Professor and Parallel Work at Industry

Dr. Elisabeth Zuber-Knost
Press Officer

Kaiserstraße 12
76131 Karlsruhe, Germany
Phone: +49 (0) 721/608-2089
Fax: +49 (0) 721/608-3658

Shared professorships are among the central innovation elements of the KIT Concept for the Future submitted under the Excellence Initiative. The model: Whoever is a shared professor, works half of the time at industry and the other half of the time at the KIT. The first holder of a shared professorship has now been appointed: Dr. Gisela Lanza, Head of the Production Systems Division of the Institute for Production Technology (wbk) will work at the Universität Karlsruhe and at the Daimler AG in the future.

For details, please contact:

Monika Landgraf
Phone: +49 (0) 721-8126
Fax: +49 (0) 721-3658
E-mail

“With this, capable young scientists are given the opportunity to gain experience in research and industry in order to facilitate their later decision in favor of a university or an industry career”, says the rector of the Universität, Professor Horst Hippler. The basic idea of this new type of close-to-industry professorship for a period of four years at first is to enhance permeability between the KIT and industry by a talent transfer in both directions - with benefits for both partners, the KIT and industry. To Dr. Gisela Lanza, the chances of a shared professorship are obvious, because “creative ideas and theoretical models have to find their way to practical application. As a production researcher, I need impulses from practice. For me, the shared professorship is a great instrument to accelerate innovation processes. The person who has the initial idea, commercializes it. This is rather unqiue.”

In the next four years, Lanza will work alternately for one year at the KIT and at the Daimler AG. The professorship is funded half from funds of the Excellence Initiative and half by the respective industry partner. A total of eight shared professorships have been recommended so far by the Council for Research and Promotion of Young Scientists (CRYS) that consists of representatives of the Universität and the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe and approved of by the KIT Executive Board. On the part of industry, not only Daimler, but also Bosch, SAP, BASF, Bayer, Roche, Harman/Becker Automotive Systems, sat. Kerntechnik, and two Fraunhofer Institutes (IITB and IAF) will take part.

To strengthen cooperation with industry is the declared objective of KIT that focuses on the knowledge triangle of research, teaching, and innovation. Talent transfer, i.e. the exchange of persons with pertinent know-how from research to industry and in the opposite direction - for instance, by a shared professorship - is part of innovation at KIT. It also comprises classical transfer of research and development results from the idea to the patent to the marketable product as well as foundations of new enterprises.

The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) represents the merger of the Universität Karlsruhe with the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe. Altogether, it has 7500 employees and an annual budget of 600 million Euros.

The KIT will be an institution of internationally excellent research and teaching in natural and engineering sciences. KIT shall attract the best experts from all over the world, set new standards in teaching and promotion of young scientists, and establish the leading European center in the field of energy research. KIT will assume a leading role in nanosciences worldwide. It is the objective of KIT to be one of the most important cooperation partners of industry.

From the lecture hall to the automotive company and back:
KIT researcher Dr. Gisela Lanza