Franziska Hedrich

What a week! From November 24 to 28, Frankfurt UAS hosted the first U!REKA Week. Around 200 international staff and students from Helsinki, Ghent, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Ostrava, Odessa, Vienna, Edinburgh, Sofia, and Bari had the opportunity to network with their international colleagues, further develop projects, or deepen their collaboration. The main program highlights included the U!REKA job shadowing programme, international guest lectures, and the two-day Urban Circular Hack(athon).

Frankfurt UAS professor Raul Gschrey discusses ideas, plans and goals for the international teaching platform

U!REKA European University Alliance and businesses, has been awarded major project funding from the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) Higher Education Institutions (HEI) Initiative. The U!Innovate Project is an important boost to enhance the innovation capacity and entrepreneurial mindset of U!REKA universities and foster collaboration between academia, industry and regional authorities.

In a podcast conversation U!REKA members Minna Kaihovirta (Metropolia) and Koen Van Damme (HOGENT) explore how inclusion, co-creation and boldness became the core values of our European University alliance.

In April 2025, eight members of HOGENT International Office visited their colleagues at Frankfurt UAS for a job shadowing. Hanna Leonhard, local coordinator for U!REKA in Frankfurt, was eager to learn how Nausikaä Lagrou, senior staff member at the International Office in Ghent, prepared and experienced her stay in Germany.

Prof Dr Jens Liebehenschel combines several goals in his innovation professorship: Together with Master’s students from Frankfurt UAS and HOGENT, he is developing a computer science learning tool over the course of several semesters. He combines this practical task with the supervision of Bachelor students. While he slips into the customer role for the learning tool and thus drives the project forward, the Master’s students gain their first valuable teaching experience.

The presidents and rectors of the U!REKA universities met in Vienna on 10 and 11 March. The meeting was hosted by the UAS BFI Vienna, which is an associated partner in the U!REKA network. Managing Director Eva Schiessl-Foggensteiner explains in an interview why the university is involved in U!REKA and what opportunities she sees in international cooperation.

At the beginning of February 2025, Frankfurt UAS scientists welcomed Prof Dr Petr Machník, professor of Computer Science at the Technická univerzita Ostrava. The aim of his visit in Frankfurt was to explore possible areas of cooperation and to delve deeper into the planning of a U!REKA summer school.

As part of U!REKA, Frankfurt UAS has established four innovation professorships focussing on strategically important projects. The selected professors are allowed to reduce their teaching load by six semester hours for two years in order to focus on international research topics or cross-university projects. One of them is Prof. Dr. Raul Gschrey.