Why are some cities hotspots for science and innovation and others aren’t? What will be the role of science in future cities after the Coronavirus pandemic? Are universities turning into mini Smart Cities?
Join our virtual event series Universities & Research Organisations – Key Drivers of Future Smart Cities filled with insights from leading innovation experts from Germany and the UK. In our five-part series we will explore the special roles that universities, research and innovation will play in the future of urban areas.
Listen to short expert lectures from UK and German representatives, take part in the subsequent Q&A and get actively involved through the breakout sessions. In each event, participants will dive deeper into certain aspects of the respective topic, meet with professionals working on similar issues and share personal experiences. Participants of the event series are keen on engaging internationally and see potential in cross-national cooperation.
The event series is co-organised by the UK Science and Innovation Network Germany (SIN), the German U15, the Imperial College London and BABLE, a young Morgenstadt spin-off facilitating innovation in cities.
Format | Duration | Summary |
---|---|---|
Inputs | 45 minutes | Two well-focused statements of 10-15 mins. each (one German, one British expert), 15 mins. Q&A |
Breakout Sessions | 1 hour | Participants discuss specific themes in virtual groups – supported by a moderator. The overall aim is an exchange of best practices and the identification of the most relevant research topics as well as potential areas for cooperation. |
Aggregation, Discussion & Conclusion | 30 minutes | Aggregation of the discussions within all Breakout Sessions. |
The Corona pandemic is globally a huge shock to societies and cities are often particularly affected by the virus (e.g. New York, Madrid). At the same time, it reinforces, accelerates and changes existing megatrends for cities: their role as hotspots for science and innovation, as labs for social trends, as hotspots for start-ups, as trendsetters and masterminds for politics. In our first session we’ll be addressing key questions like:
CEO & Co-Founder
BABLE
Managing Director
German U15
Head of Science & Innovation Germany, Switzerland & Austria
British Embassy Berlin
Organisational Development & Communication
BABLE
Senior International Relations Officer (Europe)
Imperial College London
Associate Vice-President for Major Special Projects
University of Manchester
Innovation District Manchester
Project Manager Talent I Science Marketing, Berlin Partner für Wirtschaft und Technologie GmbH
Brain City Berlin
Spokesperson for Higher Education and Research Governing Mayor of Berlin Senate Chancellery
Brain City Berlin
Which political/strategic programmes for future cities are in place – in the UK, in Germany and in other countries? Which role do research and innovation play in this context?
Professor of Economic Geography and Director of Research and Innovation at the School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University, and Director of its Cities Research Centre
Innovation, Cities and the Pandemic
Director of the Institute for Global Sustainable Development at the University of Warwick, UK
Turing Fellow at The Alan Turing Institute, UK
Citizen Cities. Previous projects clearly show that urban transformation is only successful if citizens are involved in a transparent and participatory way. We want to take a look at how this happens - using examples from the global South.
Project Manager PR & Communications, Potsdam Science Park, Standortmanagement Golm GmbH
Potsdam Science Park
© M. Jehnichen
How does the urban research and innovation ecosystem work? Why are some cities hotspots for science and innovation and others aren’t? How do society, universities and start-ups successfully work together?
Universities as drivers of European R&D ecosystems
Imperial College London and Technical University of Munich (TUM) are committed to developing mechanisms and programmes to link the Imperial and TUM research and innovation ecosystems, including the White City Translation Campus of Imperial and the Garching HighTech Campus of TUM.
University leaders and professors from both institutions will describe the vision for these campuses, the ways in which they engage the communities in which they are located, and how the universities are fostering innovation by bringing together business and industry, academic, and community actors to address local and global challenges. Start-ups and other innovation agents from these and other UK and German universities will engage in a panel discussion afterwards to explore best practices for creating successful innovation ecosystems.
White City is one of the most exciting, dynamic and rapidly changing parts of London.
It is becoming a pioneering quarter for arts, culture, innovation, science and learning – with resident organisations including the revamped BBC Media Village, the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London. Imperial’s White City Campus is a platform for innovation and entrepreneurship bringing together world-class researchers, businesses and partners from academia to work, share ideas and turn cutting-edge research into benefits for society.
