Successful conclusion of the EUNICE Student Research Clubs @ LEAG 2025

With this competition, the EUNICE Student Research Clubs offered students from EUNICE universities the unique opportunity to work in an international team on an interdisciplinary pitch on the topic of "Innovative energy solutions for industrial customers: Shape the future of power supply!". The prize was a trip to Cottbus and the opportunity to further develop their concept together with LEAG. The call for entries for the first edition of the competition went online in February 2025.

This new, innovative format struck a chord: a total of 167 students from all EUNICE universities and a wide range of disciplines applied. In the end, 85 participants were selected. From March 2025, they worked in 17 international and interdisciplinary teams on ideas and concepts for the energy supply of the future. In the end, ten pitches were submitted, two of which were honoured by LEAG after a pre-selection process.

One of the winning pitches was delivered by Maria Gomez (University of Karlstad), Syed Arham Qadri (University of Catania), Christina Rodopitheou (University of Peloponnese), Natasha Bhaskar Shinde (BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg) and Ibrahim Zouhir (Université Polytechnique Hauts-de-France). Georgios Koutsikas (University of Peloponnese) was also able to present his pitch as an individual participant and was honoured as the second winner thanks to his well thought-out idea.

"The teams were very close together in the final. That's why the jury decided in favour of two winners and selected an individual participant as the runner-up. I was impressed by the spirit of both of them. Their ideas complemented each other and fit in well with our approaches. That made me curious about the further elaboration," says Daniela Hertzer from LEAG's Innovation & Business Development department, explaining the selection of the best pitches.

As part of their trip to Cottbus, the winners were able to continue working on their pitch, get to know LEAG better and explore the city and the BTU campus. In the mornings, they completed daily themed learning sessions on the circular economy, energy trading and geothermal energy at LEAG. "Here we tried out working methods from futures thinking and design thinking and, at the end of the day, concretised the idea using the business model canvas. I was supported by colleagues from the department and the Container Grid start-up," says Daniela Hertzer. After lunch, exciting activities awaited the students in the city and on the main campus of BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg. For example, they took part in Speak Dating or enjoyed the international welcome festival "KLĔB A SOL".

The Student Research Clubs not only offered students a unique opportunity to develop solutions to a real-life problem in an international and interdisciplinary team. As an industry partner, LEAG also utilised the potential of the collaboration. "The progressive integration of renewable energies and the ongoing digitalisation of the energy market are opening up exciting opportunities [...] The challenge aimed to explore new business models with a focus on industrial customers for energy suppliers and thus offered the chance to gain an open, international and fresh perspective on the topic," reports Daniela Hertzer.

The participants' conclusion: "The entire programme of the Student Research Clubs was excellent. It offered us as students a great combination of education, industry and international networking. I can only recommend all students to take part."
The next edition of the Student Research Clubs is planned for autumn/winter 2025 in collaboration with ASG Spremberg GmbH and the Schwarze Pumpe Industrial Park.