Hochschule Ruhr West (Consortium management)

Hochschule Ruhr West (HRW) is a STEM university founded in 2009 in North Rhine-Westphalia with currently more than 6,500 students. An interdisciplinary team from the Computer Science and Measurement and Sensor Technology institutes is involved as a project partner. Founded in 2012 by Prof. Dr. Michael Schäfer, the 600 m² FabLab with the adjacent 200 m² co-working space is being used and expanded as an educational and collaboration environment in the project.

As a solid-state physicist with a doctorate in the field of learning psychology, Mr. Schäfer will contribute to the development and implementation of attractive formats together with the partners. With an interdisciplinary team of currently ten employees, the HRW FabLab will use its national, European and international network, particularly with MIT, to support the impact and reach of the project.

Prof. Dr. Jan Pawlowski, a business information scientist with a focus on digital transformation, supports Verbund in the successful introduction of new strategies and processes in companies. In his research, he has worked on various focal points that are addressed in this project, such as the investigation and design of innovation processes, the development of competence frameworks for various competence areas, co-digitization (design of digitization processes with special consideration of employees) and the didactic design of e-learning offers and development of learning scenarios.

The expertise in the development of sensor systems at the Institute of Measurement and Sensor Technology rounds off the capabilities, as this brings in the specialist focus on future second-generation quantum sensors. Prof. Dr. Andreas Hennig, with his focus on smart sensors, contributes his technical expertise and acts as an interface to the Institute's activities in the field of magnetic sensors for plant engineering and medical products.

Main responsibilities of the HRW in the research project

WP0 - Project management and coordination (Jens Klöpfel, Tanja Pape)

WP1 - Competence model and overall didactic concept (Annika Nowak, Prof. Jan Pawlowski)

WP2 - Expansion, further development and operation of the HRW FabLab as a collaboration and educational environment for the Quantum Technology FabLab (Michel Hoffmeister, Leon Becker, Tristan Strahler, Prof. Dr. Michael Schäfer)

WP5 - Conception and further training to combine technological possibilities and properties with requirements and problems from industrial applications (Prof. Dr. Andreas Hennig)