Archive: Funded Projects since 2019
Ideas Competition “Studienbezogene Verstärkung der Exzellenzstrategie”
With the ideas competition “Academic Enrichment of the Excellence Strategy”, started in 2019, TUM promotes initiatives in the area of study and teaching that aim to advance the use of digital forms of teaching, learning, and examining at TUM as well as to develop innovative transdisciplinary teaching formats.
Competition 2025/2026
The call for proposals for the ideas competition “Studienbezogene Verstärkung der Exzellenzstrategie” 2025/26 aimed to promote new initiatives, new formats, new contents and new structures in the area of teaching, learning and assessment for the further development of teaching at the TUM.
The following projects will be funded:
TUM School of Management: Prof. Dr. Isabell Welpe
The Quantum Entrepreneurship Laboratory, a well-established course offered in cooperation with the TUM School of Management, the TUM Physics Department and TUM Venture Labs, has facilitated numerous groundbreaking entrepreneurial student initiatives in recent semesters. However, a lack of management student participation has been a persistent challenge, limiting the business prospective of the proposed ideas. Furthermore, it was clearly shown that interdisciplinary teams excelled and delivered a higher quality in the final pitches compared to those teams without management students. To bridge this gap, the project “Startup Insights: Unlocking Quantum Potential” was launched: a 3 ECTS course designed to engage 30 selected management students with an entrepreneurial mindset, to equip them with basic knowledge about quantum technologies and to enhance their understanding of its applications in various industries. Resulting in an improved quality and quantity of management students applying for the Quantum Entrepreneurship Laboratory, consequently improving the quality and business applicability of the presented startup ideas.
TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology: Prof. Dr. Christoph Knochenhauer
Machine learning methods are increasingly finding their way into the modern world of finance and insurance. Highly qualified experts are needed to exploit the great innovation potential at the interface between finance and insurance, computer science, mathematics, and statistics. A key requirement is to implement and develop these cutting-edge methods in specific applications and identify and analyze their limits. This poses exciting challenges for teaching to optimally prepare students for these new developments and enable them to become part of the machine learning transformation. The Machine Learning Lab for Finance and Insurance provides students with essential skills in this highly interdisciplinary and cutting-edge area of teaching. Specifically, a new teaching and examination format will be developed. Students first learn the theoretical foundations of current machine learning methods in finance and insurance through freely combinable learning units, then implement, analyze, and present them in group work using case studies.
ProLehre Medien und Didaktik: Ellen Merkert-Taraba
The project will develop support programs for international and neurodivergent students to enhance their learning skills in the long term. The focus is on the systematic evaluation and expansion of existing materials and the development of new formats. Existing offers will be analyzed from an international perspective, and strategies will be developed to address international students more effectively. In addition, the existing range of services is to be expanded to include targeted English-language counseling, workshops, and online materials. Furthermore, workshops will sensitize university advisors, lecturers, and student counselors to the specific needs of neurodivergent students. The expertise of an international student counselor will enrich this project. Her experience in advising international and neurodivergent students will be directly incorporated into the design and implementation of the activities.
TUM School of Life Sciences: PD Dr. Jürgen Stolz
The interdisciplinary social media project “Der Verdauungskanal” (The Digestion Channel) was launched in the winter semester 2024/25. Students from various disciplines, including nutrition science and medicine, run an Instagram channel to provide scientifically sound nutrition information to a young audience in an entertaining way. The project takes a stand against the spread of unreliable content on social media by non-scientifically qualified people. Students work in teams to develop carefully scientifically proven posts to return the power of interpretation on nutrition issues to science. At the same time, the students gain valuable skills, from scientific communication and technical know-how to professional competence. The channel will also serve as a platform to promote the study program Life Sciences Nutrition. The project could become a pioneering model for other degree programs if successful.
TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology: Daniel Dyrda, Sven Liedtke, Prof. David Plecher
The project “Immersive Storytelling: Games” is a collaboration between the University of Television and Film Munich (HFF) and the Technical University of Munich (TUM). The project aims to bring together students from different disciplines to develop innovative video game prototypes through interdisciplinary collaboration. During the practical course, which will take place in 2025 and 2026, the participants will be divided into teams and go through three central phases: a block course for concept development, a three-month project phase, and accompanying theme weeks. The 2.5-week block course teaches the basics of narrative and game design and provides space to develop initial game concepts. In the subsequent project phase, students work intensively on the realization of their prototypes, supported by experienced mentors. Accompanying theme weeks offer regular checkpoints and networking events, creating a link and exchange between science and business. The two-year project will start in March 2025 and 2026 with new participants. A unique feature of the format is that students from the 4th semester onwards can participate in the internship as part of a Bachelor’s module or as Master’s students. That makes it possible to continue and develop projects from the previous round.
TUM School of Engineering and Design, TUM School of Life Sciences: Prof. Dr. Ferdinand Ludwig (ED), Prof. Dr. Pierluigi D'Acunto (ED), Prof. Dr. Thomas Rötzer (LS)
Under “Design, Build, Grow!”, the Chair of Green Technologies in Landscape Architecture has been running regular semester projects (studios) and seminars since 2020. The aim is for students to work together to design and build a botanical building. The term “Baubotanik” is defined as a fundamental approach to engineering with living plants: using the interaction of technical joints and botanical growth to form building techniques. The courses open up the potential for innovative, problem-based teaching approaches that combine modern technologies in engineering and design with a holistic ecological approach. The project aims to promote interdisciplinary collaboration, integrate new research into teaching, and create teaching formats representing a continuous, intergenerational knowledge process.
TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology: Dr. Florian Lindemann
The project aims to set up an e-learning platform for mathematics education at TUM, open to students from different degree programmes. On this platform, students can work independently on electronic tasks related to the content of the introductory mathematics courses of their degree program. The tasks are created in collaboration with lecturers and course tutors and have the following features: Free text input of formulas and results, automatic correction using the STACK tool based on a computer algebra package, randomization of tasks using a random generator, immediate feedback including a detailed sample solution and individualized feedback taking into account the students' input.
Thanks to a recently established cooperation with other universities (including ETH Zurich, TU Berlin, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg), it is possible to draw on an extensive pool of exercises from different universities, which are adapted and extended to meet the specific needs of TUM. As the Department of Mathematics is responsible for mathematics education in almost all schools of the TUM, the platform is expected to significantly impact a large number of students in various degree programs.
TUM School of Engineering and Design: Prof. Dr. Klaus Bengler
Hybrid learning, also known as “blended learning”, combines online and face-to-face teaching and has enormous potential for teaching. However, the approach also presents unique challenges, especially for students who feel isolated or have difficulty adapting to the different dynamics compared to traditional teaching. In collaboration with student projects at the Department of Ergonomics, an innovative prototype has been developed to support student project work in the hybrid learning environment. This tool, inspired by blended learning concepts, integrates a personality assessment based on the Big Five model to promote students’ self-awareness and the development of teamwork skills (Costa & McCrae, 1992; Borkenau & Ostendorf, 2008). In this way, it promotes collaborative learning and supports the broader goal of effectively transitioning to a hybrid educational model consistent with a holistic educational mission.
Currently, this platform mainly considers students’ perspectives as the main stakeholders. However, the role of lecturers and teaching staff is equally important. As part of the project, the platform will be further developed, taking into account the needs of all university stakeholders, in order to fully integrate it into everyday academic life at TUM. This comprehensive approach will ensure that both students and teachers can successfully navigate the changing landscape of hybrid learning.
TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology: Prof. Dr. Jürgen Pfeffer
The existing range of ethics courses at the TUM is fully utilized, and the courses are only scalable to a limited extent. At the same time, demand is growing rapidly due to the TUM-wide reorganization of the curriculum. The ETHICS4ALL project offers a solution to this problem: an interactive online course provides the necessary scalability to offer introductory ethics courses to a large number of STEM students in the future. At the same time, the pressure on the existing curriculum will be reduced. Lecturers will be able to improve the quality of their courses by requiring the 3 ECTS module as an entry requirement. A standardized basic ethics course will also guarantee high-quality teaching throughout the TUM.
