💡Institutions often face the same challenges: projects remain siloed, expertise is overlooked, and no shared overview exists. This leads to missed collaboration and underused knowledge. IdeaLize tackles this with a central, cross-institution project portfolio platform for the Heilbronn region. With LLM-based matching and smart recommendations, it connects students, researchers, and staff to the right people, skills, and projects while making initiatives transparent and accessible. IdeaLize is building a regional hub that reduces duplication, uncovers hidden expertise, and turns ideas into lasting impact for Hochschule Heilbronn (HHN), IPAI, Technische Universität München (TUM), Heilbronn 42, DHBW, Fraunhofer ISI, and Fraunhofer IAO.

Reflecting on a successful and diverse year, the ideaLize project has been warmly received by institutions, showing the high demand for transparent idea spaces and collaborative innovation formats. In addition to the progress of ideaLize, the team celebrated the completion of the "Krebsberatungs-App" and is looking forward to further development in 2026. Prof. Dr. Mahsa Fischer expressed gratitude for the engaged collaboration with colleagues, partners, and students.

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At the 17th Researcher Breakfast in the KODIS Lab at Bildungscampus Heilbronn, Prof. Dr. Mahsa Fischer and the team presented ideaLize as an AI-driven open-source collaboration platform. They showed how ideaLize connects people, projects, and skills across faculties and institutions to share ideas, continue research, and develop new innovations. The session focused on creating synergies, fostering cooperation, ensuring sustainability of ideas, and strengthening the regional innovation ecosystem.

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We proudly celebrated the official release of the ideaLize App – a journey that began with the first ideas in 2020, initial funding in 2021, and now the launch in April 2025. To mark the occasion, our team gathered in Persian style at a cozy Iranian restaurant, making it a truly memorable evening.

This milestone was made possible thanks to the dedication of our students, colleagues, and long-term supporters. Special thanks to Kerstin Steimle and Susan Barth for their continuous collaboration and encouragement.

Looking ahead, we’re preparing to expand ideaLize across the Bildungscampus. To support this next phase, we are seeking two short-term team members (starting September 2025) in:

• LLM-based Recommendation & Matching – GenAI-driven features for smart project connections.

• Ecosystem & Stakeholder Engagement – Growing the ideaLize ecosystem with institutions and partners.

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At the KI-Festival in Heilbronn, we invited visitors to explore a futuristic event for the whole family. Our team was present at the HHN booth, together with Heilbronn University of Applied Sciences, Wissensstadt Heilbronn e.V., and the IPAI Foundation, to showcase our projects and engage with the public.

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In April, we officially launched the IdeaLize app at Heilbronn University! Available on both iOS and Android, IdeaLize gives students, researchers, and staff a platform to share projects, find collaborators, and make ideas visible.

The app already features research initiatives, teaching concepts, and startup ideas – with more to come. This semester, our business informatics students are testing IdeaLize with different user groups, gathering feedback, and presenting it at events like TechDay at the TechCampus and on the Bildungscampus.

We’re excited to grow this community and showcase the innovation potential at HHN!

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At the Fachtag Digitale Lehre on “Teaching in Transition – Universities in Digital Transformation”, we presented our project platform ideaLize – now available for testing on iOS and Android at Heilbronn University. The app aims to make ideas, projects, and potentials visible and interconnected.

Later, in a panel discussion with partners from Fuxam and bwgpt.de, we explored the future of teaching and learning with a focus on the role of Artificial Intelligence and Generative AI. The event offered valuable insights, inspiring talks, and engaging discussions with participants.

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Over the past two years, it has become our tradition to celebrate the holiday season together with a visit to the Christmas market followed by dinner. This year, we added two exciting new highlights:

1️⃣ We kicked off the evening with a fun bowling session – a real highlight for the whole team! 🎳

2️⃣ We celebrated together with two neighboring research teams, making the evening even more special.

It was a wonderful night filled with joy, teamwork, and gratitude for what we have accomplished together.

2024 was also a remarkable year, marked by two major career milestones:

• Research Professorship

• Admission to the Doctoral Association for supervising PhD candidates

Both achievements are the result of years of scientific work, publications, and the successful acquisition of third-party research funding. The journey was not always easy—there were moments of doubt and setbacks. But perseverance, clear strategy, and learning from mistakes proved essential to staying on course.

As we move into 2025, we look forward to continuing our growth, facing new challenges, and achieving even greater things together.

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The KI Festival Heilbronn was an inspiring event full of exciting conversations, new connections, and a vibrant exchange around artificial intelligence. Despite the summer heat, the organization and flow of the festival were seamless – a big thank you to everyone who made it possible.

Special thanks go to Thomas Bornheim (42 Heilbronn) and Saskia Koch (HHN) for their outstanding coordination and support.

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At Nacht der Wissensstadt, our team had the pleasure of meeting many curious visitors and sharing insights into our ongoing research. For those who could not attend, we also showcased our work at the HHN Exhibition Booth during the KI-Festival (29–30 June).

We presented two major research projects along with a master’s thesis:

• ideaLize – our vision for an AI-supported project platform designed to enhance the reusability of university projects, presented with a functional MVP.

• Cancer Counseling App – a digital tool to connect cancer patients and their families with psycho-oncology experts, supporting accessible care.

• Master’s Thesis – “Evaluation of a Voice-Based Emotion Recognition Software in the Psycho-oncological Care of Cancer Patients” by Leonard Georg Klotz.

The event was a valuable opportunity to exchange ideas with the public and highlight the potential of AI and digital solutions in education and healthcare.

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We were honored to be invited to the University: Future Festival (#UFFestival) to present our project ideaLize. During the event, we shared insights from nearly three years of design and development, highlighting the challenges, learnings, and milestones along our journey.

