Three RWTH Scholars Named DigiFellows

RWTH scientists Professor Stefan Roth, Chair of Experimental Physics III B, and Professor Georg Jacobs and Dipl-Ing Christian Konrad, Institute for Machine Elements and System Engineering, have all been named DigiFellows.

 

The NRW Ministry of Innovation, Science and Research launched the “Fellowships for Innovation in Digital Teaching” program in partnership with the German Stifterverband in 2016. From 2020 to 2023, every university in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia receives a grant of 50,000 euros annually to fund a project.

Roth receives the award for 2020 on behalf of the physics department for putting together the virtual open days for physics majors. When it became clear that the regular open days could not be held on-site in the 2020 summer semester due to the Covid19 pandemic, the department quickly created an online offer instead. With the DigiFellowship funding, they are now planning to expand further and make permanent the online format of the physics open days to continue to inform prospective students from outside the region about studying physics at RWTH in the future.

Jacobs and Konrad are named DigiFellows for the year 2021 for their project in “Digital Transformation in Applied Design and Product Development.” They succeeded in switching the courses “Applied Design and Product Development I and II” to a virtual teaching format even though students typically needed to access the institutes’ facilities during regular in-person classes. The awardees also created options for a continued use of virtual components in the future, when in-person teaching formats are once again possible.

The DigiFellow Student Award, which was presented for the first time this year, was awarded to student Stefan Böttges for his “PDF-Livestream” project proposal for the degree program in Technical Communication with a specialization in Fundamentals of Mechanical Engineering.

Source: Press and Communications