Podcast "We are TUM" – Transcript, sixteenth episode

"A research contract is good when at the signing all the partners have the feeling that they can sign with a clear conscience. And the best contracts are the ones we've actually negotiated for months, bargaining out each and every passage – and then you can still conclude the contact in a way that everyone involved is satisfied and a fair compromise has been found."

[Matthias Kirsch:] The woman we just heard is Daniela Seidl. She's this episode's "Hidden Champion": She and her colleagues in the Legal department are a pillar of TU Munich, without whom everyday life at the university, i.e. research, teaching and science, would be impossible. Welcome to "We are TUM", the podcast by and for the Technical University of Munich. My name is Matthias Kirsch and I'll be guiding you through this podcast. As always university President Thomas Hofmann will get things started by introducing the topics of today's episode to you.

[Präsident Thomas F. Hofmann:] Welcome, dear listeners: Artificial Intelligence will change our world, including the world of science. That's why last May's visit by Open AI founder Sam Altman at TUM was a truly exciting event. Interaction with the people who are charting the course for Artificial Intelligence is highly essential to us, and also to Andreas Fleischmann. He's the director of TUM's central scientific facility ProLehre, which builds didactic skills relating to the university and media as well as specific service ranges for teaching staff. Today he speaks with us on how AI will change research and teaching at universities. Then we get to know a start-up which was born in the TUM environment: The start-up "STABL Energy" has set out to change the world of batteries. The company wants to make storing energy easier in times of high energy prices, a model for the future. Co-founder Nam Truong shares his plans with us. And we conclude this episode with five tips from writing coach Alexandra Peischer. How can we write better and more focused term papers and research papers? How can we overcome writer's block? Now enjoy listening to the latest episode of "We are TUM"!

Cutting-Edge Research

[Kirsch:] Right now the whole world is talking about Sam Altman. The founder and CEO of Open AI was in Germany in May, making only one single public appearance, at the TU here in Munich. He spoke and debated on his chatbot ChatGPT. The Artificial Intelligence system has the potential to fundamentally transform university studies, teaching and science. My colleague Clarissa Ruge speaks with Andreas Fleischmann about how these changes could look. Fleischmann is the director of the central scientific facility ProLehre Media and Didactics at TUM.

[Clarissa Ruge:] Hello, Dr. Fleischmann, I'm glad we have the chance to talk a while. ChatGPT was made accessible to the broader public in November 2022. What has the impact on university teaching been up to now?

[Andreas Fleischmann:] I think it actually affected students first. They were the first to notice that something really big was happening. As early as the end of November, early December I saw the first students on TikTok showing how you can use ChatGPT for example to write term papers. It didn't take long before teachers noticed something was going on as well. And then initially there was a focus on this main concern: How will this impact homework, term projects, the testing landscape at universities? In the meantime I think the scope of the focus has expanded, it's no longer about the concerns, now the focus is on the potential that ChatGPT can offer us as teachers.

[Ruge:] How can students practically use ChatGPT as an aid to learning and not just as a copy-paste resource?

[Fleischmann:] There are a whole bunch of possibilities. For example, you can use ChatGPT to first summarize texts, in order to decide whether or not it's worth reading the entire text. You can use ChatGPT to generate discussion questions or instructional questions based on a text, since it's sometimes easier to read a complicated text with a basic question already in mind. Or for example you can use ChatGPT to make flash cards, where the front side has a question and the answer is on the back.

[Ruge:] How can ChatGPT make life easier for teaching staff?

[Fleischmann:] For example when creating subject texts, you give ChatGPT a few notes and it's good at formulating texts, or you can formulate quiz questions and ChatGPT will give you distractor answers. You can use it for support in brainstorming, and there are tools where you can input scripts or slides and then for example interactive Moodle elements come out.

[Ruge:] What kind of risks and unwanted side-effects does using ChatGPT have in the context of teaching and learning at a university?