The festival provided a unique platform to engage with a diverse audience of innovators, educators, and technologists, and to exchange perspectives on the future of digital solutions. Showcasing ideaLize at such a forward-looking event was an exciting opportunity to demonstrate our vision and the impact of our work.

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The "IdeaLize" and "Unify" team had the pleasure of taking part in a fascinating and exciting workshop last week, which focussed on the "Flutter" development environment and the associated "Dart" programming language for implementing cross-platforms. The workshop was run by the agency "coodoo". A big thank you goes to the entire team, especially Marcel Ploch, for the nice workshop.

"We are ready for Flutter" :)

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Last Monday, the IdeaLize team celebrated its annual and traditional Christmas celebration. First, we toasted with punch and mulled wine at the Käthchen Christmas market in Heilbronn city centre.

After that we had dinner together. We were able to chat in a pleasant atmosphere over delicious food and look back on the year! The mutual exchange and the associated time together is very important to our team in order to promote and strengthen mutual appreciation and the feeling of togetherness. Thank you very much for the lovely evening. 

We wish you a pleasant rest of the Advent season!

We had the last InduKo project workshop of the year 2023 on Monday. 

It was nice to see how far the sub projects have been developed and how many ideas we could find to integrate the subprojects to increase the value for our target group, the students, researchers and professors of the university.

It was a great experience at ICERI 2023 conference on Education, Research and Innovation. We have presented our work in the field of projectbased learning in Computer Science in higher education and had great discussions. 

We also had an engaging information exchange with colleagues of other universities about AI in education and applications of ChatGPT in lectures.

With the motto - "Articial Intelligence in academic teachig" - the IdeaLize team visit the event in the Stuttgart state parliament. 

It was very inspiring for us to see how great the diversity of ideas developed regarding application scenarios for using AI in university teaching has already progressed. 

We would like to thank you very much for the exchange and the opportunity to introduce ourselves at this event and the exciting exchange with the participants and visitors. 

On September 21st and 22nd, the “IdeaLize” and “Unify” teams were able to immerse themselves in the agile world of the Scrum methodology. 

The training helped us a lot to find the right mindset for more agility and to develop our Scrum skills through playful and well-founded exercises and to integrate them into our everyday project life. 

Many thanks to “Agile Heroes” for the great training.

According to the motto: "Teamwork makes the dream work!" The IdeaLize team moved everyday office life to Experimenta Heilbronn last Wednesday. 

Here we were able to experience science and technology virtually in the combination of planetarium, theater and science cathedral. We also ended the beautiful day with lunch together in the nearby Maker Space.

On the topic of “Sustainable Management of Project Work Results in Computer Science”, the team, represented by Prof. Dr. Mahsa Fischer, Svenja Rößler and Daniel Szafarski present our current results at the EUCEN Conference in Utrecht.

It was very exciting for us to learn from the community that many other universities are also dealing with the topic of “reusability” of student results. The concept of “IdeaLize” was received with interest by many participants. We were very happy about this positive feedback and are taking many thoughts and ideas home with us. 

On May 15, 2023, we had the pleasure of holding our internal project workshop, where we regularly exchanged information about the progress of our sub-projects. The aim was to get an overview of current progress and current challenges and to develop solutions together.

It was great to see the team members in person and exchange ideas in an inspiring atmosphere. The direct personal contact made the workshop a special experience and strengthened our collaboration. The workshop gave us the opportunity to learn from and inspire each other.

Three days focused on the future of higher education: Under the motto “Heads Up!” The University:Future Festival (U:FF) will take place from April 26th to 28th, 2023 in person and in digital space.

The following applies: Digital first! The festival in all its diversity and the supporting program can only be experienced in its entirety online. At the same time, physical stages in various locations in Germany enable face-to-face encounters and networking. The festival is bilingual in German and English.

Strengthening interdisciplinary work by building a hybrid project platform.

April 28, 2023, 13:30 pm – 14:30 pm 

Track Knowledge Transfer & Communities

Room Digital 7

#makeithappen – Nicht immer ist das Ergebnis das Ziel, manchmal ist es der Weg dahin .

Initiated by the STARTKLAR start-up center and donated by the Arnfried and Hannelore Meyer Foundation, Heilbronn University now offers 2 new rooms for innovative ideas: the Makerspace and the DigiLab. 

With a total of 300m² of versatile prototyping world, students now have space for AI, virtual reality, 3D modulation and gaming, among other things.

The newly created platform is intended to encourage students, researchers and cooperation partners from the regional ecosystem to jointly develop projects, start-up projects and formats that bring new things into the world and accelerate the transfer of innovation to the region.

Of course, the Induko team was also represented with a stand. Prof. Dr. Mahsa Fischer gave a lecture on the topic of “Ideas and innovation platforms” and presented our research project Idealize.

Under the motto "AI based recommendation systems - explainable AI to increase the traceability of recommendations", many curious visitors visited us at our stand at the garden show in Eppingen. We were able to have many insightful and interesting conversations. We were also able to introduce our “InduKo” project and the topic of “AI” with the use cases and demonstrations we brought with us. It was a lot of fun to find out about the different views and opinions on the topic of “AI” and to be able to take them away as important insights for us.

On August 5th and 6th, 2022, the StartPlay conference took place for the first time as an interdisciplinary gathering of science and practice on the topic of gamification and entrepreneurship at the University of Koblenz-Landau.

The first AI festival in Heilbronn was a complete success. The HHN InduKo team was also there and spoke to the visitors about the possible uses of AI in an educational context.

At the Night of Science, young and old have the opportunity to visit the Heilbronn educational campus to see what is being taught, learned and researched at the HHN.