“Designing for a better world”

A conversation about growth, the further development of the university and strategies against failure.
 

How would you define the term growth at the TU Hamburg right now?

First of all, we looked for a topic for which we want to further develop the TU. A smaller technical university urgently needs to focus and develop its profile. We found this with the strategic initiative “Engineering-to-face-climate-change”. Climate change is one of the big issues. Our expertise lies in developing technical solutions to mitigate climate change and its consequences. One can also ask more generally in which direction universities, technical universities, must develop, also under the sign of AI? How will research be conducted in the future? Why should I study at a campus university, at the TU Hamburg? One answer is the connection between research and teaching according to Humboldt's ideal of education, which I would like to further strengthen.

And what would that look like?

That's why we came up with the idea of campus labs. This is hands-on research and study, using the research infrastructure on campus. In the labs, for example, you can experience and learn how biomass is processed in a process engineering process, we see how recycling works, how photovoltaics work or what a heat pump looks like. We are researching all of this here on campus and want to incorporate it more into our teaching. And we have the opportunity to show it to society. When you see the importance that fake news can achieve, our approach is to counter it by reliably providing information to society. We combine these three elements in the Campus Lab.

Degree programs have been revised and new ones created: Data Science, Green Technologies, Industrial Engineering for Logistics and Mobility, and Chemical and Biological Engineering. Does that mean the TU is sufficiently well-positioned for the future?

We have to constantly develop, because we want to attract and educate the best minds. But we only have a limited number of students who want to study engineering, and we are dealing with limited mobility. Therefore, the basic engineering courses for the region and the courses for which we stand as a TU and attract students from all over Germany. However, I think we are also internationally attractive for students who are interested in Hamburg and Germany. German engineering is still a well-known concept. I would like to see us attract more European students. That's why we have expanded the English-language General Engineering Science bachelor's degree so that students can take any internationally studiable program at the TU. At the master's level, we already have a very international orientation, but we could still focus our courses of study according to the research fields.

Half of your term in office is over. Time to take stock. To name just a few highlights: a second collaborative research center in process engineering has been established at the TU, the TU has been invited to submit a full proposal for a cluster of excellence, and it has become part of the United Nations University (UNU). What are you most proud of?

When I started, we had the coronavirus pandemic, a significant structural deficit, and there were strong questions about where the TU was headed. I believe that we have succeeded in maintaining and strengthening a sense of belonging. We wanted to do it together and we did. The fact that we were able to attract 25 percent more first-year bachelor students and that we won the second special research area are very big successes. We can only achieve something like this together. If we now manage to get the cluster of excellence, that would make me very proud. But we see our successes as encompassing the entire university. Everyone has to pull together to achieve this. It's only possible if we work together.

You can read the full interview in the current issue of spektrum (in German).