[Fleischmann:] Unfortunately there are a lot. I'll just pick one: ChatGPT is not trained to give correct answers, it's trained to give answers which sound good, and one danger is that you rely too much on the fact that what ChatGPT produces is also actually true. That's one of the reasons why we have to introduce AI Literacy, so that our students as well as the teaching staff have a better understanding of what these tools really can do and what they can't do.

[Ruge:] For our listeners who might not know, tell us what AI Literacy is…

[Fleischmann:] AI Literacy is essentially being able to understand how AI works.

[Ruge:] Would you like to take a stab at the future? How do you think the future of university teaching will look, given the extremely rapid pace of technical developments?

[Fleischmann:] Right now I'm observing a strong specialization of AI tools. In the meantime there are countless tools designed for a variety of given special purposes. In the ProLehre Innovation Lab we're currently trying to maintain an overview of what's happening, but it's no easy task. I personally hope that the tools which prove feasible will then be integrated with tools that we already use as it is, for example Word or Google, so that we won't have to constantly keep track of an entire menagerie of tools.

[Ruge:] I'm thinking back now to my time with books and footnotes… Do you think that's gone forever and that we're so to speak entering a new era? What's your personal opinion?

[Fleischmann:] I think we'll still have to be able to read and comprehend texts and that we will also still have to write texts. Writing texts means more than just producing a product, it also means undergoing a process of understanding, penetrating the text. ChatGPT can help us with this kind of process, but it can not and should not do the entire job for us.

[Ruge:] Thank you for speaking with us, Dr. Fleischmann.

Hidden Champion

[Kirsch:] There are departments and people at TU Munich without whom the university would grind to a standstill. They work in the background but they're irreplaceable. Daniela Seidl is one of these people. In the legal department where she works she and her colleagues generate more than 2000 contracts ever year and thus make sure that research and teaching work smoothly at TUM. My colleague Clarissa Ruge speaks with Daniela Seidl about the everyday legal world.

[Ruge:] Welcome, Ms. Seidl!

[Daniela Seidl:] Hello Ms. Ruge! It's a pleasure to be here.

[Ruge:] I'd of course like to start by learning a bit about your background. The university isn't where attorneys usually end up. What brought you to TUM?

[Seidl:] About five years ago I read the TUM job announcement, and I was personally at a point in my life where I had to decide whether to continue as a freelance attorney, or to change something. My great wish was security, a regular work schedule, paid vacation and an assignment in a team. So I applied to TUM, and here's the best part: I have no regrets. I'm fascinated by the research, the people, the projects and all the progress and achievements that happen here.

[Ruge:] How is working here at a university different from the open market, or at a law firm?

[Seidl:] The biggest difference is probably that we don't have to do client acquisition and our work isn't designed from a "that has to bring in money" point of view, at least not for us in the legal department. Otherwise the difference isn't all that big. We advise the professorships and central departments, just as if they were clients at law firms, we negotiate contracts, inspect the legal situation, issue recommendations and also occasionally say "no, that's unfortunately not possible."

[Ruge:] Tell us how a perfect day in the legal department looks…

[Seidl:] A perfect day is when in the evening I've managed to accomplish all the tasks I planned to finish. If that doesn't work – which is actually the case often enough – then the day is still close to perfect, as long as everything that kept me busy otherwise has been accomplished to the satisfaction of all involved. And if that doesn't work either, then I'm usually still satisfied when I know that there will be a solution at some point and we'll be able to manage.

[Ruge:] Let's take another step forward: Who or what is the TUM legal department?

[Seidl:] At the moment our team has 26 employees, 20 of whom are legal staff, on a full-time and part-time basis. We process an average of approximately 3,000 transactions a year. This is then divided among our four divisions: Fundamental topics, university law, research partnerships and general legal matters. And that really spans the spectrum between a five-minute telephone consultation to negotiations, the widest possible variety of contractual types and drafting subsidy and research contracts, everything imaginable.

[Ruge:] What's essential to a good research contract?

