The Career Center offers various formats for doctoral students and postdocs to help them with their further career planning. In addition to individual counselling and individual coaching, the services also include various career events such as lunch talks by alumni from industry or career days and opportunities to network with other early career researchers at the FZJ as well as with role models from various career paths such as industry, science and science management.
Infrastructure
Use of Scientific Infrastructure by External Parties from Science and Industry
The use of scientific infrastructure by external parties from science and industry is an explicit goal of the Helmholtz Association's centers. At the GFZ, this applies in a commercial context, for example, to the rental of large infrastructure such as the borehole environment of the Kontinentale Tiefbohrung (KTB), which is used on a daily basis by companies to test or maintain drilling equipment.
Laboratories or equipment on the GFZ campus are also rented out commercially, e.g. the SIMS laboratory including service measurements, geo-bio laboratories for use by a spin-off or stationary or mobile measuring devices and sensors, which are used by spin-offs or other companies in field operations, for example. Standard market prices are determined and the infrastructure is rented out via contracts that also regulate liability and repair aspects.
Entrepreneurship
TECHiFAB: Paving the way for neuromorphic computing
TECHiFAB GmbH was founded in 2021 to develop the world's first memristor for data processing and storage. Researchers and engineers around the world have been searching for a memristor device for decades. The memristor device being developed by the HZDR spin-off TECHiFAB has a unique property: it can process AND store analogue data and will be used as a core component in neuromorphic computers. The MEMRiSTOR is an analogue component with special properties that enable data classification and data correlation in hardware. The MEMRiSTOR can be used to develop new AI algorithms. The HZDR supported this spin-off from the initial idea to the spin-off in 2021.
Transfer-oriented teaching and further education
FERN.Lern as a knowledge and exchange platform
FERN.Lern is a knowledge and exchange platform and bundles the digital training courses on the topic of applied satellite remote sensing from knowledge transfer projects of the German Research Centre for Geosciences Potsdam (GFZ). FERN.Lern offers web seminars, learning videos, tutorials and exchange opportunities for all interested parties and teaches how to utilise the potential of satellite images for individual questions using freely available data. Users learn, for example, how to find suitable satellite data and how to process, analyse and visualise it. Through FERN.Lern, the GFZ can pass on knowledge about our environment and the diverse possibilities of remote sensing and the application of satellite data to various non-scientific target groups (e.g. authorities, municipalities, farmers, media, NGOs) and thus generate added value for society.
Advisory of decision-makers and those affected
European Technology Assessment Group (ETAG)
Since October 2005 a group of European scientific institutes - with the Institute of Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS), Research Centre Karlsruhe, Germany as the leading partner - has been providing scientific services for the European Parliament on social, environmental and economic aspects of new technological and scientific developments. Like many other parliaments in Europe (see: https://www.eptanetwork.org) the European Parliament at the end of the 1980s set up an institution for scientific advice regarding complex social, ecological and economic implications of modern technology and scientific research.
At the European Parliament the process of consulting was and is organized by the so called STOA-Panel (Panel for the Future of Science and Technology), a parliamentary body consisting of 27 Members of Parliament representing several parliamentary committees. In view of the growing importance of a European science and technology policy the European Parliament decided in 2005 to support STOA's activities by establishing permanent co-operation with a group of institutions with relevant expertise in the field of Technology Assessment. Starting from June 2018 the European Technology Assessment Group supports STOA by carrying out TA-studies. The focus of ETAG's activities on behalf of the European Parliament for the current parliamentary term (2019-2024) is:
Thematic priorities:
- Artificial intelligence and other disruptive technologies
- The Green Deal
- Quality of life
Horizontal policy priorities:
- Science, technology and innovation
- Societal and ethical challenges
- Economic challenges
- Legal challenges
Participatory Research
TechnoCitizenScience – Citizen innovation in science and technology
The "TechnoCitizenScience" project, which was completed in 2017, investigated special forms of citizen research and innovation, namely those in which citizens actively participate in the field of technology sciences. As this form of citizen science is particularly relevant in our technologically characterised society and could have an impact on the research and innovation system, it appeared to be a particularly suitable subject of research. As part of the project, the potential of citizen science in the technological sciences - or TechnoCitizenScience - with a particular focus on engineering and life sciences was therefore assessed for Germany in a theory-based and methodologically controlled manner.
While project staff at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) looked at citizen science endeavours in the field of engineering (including the so-called "maker" movement and "fab labs"), ITAS carried out the sub-project "CitizenBioScience - Bioscience in do-it-yourself mode", which focused on TechnoCitizenScience in the life sciences. The activities of the DIYBio or biohacking movement that has emerged in recent years took centre stage.
A primary aim of the study was to identify opportunities and challenges as well as possible effects on research, development and the economy and to analyse the political aspects of the topic. It was also important to analyse whether Citizen Science in its current form meets the often very high expectations articulated in public and science policy discourse or will be able to do so in the future. The following research questions were the starting point for the study:
- What forms of TechnoCitizenScience can be observed nationally and internationally?
- What are the potentials and challenges of TCS in the life sciences for research and innovation, but also for politics and society?
- How is the participation of citizens in different contexts of TCS organised in concrete terms, what is its scope and does it meet the expectations of civil society and politics?
- What are the (social and technical) prerequisites for professional technology sciences and TCS to become compatible?
- Which TCS development paths appear plausible in the medium term and will enable the full potential of TCS to be realised? What options for shaping science policy result from this?
Five empirical work packages were carried out in the project in order to find answers to these questions: a literature study, ethnographic field studies on exemplary TCS projects, the creation of a typology of forms of participation in TCS contexts, expert interviews on the social and technical requirements of TCS and a stakeholder workshop on the status and prospects of TCS. In the course of the ethnographic field studies, ITAS carried out participatory observations in some of the newly emerging DIY bio-labs in the German citizen science movement. These were supplemented by guided interviews with representatives of the German(-speaking) and international DIY bio/biohacking movement. In addition, ITAS organised the final stakeholder workshop at the "Open Innovation Space" in Berlin, which also covered the TUM's areas of work in the overall project.
Scientific Dialog
JuLab – School laboratory
The JuLab school laboratory is one thing above all: an extraordinary, extracurricular learning centre on the Jülich research campus. The focus here is primarily on young people as a target group. JuLab's programmes include online formats in which various scientific topics are discussed, workshops to familiarise young people with science, experimentation days and career orientation days.