TUM School of Medicine and Health: Prof. Dr. Filip Mess, Johanna Schmickler
The project will develop, test and implement a target group-specific online course as a self-study program for the learning platform Moodle to promote sleep health among TUM students. The content will be created in a participatory way by a team of students through interactive modules, practical tips, and audio and video contributions. By involving students in the development process, the specific needs and requirements of the target group can be taken into account, thus increasing the program's acceptance. The overall aim of the online course is to increase participants' sleep-related health literacy and to enable them to optimize their personal sleep behavior. The online course is linked to the 'Sleep and Recovery' sub-project of the TUM Student Health Management program and is open to students from all disciplines. The course language is English, and accessibility is taken into account when developing the materials. TUM ProLehre also provides didactic support during the development and pilot phase.
TUM Language Center: Katharina Lechle, Jutta Schlüter, Claudia Hanke, Elisabeth Thiessen, Christine Reulein
The project aims to set up an accompanying program to complement the existing German courses, enabling international students to use their growing knowledge of the German language practically and authentically. Peer-to-peer meetings will bring international TUM students together with students who grew up in Germany or are well integrated. In this way, students learning German can apply their new knowledge. All participating students learn to act in an intercultural environment and thus lay the foundation for personal networks. These peer-to-peer meetings, known as 'tutorials', promote the idea of a 'face-to-face university'. International TUM students experience community and opportunities for linguistic and personal integration and can prepare themselves optimally for the German-speaking working world.
TUM School of Medicine and Health: Michael Gammel
The project aims to take medical education at the TUM School of Medicine and Health to a new level through the use of virtual reality (VR). Based on proven e-learning formats and the successful concept of Juntendo University Hospital in Tokyo, immersive 360-degree videos will be created in close cooperation with the Japanese university. The VR-videos allow students to experience realistic clinical situations and complex procedures from a first-person perspective, enabling a practical and intensive learning process. Immersion in a virtual environment creates a deeper learning experience where students can fully engage in the clinical event and process the learning content in a realistic context. The ability to simulate complex and even rare clinical cases and replay them in a safe environment is particularly valuable. Unlike traditional educational videos, VR allows students to actively focus on different aspects of the clinical scenarios, enhancing their conscious perception of the environment and developing clinical skills.
TUM School of Medicine and Health: Dr. Jana Fritsche, Karina Korecky, Philipp Rauh
Inspired by the report of the Lancet Commission on Medicine, Nazism, and the Holocaust of 2023, the project aims to develop a concept of history-informed Professional Identity Formation (PIF) for academic medical and health professions in the form of teaching content and formats. Through a self-reflective engagement with the historical path dependencies and conditions of the origin of moral principles in medical practice, a profound understanding of their fragility is to be fostered – thereby creating a sustainable foundation for responsible and critical attitudes in medicine. Such an approach has so far been scarcely established at the (inter-)national level. The TUM Medical Education Center and the Institute for the History and Ethics in Medicine at the TUM develop ideas and create innovative teaching formats in close cooperation with students through active participation in a workshop and summer school. In this process, which will be accompanied by lectures, discussions, and excursions, the aim is to work out how historically informed professional identity formation can be sustainably anchored and promoted.
TUM School of Medicine and Health: Prof. Dr. David Daniel Ebert, Anna Pyttlik
The project aims to develop and evaluate a sustainable, internet-based blended care program to support TUM students in acquiring stress management skills. The aim is to create an additional, flexible, capacity-sparing stress management program. The internet-based approach allows students who are unable to attend face-to-face courses (e.g., due to social anxiety or time constraints) to participate. The project builds on the extensive experience of the TUM Center for Study and Teaching (CST) and the expertise in internet-based mental health applications at the Chair of Psychology & Digital Mental Health Care. In addition to the internet-based self-help via the learning platform Moodle, two face-to-face group sessions via Zoom are planned, which will be conducted in cooperation with counselors from the TUM CST (primarily Dr. Mirjam Uchronski).
TUM School of Medicine and Health: Dr. Patricia C. Da Rosa, Prof. Dr. Matthias Richter
The project proposes a course that will help students strengthen their scientific, critical, and analytical skills in order to better identify, analyze, and combat misinformation. The course combines interdisciplinary lectures with problem-based activities and uses innovative teaching methods. The focus will be on building skills and perspectives across diverse disciplines and fostering new strategies to counteract misinformation. They will create practical tools such as toolkits, podcasts, and social media content, further reinforcing their learning and empowering them to address misinformation effectively. These skills are essential for academic success and future professional practice and contribute to strengthening the global academic community. The course is open to students from all TUM faculties and will run for 9 weeks each summer semester from 2025.