[Seidl:] A research contract is good when at the signing all the partners have the feeling that they can sign with a clear conscience. And the best contracts are the ones we've actually negotiated for months, bargaining out each and every passage – and then you can still conclude the contact in a way that everyone involved is satisfied and a fair compromise has been found.

[Ruge:] To put the question the other way around: What makes some contractual negotiations difficult or maybe even tedious?

[Seidl:] The reason is that for example in negotiations between the university or a research facility and partners in industry, the respective objectives are different by nature. A university wants to conduct research and publish the results generated by projects, use them in teaching and when appropriate wants to sell them. Furthermore, as a state institution we're bound by a variety of regulations, such as the EU state aid policy or budget law. For example, we're not allowed to give any gifts. Industry partners on the other hand wants to achieve results to use them for their own companies and in particular for their own production. So the interests don't always point in the same direction.

[Ruge:] All professional employees certainly have in common the fact that they have a kind of favorite work activity and then the required activities which aren't quite as pleasant. What would be your choices for these two roles?

[Seidl:] I actually have very many assignments that I really enjoy doing. If I had to choose a number one, then it would be direct interaction with other people, whether in a consultation, when awarding a contract, on the phone or in contractual negotiations and discussions, especially brainstorming together and finding a solution or a compromise. That's what I find challenging and demanding. The absolute "required" task winner would be consolidating a contract as coordinator. Just imagine: You have a 28-page contract involving 20 partners and they all have different wishes regarding different clauses which they've communicated to you using the "Track Revisions" function in a Word file. And now you have to consolidate all the opinions, comments and requested changes in a single document. Sometimes that almost feels a little bit like hard labor…

[Ruge:] (Laughs) I can imagine! Okay, attorneys fight with people for a living. Have you ever really had a fight about a substantive issue?

[Seidl:] No, I don't think I've really had a professional fight yet. I think the right expression is more to have an objective debate. I associate fighting with personal emotions which overheat. In my opinion you get much farther with objectivity and friendliness than with shouting and putting on a dog-fight.

[Ruge:] Where do you see your professional strengths?

[Seidl:] I see myself as solution-oriented and empathetic. By the way, I also put that down years ago on the form during career counseling in high school. They told me I should study law…

[Ruge:] What would you like to see change in your department at TUM five years from now?

[Seidl:] Oh, it would be great if in five years we were the everyone's favorite department at TUM, something like "Oh, I'll just give the legal department a call. They won't do anything to me," and then they put down the phone having gotten positive and pleasant information. That's what we're working towards.

[Ruge:] (Laughs) I'll ask you in a couple of years if that's working out … Ms. Seidl, thanks you for this informative and revealing conversation, for doing away with several stereotypes … I enjoyed it! Thank you Ms. Seidl.

[Seidl:] Thanks, I enjoyed it very much! Bye!

The Young Perspective

[Kirsch:] STABL Energy's business is batteries, but not the small round ones for the TV remote that you buy in the supermarket. These are large batteries which function for example as energy storage for solar power. STABL Energy, a spin-off partly owned by TUM, uses a special innovation to do this. Co-founder and CEO Dr. Nam Truong speaks with my colleague Fabian Dilger about how the TU gave a helping hand to get this business idea off the ground.

[Fabian Dilger:] Dr. Truong, thank you for inviting us and taking the time to speak with us.

[Nam Truong:] My pleasure, I'm glad we can talk.

[Dilger:] Dr. Truong, you're CEO of STABL Energy. Your company is not just a spin-off from TUM, where you studied and earned your doctorate; other universities are also shareholders, namely Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences and the Bundeswehr University here in Munich. How did this unlikely partnership come into being?

