Collaboration with Business and Industry

Science meets business! TU Graz and its institutes work successfully with business and industry, creating win-win-situations:

• Companies get access to research results of TU Graz.
• Researchers of TU Graz work on real-world products and services.
• Research results are put to the service of society and the economy.  

Corporate Partners of TU Graz

Best-practice examples of partnerships of TU Graz with business and industry:

• Siemens / RIE Graz
• Magna Steyr / MATURE
• AVL List GmbH
• Science Park
• Wissenstransferzentrum (WTZ) Süd

TU Graz is Siemens´ trusted university partner with passion – from rails to the digital age, from smart factory to entrepreneurship, from science to application.

Together with TU Graz, Siemens launched the joint Center of Knowledge Interchange (CKI) in October 2015. The successful partnership of many years between TU Graz and Siemens, a range of joint projects and the high research competence of the University clinched the deal. There has been a strategic partnership with Siemens in railway technology since December 2006. The breadth of knowledge and the total volume of co-operation projects have undergone a clear increase since the inception of the CKI. The so-called Siemens class with all the students involved in these projects was successfully established, as was an annual CKI conference. The annual CKI conference was extended for a number of years by Siemens general manager Wolfgang Hesoun at the end of 2018. With the "Research and Innovation Ecosystems" (RIEs) introduced by Siemens in October 2021, the existing strategic partnership was further expanded and TU Graz was confirmed as a central force in the regional innovation ecosystem.

From 2004, TU Graz and the automotive supplier Magna have collaborated very successfully in the form of FSI, a Center Of Excellence in European vehicle technology located at the Faculty of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. 1300 scientific papers and 13 joint patents bear witness to this success story.

At the end of 2018, Magna Steyr Fahrzeugtechnik and TU Graz agreed on a comprehensive 5-year cooperation in the areas of automated driving, virtual product development and production, under the title MATURE (MAgna TU REsearch). This was extended for a further five years at the end of 2023, and the content of the areas of cooperation was adapted in light of the advancing digitalisation in vehicles and the increasing complexity in development and production.

After AVL List and TU Graz established the AVL-TU Graz Transmission Center in 2017 as the world’s most advanced competence centre for research and development on novel transmission systems, an AVL class was set up in autumn 2018 with the aim of furthering an even stronger connection between students and AVL experts and introducing entrepreneurial issues. Another milestone is the establishment of the battery testing center BSCG – Battery Safety Center Graz, also located at Campus Inffeldgasse. Furthermore, AVL supports several endowed professorships which have been set up at TU Graz. 

The Science Park Graz has been set up as a take-off ramp for innovative, knowledge-based and technology-orientated enterprises.  

The Science Park Graz is a joint start-up centre of 3 Graz universities. New entrepreneurs can access the entire know-how of all the academic institutions of Styria and can benefit from the advice of people who have founded successful businesses.

6 universities and 3 universities of applied sciences from Styria and Carinthia have joined together in the Wissenstransferzentrum (WTZ) Süd to combine their competences and know-how in knowledge transfer.  

The combination creates synergies, enhances visibility and facilitates access to the knowledge of the universities. Scientific discoveries and inventions are transferred more effectively into the commercial realm. The knowledge generated in the universities is made available to society in the form of new products and services.