Scientific discoveries are often confined to academic papers and fail to translate into practical applications. With their worldwide start-up programmes, the German Centres for Research and Innovation (DWIH) support German scientists in turning their research into viable business models. At the first DWIH Founders Summit in Cologne at the end of June, alumni of the start-up support programmes CITRIS and the GUILD Academy of the DWIH San Francisco shared their experiences—and what German universities can learn from the international start-up ecosystems. 

How can we live longer and healthier lives? What options are there for feeding more and more people sensibly? How can we increase people's participation in the digital space? Intensive research is being conducted into these and many other challenges - including at German universities. “Unfortunately, knowledge very often gets stuck in academic papers and is not properly applied,” says Dana Pietralla. “Research is conducted in an ivory tower on really exciting things, but the findings don't reach society and people in their everyday lives.”

Pietralla studied psychology at the University of Klagenfurt and the University of Cologne. For her doctoral thesis, she wanted to investigate the question of how perception changes in people with ADHD or dyslexia. To this end, she was at UC Berkeley for a research stay, after which she was supposed to go to New York University for her PhD. Instead, Dana Pietralla decided to set up her own company. Her start-up develops consulting and IT solutions for companies to digitally include neurodiverse people with a wide range of cognitive needs. “We bring scientific findings from cognitive science to companies and society in order to create practical added value.”

Women in Entrepreneurship

Promoting the transfer of knowledge from research to practice is also very important to the DAAD. With its worldwide network of German Centres for Research and Innovation (DWIH), it supports German universities in particular in increasingly establishing themselves as start-up centres. To this end, the DWIH offer a range of programmes that give students at German universities, who are interested in founding a company, the opportunity to gain access to the markets of the respective DWIH host countries. One example is the Women in Entrepreneurship Programme of the DWIH San Francisco. Every year, 100 women from German science and research institutions can take part in an online academy with the aim of turning scientific ideas into viable business models and becoming entrepreneurs. At the end of the programme, ten candidates are chosen to travel to Silicon Valley for a week to make contacts.

Dana Pietralla is also an alumna of this programme. At the end of June, she and other grantees met at the DWIH Founders Summit, the first alumni meeting of the DWIH's start-up-related funding programmes. “In future, we want to take the opportunity to learn from the participants and find out what works well and what doesn't,” reports Dr Jan Lüdert, Programme Director of the DWIH New York. Together with the German-American Chamber of Commerce, the DWIH New York organises the STEP USA University Programme once a year, which is aimed specifically at German start-ups and spin-offs from the university sector who are looking for access to New York's start-up ecosystem or at least want to be inspired by it.

Out of the academic bubble

Liwah Wong, a former Computer Scientist turned Geoscientist with degrees from TU Berlin and the University of Göttingen, was also at the alumni meeting. Wong is an alumna of CITRIS Innovation Intensive, a five-day innovation programme sponsored by the DWIH San Francisco for German students and young researchers who are interested in turning their research projects into start-ups. Participants learn about current research and start-ups at four University of California locations, receive workshops and networking opportunities and are given targeted support in transferring research into practice. Like Pietralla, Wong also wanted to “get out of the academic bubble”, as she puts it, although she is still active in research as part of a project at TU Berlin.

Liwah Wong's start-up is developing new types of soil layers that are tailored to urban agriculture and landscaping and can be used on rooftops, for example. They are based on the biomass waste produced in large cities. In contrast to previous solutions, the soil layers developed by Wong’s company are much thinner and only need to be a few centimetres thick. “My aim is to improve food and nutrient security within the framework of the principles of the circular bioeconomy,” explains Wong.

Valuable international insights

Both Wong and Pietralla have benefited greatly from the respective programmes. “To be honest, the German start-up and innovation landscape is still quite risk-averse. The DWIH programmes, on the other hand, are more down-to-earth and implementation-oriented, which suits my way of thinking and working better,” says Wong. For Pietralla, it was above all the contact with companies in the Bay Area that helped her progress as a founder. “The scientific network was already there thanks to my research stay at UC Berkeley. What I was missing was the network on a business level.”

What can German universities learn from such experiences? Marius Rosenberg is Chief Product Officer (CPO) at an international organisation that promotes start-ups and innovations. As the former head of the Excellence Start-up Centre at RWTH Aachen University, he knows exactly how knowledge transfer and spin-offs at universities can be strengthened. “We urgently need to change the mindset,” says Rosenberg, who discussed current challenges in this field of action with Jan Lüdert at the Founders Summit. So far, the idea of transfer has not really been taken seriously at university management level, according to Rosenberg. “The only measure of scientific excellence is still the output of papers. However, the transfer of innovation to society is actually the relevant metric. Spin-offs are the ideal vehicle for this transfer and should be given more attention.”

Important impetus through networks

In future, the DWIH Founders Summit will take place annually and also address corresponding funding activities of other DWIH. “We also want to strengthen the effect of networking on founders,” says Jan Lüdert from DWIH New York. “This is sometimes underestimated if you only focus on the potential entry into a foreign market. But we also see time and again that our sponsorship recipients decide to stay in Europe after their visit to the USA. The decisive factor is often the impetus they get from the exchange with other participants in the funding programme.” 

Klaus Lüber (15 July 2025)