[Truong:] Basically, the whole thing began with my co-founder Arthur Singer's doctoral studies. He earned his PhD at the Bundeswehr University Munich. In the research project the Uni BW (as we call it) worked together with Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences, which is where our second co-founder, Martin Sprehe, is from. He had completed his Master's degree there, and Arthur for example still knows me from our days at TUM. He studied electrical engineering at TUM. We actually met on the second day of the first semester… and that's where the connections to the start-up are from. On the other hand, I have to say: We're a spin-off from science and were financed by the EXIST research transfer program, that means funding from the German federal government. The supervising university, in our case the Bundeswehr University, also had to conduct what's called a "Start-up Acceleration", like UnternehmerTUM does. And since that's still a pretty new topic at Bundeswehr University, with start-ups, TU Munich was called in to help. And that's where the connection to UnternehmerTUM is from, where we found a fantastic advisor for start-ups.

[Dilger:] Dr. Truong, you not only studied and earned your doctorate at TUM, TUM also, I'd say, gave you quite a bit of direct help during the initial days of STABL Energy.

[Truong:] That's right, that was even before we founded the company. We participated in the TUM IDEAward program and we even won second place in 2018, which meant we won a cash prize in the five-figure range. Unfortunately I can't exactly remember what we spent it on, but in those days that was quite a lot of money, and it was incredibly helpful in the beginning.

[Dilger:] Now the core business of STABL Energy is batteries and battery technologies. What makes your battery technology better? What's new about your idea as compared to other companies?

[Truong:] Exactly… My co-founder Arthur Singer basically developed an innovative battery inverter in his doctoral thesis. All the storage manufacturers in the market use the conventional inverter, and to use it you need what are called highvolt packs on the batteries. You could think of it as a long chain, and as with any chain, the weakest link determines the performance level. Using the new approach we developed and brought to product maturity, we're no longer talking about a long and sensitive chain, instead the batteries are connected with one another in something more like a network, so that this weakest link doesn't determine the performance, instead it's supported by the batteries which are still good. That gives us a much, much more stable and reliable system.

[Dilger:] Dr. Truong, we've talked about batteries, but we often read the term energy storage in your literature. What exactly is an energy storage system? Are they simply giant batteries? And what exactly do they store, and why do we need them here in Germany?

[Truong:] Energy storage can be battery storage systems, or they can also be pumped storage hydropower plants. We actually work with battery storage systems and use the term energy storage as a synonym. So you can think of the energy storage system as a large battery, that's right. Our customers are usually companies which consume very large amounts of electricity and would like to use more electricity from their own photovoltaic systems instead of feeding the electricity into the grid.

[Dilger:] We also associate your company with recycling, since your business incorporates used batteries from eVehicles. How do you go about recycling these batteries from eVehicles and what's the benefit of doing that?

[Truong:] The secret is in our technology, making it possible to use these different batteries together with one another. I'll say the idea of re-using old batteries from electric vehicles isn't the main innovation. It's not possible on a long-term and sustainable basis with the classic systems of the kind you find in the market, because the failure of one of these batteries can then have a serious impact on the overall system. That's what I explained before: using our inverter technology, individual weak batteries don't destroy the overall performance or interrupt operations. The technology we have ensures that even if individual batteries might fail since they've been in use for 20 years already, our system will nevertheless keep working safely and reliably.

[Dilger:] Dr. Truong, thank for taking the time to speak with us.

[Truong:] My pleasure, thank you for such a nice interview.

Five Tips

[Kirsch:] We'll end today's episode once again with our feature Five Tips. Today the topic is writer's block. The deadline for the term paper is approaching fast, but the pages on the computer screen are still pure white. A nightmare for many students. Luckily there are ways to overcome a writing freeze-up like that. Writing coach Alexandra Peischer shares five tips with my colleague Fabian Dilger on how to make the writing process more successful.

[Dilger:] Hello Ms. Peischer, nice to hear from you!

[Alexandra Peischer:] Hello Mr. Dilger! thanks for inviting me, I'm looking forward to our conversation.

[Dilger:] Ms. Peischer, everyone has had the experience of sitting and staring at a blank sheet of paper. But how many days does that have to last before we can call it a real writer's block?