Garching is one of the most prominent R&D campuses in Germany. Located north of Munich, it constitutes the center of natural sciences and technology at TUM. With more than 12,000 students at five departments, it is the largest of all TUM locations and also home to the TUM Institute for Advanced Study, the TUM Graduate School, the Munich School of Engineering (MSE) and an extensive Entrepreneurship Center. High-profile research institutes at Garching include the Max-Planck Institute for Plasma Physics and the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre. Moreover, it also includes an extensive mix of public research and private business-led research, with General Electric's only European research centre based in Garching.
Professor of Economics,
University of Hamburg
Vice-President (International),
Associate Provost (Academic Partnerships) and
Professor of Immunology,
Imperial College London
White City
Associate Provost (Academic Planning),
Imperial College London
White City
Chair of Urban Structure and Transport Planning,
TUM
Smart Mobility: Urban Innovation Clusters for Sustainable Development
Vice President for Entrepreneurship,
TUM
Smart Mobility: Urban Innovation Clusters for Sustainable Development
How does the future campus looks like? In many future cities the campus is the nucleo for innovation: research, start-ups and living take place together.
Setting the Scene by BABLE, British Embassy & German U15 | 10–15 minutes |
3 Speaker Keynotes | 45 minutes |
2 Start-Up Pitches + Q&A | 15 minutes |
Breakout Sessions | 30 minutes |
Summary | 15 minutes |
Institute Director, Chair for Bauinformatik, Technical University of Dresden
Universities as Living Laboratories
- Experience what you design(ed) -
Chair in Sustainable and Resilient Cities, Director of Transport, Mobility and Cities @ Nottingham, University of Nottingham
Decarbonised Communities and the Cities of the Future
RWTH Aachen, Professor for Economic Geography (until 9/2020),
Leibniz-Institute for Research on Society and Space / Humboldt Universität zu Berlin,
S-Junior Professorship for Applied Economic Geography and Head of Department
“Dynamics of Economic Spaces” (currently on leave, returning 10/2020)
Beyond Transfer – Universities as ingredients in problem-centred solutions?
Nima Torabi,
CEO & Co-Founder
Liberatii was founded in 2019 in Southampton (UK) and is a database virtualisation company that helps enterprises change their SQL database provider without having to change the application they use. Using a real-time query translation technology, Liberatii reduces the time, cost and risk of re-platforming enterprise applications to different cloud databases. Therefore enterprises can reallocate the savings on higher impact areas for growth.
Website
Kourosh Atefipour,
CEO & Co-Founder
Valkyrie Industries is enabling touch interactions for Virtual and Augmented Reality. Our patent-published wearable haptics technology allows natural interaction, sensations of touch, weight and resistance in the virtual simulations. With this technology having the opportunity to be applied to multiple industries, our initial applications are in immersive training for heavy industries, including chemical, automotive, space/aerospace and construction.
WebsiteUniversities and cities have been separated areas for many centuries - now they are growing closely together. Only together can society and universities maintain the trust in facts and truth and avoid populism or fake news.
Chairman of the DESY Board of Directors, Hamburg
Science City Bahrenfeld
Chair of the Scottish Cities Alliance, Leader of Dundee City Council
Scotland’s Smart Cities – Taking the Collaborative Approach
Professor of Cognitive Psychology
Director of the Centre for Immersive Technologies, University of Leeds
Director of the Centre for Applied Education, Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
Data driven societal benefit in the 'City of Research'
Chair of Geospatial Data Science and UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellow at the University of Glasgow
Citizen science: an inclusive approach to sense and research cities
Sign up here if you would like to join one or several of our virtual events. Once you have successfully registered, you will receive a confirmation email from us. We will send out emails with a link to the online event platform Remo for each of the upcoming events closer to the date. These emails will also contain all relevant information e.g. options for breakout sessions and technical requirements.
The virtual event series is co-organised by the UK Science and Innovation Network Germany (SIN) , the German U15, the Imperial College London and BABLE, a young Morgenstadt spin-off facilitating innovation in cities.
Just get in touch with us - we are happy to help.