Digital future: Palatinate strengthens innovative strength at Hannover Messe!

Digital future: Palatinate strengthens innovative strength at Hannover Messe!

The Open Digitization Alliance Palatinate is presenting itself at this year's Hannover Messe, which takes place from March 31st to April 4th. The trade fair will be used as a platform to strengthen the regional exchange of knowledge, ideas and technologies and will be represented in Hall 2, Stand C33, by the RPTU, Kaiserslautern University of Applied Sciences, Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics (ITWM) and the Leibniz Institute for Composite Materials Kaiserslautern (IVW). This is done as part of the federal-state “Innovative University” initiative.

A central goal of the Open Digitalization Alliance is to promote the regional innovation system with a strong focus on digitalization. The alliance's initiatives cover several future topics, including work, collaborative digital engineering, health, citizen science and creativity. Transfer manager Chantal Momber explains that the alliance acts as an interface between science, business and society. The aim is to create platforms that transfer knowledge and technologies into the economy and society.

Innovative projects and collaborations

A notable example of the initiative is the citizen science project “MotionForscher”, which aims to develop a foot lifting orthosis in cooperation with citizens and researchers. Intelligent composite materials are used to produce functional and comfortable orthoses with variable stiffness. In this project, participants also learn “design thinking” methods.

In addition to the trade fair, the University of Kaiserslautern will be represented by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Sven Urschel and Sebastian Bold from ODPfalz represented. The presentation at the Hannover Messe also integrates the latest developments in digital health, a thematic area that is particularly relevant given the current nursing shortage in Germany. This includes a new cooperation between the Pirmasens Municipal Hospital and the Kaiserslautern University of Applied Sciences, which focuses on research and teaching.

Education and knowledge transfer

In the run-up to the trade fair, 22 exchange students from Cherbourg visited the chemistry didactics school laboratory on March 17, 2025. The topic “Honey – what's the deal with this natural remedy” offered an interesting perspective on scientific issues that were addressed as part of this educational initiative.

In addition, 42kaiserslautern was opened in Kaiserslautern, an interactive meeting place for knowledge transfer and innovative ideas that is intended to promote networking between students and specialists. A recently successfully completed student cooperation project with the company ITW from Enkenbach-Alsenborn dealt with human resources design approaches and highlights the relevance of such practice-oriented projects.

The further development of project formats and collaborations, such as the citizen and scientist workshop as part of the “Motion Researcher” project, underlines the alliances' effort to actively involve citizens in research projects. Such initiatives are essential to exploit innovation potential and advance technology transfer.