[Alexandra Peischer:] Strictly speaking a distinction is made between writing difficulties, writing problems and writer's block. Block is the most extreme of them. We talk about a real writer's block when no writing is possible at all over a longer period of time, when it's really settled in. Nevertheless, most people say, oh, I'm having a writer's block and actually mean they're having trouble writing or a writing problem, which happens on a regular basis and frequently. Everyone will be familiar with that and you can always refer to it that way, when you simply can't make any progress.

#1

My very first tip is, and this may sound strange, but self-management and self-care. When it comes to writing, you may expect concrete tools and tangible aids. They're also good. But the most important thing is to keep your eye on yourself, carefully set up your writing desk, carefully set the writing time, taking a break, that means creating rituals, finding a suitable space to write in… Then a lot of things just take care of themselves, when I create these basic conditions as well as I can.

#2

Tip number two: Separate creative phases and analytical phases. Let me explain a little bit… The writing process is, as the term says, a process. It's not, like, I start writing, then at some point the finished product is on the page; instead there are many phases. The first, collecting ideas, doing research, and also simply sitting down and starting to write are creative phases, and it helps a lot when I separate these phases from the later revision process and making beautiful sentences. Then first of all I can simply write freely and rework things later, otherwise I won't have anything to revise, the page will still be empty.

#3

Tip number three: Look for company. Writing groups are so wonderful, an assembly of other writers, for example with set writing times when you meet to write. This can be online via Zoom or at the library. Anywhere where you can write together. Each individual working on their own project, but still interacting together during the breaks, just having this feeling of not being alone when you write, but rather pursuing a similar goal together. That helps an incredible amount and it has another positive effect: I can also maybe ask someone for feedback.

#4

Fourth tip: Keep your own expectations a little more modest and don't be overcome by perfectionism. Many of us will know that: You want to turn in the best term paper of all time but for all the "wanting to be the best" you don't get anything down on paper at all. And at the same time there are these internal censors, this voice which always says, you're not good enough and you can do better. Here it helps to just get in touch with this inner voice, maybe to speak back to it or even to write down a dialog with the voice and ask permission to simply write freely at first and then to make the whole thing beautiful later.

[Dilger:] You've given us several tips on how students can help themselves. But when does the time come when the situation is really such that you can't make any progress alone? What kind of outside help is there?

#5

[Peischer:] My tip number five is on professional help from outside, something for when the other tips don't help in the long run. When you have the feeling that the same thing keeps happening again and again, always the same problem. I'm always getting stuck at the same point, that means not just with one paper, but on a frequent basis. I would say that's a sign that it's time to get outside help. A couple of days is totally OK, then suddenly there's another phase where everything flows out onto the paper. But when it lasts for several weeks, then it's time to get help, for example from a writing coach. And at many universities there are already writing guidance centers or writing workshops where you can learn some tricks of the trade, techniques that help. That's what I mean by professional help. If you google it, you'll find already probably find something suitable on the help pages of the universities. In the meantime there's a pretty good range of things available. Often it doesn't take much at all to get things going again.

[Dilger:] Ms. Peischer, thank you for your tips on the topic of writing difficulties and writer's block. I'm sure they'll help many students get through the upcoming term paper season.

[Peischer:] My wish is for all students to overcome their blocks and to enjoy writing. That would be the absolute best, the joy of creative activity! Don't forget, scientific writing is always creative and can be fun too.

[Kirsch:] And that's it for this episode of "We are TUM". In the next episode we'll once again be showcasing TUM's cutting-edge research, student life and we'll be speaking with all those who make TU Munich the unique place that it is. This has been "We are TUM". This episode was produced by Fabian Dilger, Clarissa Ruge, ProLehre Media and Didactics, and by me, Matthias Kirsch. Sound design and post-production by Marco Meister at Edition Meister in Berlin. That's all until the next episode. Make sure to join us and discover the big and little secrets of the Technical University of Munich!

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