Search, find, foster
Seeking talent at the Technology Park Adlershof
Finding, fostering, and maintaining talent is a pivotal challenge of our knowledge-based society. Science and business must cooperate to not let good ideas go to waste in laboratories. Adlershof offers ways to study how it’s done.
Young future makers are passionately presenting their solutions to an important issue of the future. As part of the “Forum Young Top-Level Researchers” on the internet of things, six scientists showcased their research results. The best idea with the highest chances for commercial application can look forward to prize money amounting to 36,000 euro. The annual competition is organized by the Industrial Research Foundation in cooperation with Humboldt-Innovation GmbH (HI). It aims at “supporting young talent and encouraging them to market their ideas,” explains HI-director Volker Hofmann. He works for the above-mentioned knowledge and technology transfer company which is in charge of helping scientists become entrepreneurs.
One of those young and sought-after talents is Marius Kloft, junior professor for machine learning at the Humbolt-University of Berlin. Together with his team the mathematician and computer scientist has developed a solution for heating control systems that uses multiple data sources, such as GPS data from a smartphone, the weather report, and information on holidays and seasons, to calculate when and how to adjust the heat. In future the system will learn residents’ moving patterns and predict when they return home and how to air-condition the rooms accordingly. Kloft’s idea convinced the “Forum Young Top Scientists” and he was awarded a prize of 2,000 euro.
He is regarded as an outstanding young talent: he was named junior professor when we was 33-years-old, leads his own research group, and has been distinguished many times, including by Google Research, for excellent publications. His key research areas are kernel methods for machine learning, classification procedures, and statistical genetics – a wide range of subjects. Ultimately his work revolves around drawing conclusions from vast and heterogeneous data sources which are relevant to various aspects of life.
In order to prevent such developments from being stuck at unis and institutes, the HI sends out talent scouts to seek out market-relevant ideas in research groups and to encourage students, alumni, and professors to bridge the gap between science and business. Moreover, the HI team supports them with advice, coaching, and networking opportunities. In the last ten years, HI initiated more than 60 start-ups, acquired 19 million euro in project funds and created at least 550 jobs. “A place like Berlin benefits from this, because young talent is a crucial element for the innovation potential of a city,” remarks Hofmann. In his view Adlershof is a veritable pool for talent with “enormous potential at universities and beyond.”
Many, including Osypka Medical GmbH, benefit from this. The Adlershof-based company develops and manufactures electronic devices for cardiology and heart surgery such as temporary pacemakers and non-invasive cardiovascular monitoring. “Adlershof is ideal for finding talent because the university provides direct access to young scientists,” according to Thilo Thümecke, director of operations at Osypka. Sometimes a note on the Science City’s bulletin board is already enough. Every now and then outstanding people will knock on the company’s door on their own accord and are hired despite there not being an open position. Maintaining those talents doesn’t require much effort: “A small company with 35 employees can offer interesting tasks, taking over responsibility instead of mere subtasks, as you would in a large cooperation. Because of this we have hardly any fluctuation,” says Thümecke. He is a prime example himself: he started working for Osypka in late 1996 and couldn’t imagine working anywhere else. Flexible working hours to him are a great incentive. Especially software engineers can almost completely do their work from home. This is obviously attractive for young executives.
Seeking and fostering talent is commonplace in Adlershof. But even now when the times are good, Hofmann would like to see science and business to invest more. “There’s still room for improvement. After all, in a knowledge-based society, the sky’s the limit when it comes to talent.”
By Chris Löwer for Adlershof Journal
www.humboldt-innovation.de
www2.informatik.hu-berlin.de/~kloftmar/
www.osypkamed.com