Software Campus

The Software Campus trains the leaders of tomorrow. Doctoral students in computer science conduct research projects as project leaders in collaboration with a company and build up new knowledge on management and leadership thanks to training courses. Thereby, the talents are accompanied by highly experienced managers through mentoring. This prepares them for leadership positions or starting their own business.

Many universities, research institutions and companies are cooperating in this program (see softwarecampus partner ), which is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Prof. Wolfgang Wahlster and the DFKI were significant for its creation and inception in the course of the IT summits in 2010 and 2011.

IT research project

Program participants lead their own IT research project and manage the entire process independently with the support of their research and industry partner. Each project is funded by the BMBF with up to 115,000 euros over a maximum project duration of two years.

Leadership training

To ensure that the IT research project can be successfully led, the industry partners provide support for the further training of individual skills. Each participant attends four training sessions over one to two days in the fields of leadership, methods, and social and personal skills, as well as an online course.

Mentoring & Networking

In the program, participants are immediately part of an active network of current and future IT executives from leading German companies, as well as company founders and experts from science and research. Experienced leaders accompany the participants personally within the framework of mentoring. On the one hand, this gives them a direct insight into the daily working world of IT executives, and on the other hand, they have a high-ranking contact person for questions or advice regarding their project.

Communities of Practice

Participants from different years, alumni and partners meet up in various communities of practice, both online and offline. Among other things, the exchanges take place on behalf of research topics, personal development, or career planning. Through the peer-to-peer mentoring with other participants, they receive and pass on their experiences.