Aicomp Actively Cooperates with Reutlingen University
Reutlingen University is one of the leading universities for international and business-oriented academic education. Since its foundation in 2000, Aicomp has maintained a long-standing relationship and close cooperation with Reutlingen University. A large part of the staff at the office in Sonnenbühl came from the university. Some of the graduates now hold leadership positions at Aicomp.
Aicomp employees have been actively involved with the university at various levels since 2012.
A short time overview:
- Since 2012: Supervision of the semester projects in the Bachelor’s and Master’s studies at the Faculty of Informatics.
- Since 2013: Supervision of the final theses in the Bachelor and Master studies of the Faculty of Informatics and award of the Aicomp Prize (1500 €) for the best semester project.
- Since 2018: Offer of a 3-day compulsory elective subject on the topic “SAP HANA“.
Involvement in Universities Creates New Opportunities
For Aicomp as an employer
Aicomp operates in a very specific environment in which SAP knowledge is enormously important. However, even greater emphasis is placed on industry-specific know-how. In view of these requirements, working with Reutlingen University and the students has proven to be an extremely effective instrument in promoting young talent.
The students at Reutlingen University already bring a large amount of SAP specialist knowledge with them and are very open when it comes to familiarizing themselves with a new subject.
In addition, there is the valuable opportunity to follow current trends in information technology live (AI, VR/AR, IoT, Industry 4.0, Edge Computing, etc.) and to talk to young motivated people. This allows interesting topics to be explored at an early stage.
For students
Aicomp employees at Reutlingen University actively contribute to the practical teaching through the HANA lecture, contribute ideas for theses and offer topics for student projects. Ideally, this means that cooperation already begins with the practical semester. If a positive summary is drawn from this for both sides, Aicomp offers a working student activity after the practical semester, which can then lead to a final thesis and an employment.
The Aicomp team makes you feel comfortable and in good hands pretty quickly. It's also good for your studies, as you get a good explanation of the processes and functions in the area of SAP application development from very helpful colleagues and you can use this knowledge in several courses. A further plus point in addition to the practical insight when working as a student trainee at Aicomp is the flexible working hours, which provide important freedom especially during the examination phase.
For Reutlingen University
Cooperation with SMEs such as Aicomp, which on the one hand are rooted in the region and on the other hand belong to a Germany-wide and international network, is very important for us as a university of applied sciences. Especially the cooperation with Mr. Helmreich, Mr. Mezger and Mr. Bernhardt is characterized by professionalism, commitment and mutual trust. Aicomp has proven expertise in many areas of business informatics and broad technical know-how, which goes well beyond the boundaries of business software in areas such as industry 4.0, for example. The close cooperation with business partners in the region, such as Aicomp, is also reflected in their commitment to Reutlingen University. Aicomp regularly reports on application-related aspects of various technologies, such as SAP HANA, as well as on innovative fields and possible applications within the framework of a wide range of activities. Aicomp has been an innovation promoter and sponsor of the Aicomp Award for many years. The award regularly honors some of the best master's and bachelor's projects in business informatics. Our students appreciate this opportunity for practice-related exchange. In particular, they benefit from innovative ideas, practical scenarios and technical know-how.
This is new in 2019 – It’s hacking time
Starting this year, Aicomp honored the winning team of the “HackIn4” event at Reutlingen University of Applied Sciences (https://www.hackin4.de), thereby relocating the Aicomp Prize awarded in previous years.
“HackIn4” is an international hackathon about industry 4.0, IoT, automation, visualization and process management in cooperation with the Universities of Vilnius, Latvia and Tartu. As a sponsor Aicomp got a spot on the jury and saw very innovative projects.Â
The winning team’s idea revolved around working and improving presentation skills. The group had considered that in a feedback round, you never get honest and detailed feedback and that this is necessary to improve one’s self. So, they decided to develop a tool that offered honest, detailed and comprehensible feedback.
The winners developed a tool to analyze and evaluate the emotions of the audience in a presentation. To make this possible, a webcam takes a photo every second, which is sent to an Artificial Intelligence, previously offered by Microsoft Azure. This AI engine recognizes the number of faces and their emotions during each second of the presentation. These values are measured and returned. As a result, the average emotion can be calculated and displayed in diagrams. With this prototype one can measure emotions like “enthusiasm” and “boredom” and judge exactly in which moment of the presentation the audience was animated or just totally bored.
For example, the tool can help a moderator to identify content that is interesting or uninteresting to the listener and adapt his presentation accordingly.
The result of the work is all the more impressive as only 24 hours were available for implementation.
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As an international business student, events such as the Hackathon give me a practical insight into the way computer scientists think and prepare me specifically for the challenges of our future. Each of us must understand that topics such as IoT, artificial intelligence and data analysis will later be an integral part of our daily work. I'm very grateful that companies like Aicomp are giving us the opportunity to be part of change and digitization.
Conclusion
Aicomp very much appreciates the cooperation with Reutlingen University. We are delighted when we as a company can make a positive contribution to the future of young people. Our interns, working students and authors of bachelor or master theses quickly realize that there are also attractive employers in our region who do not carry a star or anchor in their logo. I am therefore particularly pleased that almost all of the students I supervised joined us after completing their final thesis.