TUM School of Medicine and Health, TUM Center for Culture and Arts: Tina Schwender, Prof. Felix Mayer
In the summer of 2025, the Kunstareal Festival will take place, with the TUM family among the organizers. The project aims to make dance, as part of cultural and aesthetic education, accessible and tangible in its diversity to the TUM community and visitors to the Kunstareal festival. The goal is to make established programs at the TUM visible and to create project formats specifically designed for „TUM dances!“.
One of these formats is the community dance project, in which students will experience and create dance as an artistic and cultural asset during a block event from 23 to 27 July. During the project week, under the guidance of two lecturers/dance artists, the participants will work on a professional, artistic dance piece that will be thematically related to an exhibition at the Pinakothek der Moderne (PdM) and performed as part of the Kunstareal Festival. The entire project will be realized in cooperation between the unit Applied Sports Science of the Department of Health and Sport Sciences and the TUM Center for Culture and Arts.
TUM School of Engineering and Design and TUM Gender Equality Office: Dr.-Ing. Ann-Kathrin Goldbach, Dipl.-Ing. Michaela Wenzel
The project aims to bring students together in project teams across school boundaries and to think together about diversity and sustainability, in line with the EuroTeQ Collider theme 'enhancing connections for sustainable futures'. The first EuroTeQ collider challenge, divided into three phases, will start in the summer semester 2025. In the input phase, keynote speeches will provide insights into different dimensions of diversity and sustainability. In the challenge phase, students will go through a design thinking workshop introducing them to creative idea generation and project development. This is where concrete project tasks arise that are pursued in the team. In the final phase, the developed projects will be presented to a jury, with the possibility of an exhibition and further opportunities for exchange.
TUM School of Engineering and Design: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Johannes Fottner
As part of the connecTUM initiative, a holistic teaching concept has been developed for the bachelor's degree program in mechanical engineering. For this purpose, an information platform has been implemented which accompanies the students throughout their studies and provides them with up-to-date lecture material from the participating courses from the introductory course onwards.
The follow-up project aims to integrate a chatbot into this platform. This chatbot will access the course content and select relevant passages in lecture notes and other lecture documents according to the student's questions. The different disciplines will be considered holistically, and interdependencies will be taken into account. In this way, students will be able to access the extensive teaching material more quickly and efficiently and solve interdisciplinary problems.
TUM School of Engineering and Design, TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology: Prof. Dr.-lng. Gebhard Wulfhorst, Yihan Xu, Prof. Dr.-lng. Markus Lienkamp, Prof. Dr. Sebastian Pfotenhauer
euMOVE is an interdisciplinary, international project course that offers 12 students from various fields the opportunity to explore sustainable mobility innovations in Europe and develop solutions for specific challenges in Munich, through interdisciplinary collaboration and an excursion to a European metropolitan region to learn about innovative approaches. Mobility is understood as a "wicked problem," meaning a techno-social challenge intertwined with other issue areas that must be addressed within its specific context and from a process-oriented perspective. The course is open to students from different Schools interested in mobility in metropolitan regions.
During the summer semester 2025 and 2026, students work in three interdisciplinary groups supervised by the Chairs of Innovation Research, Automotive Engineering, and Urban Structure and Transport Planning. Each group deeply engages with one of three predefined mobility-related topics, such as commuting from suburban areas, urban cycling, or the distribution of public space. Throughout the semester, the groups follow a design process facilitated by the Hans Sauer Foundation, an external cooperation partner. Due to the thematic relevance, the course is closely connected to the Munich Cluster for the Future of Mobility in Metropolitan Regions (MCube).
TUM Think Tank: Niklas Wais
The teaching project aims to unite the fields of computer science and law in a central Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). Current research findings from both disciplines will be integrated into the teaching and made freely accessible. Future topics are, e.g., the law of artificial intelligence (the legal perspective on technology) and the use of AI in justice and administration (the technological perspective on law). The content will be presented to students from various study fields through high-quality video elements and interactive knowledge assessments.
TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology: Prof. Dr.-Ing Georg Carle, Filip Rezabek
The Cyber Security Polygon Lab and Project Week are designed to provide students with hands-on, comprehensive training in cybersecurity by replicating real-world infrastructure scenarios. The Cyber Security Polygon is an emulated environment which allows students to apply theoretical knowledge, work in interdisciplinary teams, and which addresses practical needs of the industry. It serves as a platform where academic and industrial partners can collaborate to create diverse cyber security scenarios. By integrating the Polygon into a dedicated laboratory and a Project Week format, we emphasize interdisciplinary learning that covers risk management, network protocols, and on-premise and cloud deployments.
TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology: Prof. Jens Grossklags, Dr. Mo Chen
The primary aim of this project is to gain a deeper understanding of how computer science courses can be more effectively designed for students from the School of Management and the Bachelor/Master of Management & Technology study programs. As a case study, the project will focus on redesigning the course “Information Management for Digital Business Models (IM4DB)”. A key objective is to align technical concepts with the needs and backgrounds of a diverse student cohort in management programs. The project aims to develop a tailored and effective learning experience by exploring student and faculty perspectives through targeted research and engagement. The insights gained will not only guide the redesign of the IM4DB course but will also support broader improvements to computer science transfer courses, ensuring that management students receive an engaging, relevant, and technically rigorous education.
TUM School of Engineering and Design, Bayerische Landesanstalt für Landwirtschaft: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Markus Disse, Dr.-Ing. Johannes Mitterer, Florian Ebertseder
Since 2014, the Chair of Hydrology and River Basin Management has offered an elective module in the Bachelor's program in Environmental Engineering, in which students learn terrain-based measurement and analysis methods in a one-week block course in Lower Bavaria. They investigate soil water balance, erosion, and runoff to understand the interactions between water and soil and the effects of agricultural use. In addition to practical work, they develop an awareness of complex scientific relationships and become sensitized to the consequences of human intervention and climate change.
To further improve teaching, the Chair has been working with the Bavarian State Research Center for Agriculture (LfL) since 2021 to make the course more practical. A hydrological research area has been established at Wittibreut to monitor the water balance of the landscape. The project has three main objectives: to expand monitoring by introducing on-site flow measurements, to encourage interdisciplinary cooperation between environmental engineers and agricultural scientists, and to integrate the topic of landscape water balance as an overarching theme. That will give students a deeper understanding of the interrelationships and prepare them for future challenges in sustainable land use.
TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology: Dr.-Ing. Michael Zwick
This project aims to develop a mobile green screen system to enhance traditional teaching and to investigate its effectiveness. The focus is on whether active support for students in synchronizing their visual (script, notes) and auditory (speech/articulated thought processes) perceptions enables them to better follow the course of the lecture.
TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology: Prof. Dr. Jeanne Rubner, Kolja Kröger, Andreas Schmidt
The plug-in module “Science Communication and Public Engagement” teaches the basics of science communication. So far, students have gained practical experience by analyzing existing science communication formats. For a stronger practical orientation, the project aims to develop a format and learning materials for 'agile prototyping'. The co-creative format development will be tested with target groups to create a dialogue-based communication offer for the TUM (CCC, schools, clusters, etc.). The learning content is thus interlinked with TUM's communication work and creates added value for the students as well as for the CCC and the TUM communication network. Furthermore, the project contributes to TUM's Public Engagement program.
TUM School of Life Sciences: Prof. Dr.-lng. Petra Först
The project aims to develop an innovative teaching format to make food process engineering more exciting and accessible to students. The format emphasizes a high degree of practical relevance so students can playfully translate theoretical content into practical applications. The project's core is designing an “Exit Game” or “Escape Room” where students work in small groups to solve process engineering problems that represent typical process and product development challenges in the food industry. The format is divided into stations of increasing difficulty. Each station in the game corresponds to a specific problem that students must solve by applying the theoretical knowledge learned in the lecture. Access to the next station is granted after the successful completion of one station. After completing all the stations, the students should be able to innovatively improve an existing process or product or develop a new one. The project encourages students' independence, creativity, and problem-solving skills. The exit game combines traditional theoretical teaching with interactive, practical elements, thereby increasing the subject's attractiveness for later professional practice.