FH Kompetenz – IDiAL

Increasing digitalisation is profoundly changing the way we produce, consume, work and live. This change of life and work environments offers many opportunities, but also risks, social, economic, as well as political. The Institute for the Digital Transformation of Application and Living Domains (IDiAL) is generating scientific findings and solutions in order to turn these opportunities into benefits for the economy and society, to address the resultant challenges in favour of people and the business.

Under the aegis of FH STRUKTUR supported research focus Process Improvement for Mechatronic and Embedded Systems (PIMES) and in collaboration with research focus Mobile Business - Mobile Systems (MBMS), as well as Intelligent Business Information Systems (iBIS) and BioMedizinTechnik (BMT, both supported by FH STRUKTUR), 11 professors from 4 faculties founded IDiAL as the logical next step. This institute constitutes a hub in the technology park Dortmund for transdisciplinary and participative research into the challenge of digitalisation of important life and work spaces. The success of this institute will be measured by how far it succeeds, by implementation oriented collaboration of the players from science, business and society, in finding solutions that harness the digitalisation trend to truly and tangibly benefit people.

IDiAL should become a beacon for the University of Applied Science and Arts Dortmund, in the technology park, in Dortmund, in the Ruhr area, nationally and internationally. This will succeed by developing common work and research spaces and formats, initially in the fields of automotive software, cyber physical systems and social platforms. Added to this is the development of the professional execution of engineering projects, mainly in collaboration with SMEs, and by addressing the tasks of Technology Readiness Levels TRL 7-9, close to the actual product. Accompanying research into the design of the socio-economic change process and the participative innovation process completes the portfolio. In these domains we succeed in connecting the science community by PhD cooperations with TU Dortmund, University of Bielefeld and University of Duisburg-Essen. With the aid of the Masters Embedded Systems for Mechatronics (ESM) degree and the inclusion of the Ruhr Master School, the tight coupling of research and teaching, typical for universities of applied sciences, is achieved. The resulting visibility and ability to collaborate delivers a decisive and sustained contribution for the new definition of the role of the university of applied science in the structural transformation.

The Dortmund University of Applied Scien-ces and Arts is one of seven institutions, that were awarded support within the 'FH Kompetenz' programme of the Land of North Rhine-Westphalia. There were 33 applications from 20 Universities, 15 applications reached the final round. The support programme primarily targets the new establishment of research institutes in universities of applied sciences. At the Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts, the foundation of the Institute for the Digital Transformation of Application and Living Domains (IDiAL) is supported with 1 million Euro for 5 years. The aim is to bundle the research into digitalisation under one roof.