TUM School of Management

Congratulations to Prof. Dr. Christine Eckert on joining the Excellence Cluster TransforM! 🎉

Prof. Eckert brings a strong quantitative and consumer-focused perspective, with research interests in using data to understand how individuals interact with technology and make decisions.

Her research examines how technology can assist consumers in navigating an increasingly complex world and making more informed decisions.

🦋 “What excites me about TransforM is the opportunity to work with researchers from different disciplines and contribute to shaping technology’s impact on society,” says Prof. Eckert.

Funded: a new SNSF–DFG project on time and space in virtual reality🥽🎉

We are delighted to announce that the Schweizerischer Nationalfonds SNF and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG will support our joint project under the WEAVE scheme.

Over the next three years, researchers from the TUM Professorship of Marketing & Technology at the TUM School of Management and the Chair of Technology Marketing at the Department of Management, Technology, and Economics, ETH Zürich will co-investigate how people perceive time and space in immersive virtual environments.

Immersive environments do not simply reproduce reality; they reshape how long a moment feels and how near or far things seem. Understanding these mechanisms matters for how we design, evaluate, and regulate the virtual spaces people increasingly engage and work in.

The project integrates perspectives from consumer psychology, technology, and human–computer interaction and is led by Prof. Dr. David Finken, Dr. Thomas Scheurer, and Prof. Dr. Florian von Wangenheim.

Congratulations to everyone involved in securing this funding. We look forward to this cross-border collaboration between Germany and Switzerland.

TU München | Wübben Stiftung Wissenschaft

European applied-AI workshop with international participants 🌍

Prof. Dr. Ziyue Li hosted the 1st International Workshop on 𝗟𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗲 𝗟𝗮𝗻𝗴𝘂𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗠𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹𝘀 𝗘𝗺𝗽𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗙𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗜𝗻𝗱𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘆 in Heilbronn on 20–21 July 2026.

Large Language Models are not only a technical shift. They are reshaping how firms organize decisions, structure processes, integrate data, and manage the boundary between human judgment and automated action - questions at the very core of what we teach and research in management.

🎤 Speakers from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology - HKUST, Virginia Tech, TU Dortmund, BMW Group, ZF Group, ZETA GmbH, Schneider Electric, AutoScout24, AS-Schneider Group, Lithos AI, Amazon Web Services, Meta, and Microsoft
🎤 1 keynote, 8 talks, 1 panel, 1 industry tour at the Innovation Park Artificial Intelligence (IPAI)

The insights
💡 Operationalizing LLMs in industry is a data, process, and integration challenge - not primarily a modeling one.
💡 Small open models with careful training and task design can match proprietary frontier performance.
💡 Agentic AI in production requires safety-gated ex*****on and meaningful human oversight.
💡 Digital twins become useful when the world model reasons back - not when it simply visualizes.

📃 Stay tuned for a workshop White Paper mapping industry’s burning challenges to academia’s proven LLM solutions, which will follow this autumn.

TUM Campus Heilbronn

What if euro banknotes told the story of TUM School of Management? 💶

From campus landmarks and student life to entrepreneurship, research, and graduation, we reimagined each note with the people, places, and milestones that shape our community.

Which TUM banknote is your favorite? 👀

A creative nod to the Frankfurt School, which inspired us with their own take on redesigned euro banknotes.

❓How are advances in econometrics improving the reliability of empirical research?

The 𝗠𝘂𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗵 𝗘𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗽 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲 brought together leading researchers in econometrics and statistics for two days of academic exchange.

This year's workshop showcased advances in econometric theory and computational methods, highlighting their contribution to more reliable empirical research.

Topics included causal inference, robust statistical inference, network analysis, and the use of unstructured data for demand estimation, reflecting both the methodological breadth and practical relevance of modern econometrics.

Among the speakers were Alberto Abadie (Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)), Jiaying Gu (University of Toronto), Azeem Shaikh (The University of Chicago), Eric Auerbach (Northwestern University), Ulrich Mueller (Princeton University), Ivan Canay (Northwestern University), Mathias Drton (TU München), Isaiah Andrews (MIT), Deborah Kim (University of Warwick), Guillaume Pouliot (Rice University) and Tim Christensen (Yale University).

A big thank you to Helmut Farbmacher (TUM School of Management), Daniel Wilhelm (LMU, CeMMAP), and Joachim Winter (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) for organizing this workshop and creating a platform for academic exchange at the frontier of econometric research.👏

Once again, it’s time for the MMK Award of Excellence. And applications are now open!

Industry meets Academia: At the MMK - Münchner Management Kolloquium, leaders from business, academia, and entrepreneurship come together to exchange ideas, build connections, and recognize outstanding innovation.

Together with BMW, E.ON Konzern, and GEA Group, the MMK will present the MMK Award of Excellence on 9 March 2027 at the Technische Universität München.

We invite startups, scale-ups, and innovative spin-offs to apply in the following categories:

🔹 Artificial Intelligence
🔹 Sustainable Engineering
🔹 Energy
🔹 Academic Start-ups

Why apply? Three finalists per category will present their innovations on the stage of the Audimax at TUM in front of more than 1,500 decision-makers from industry, academia, and politics. Winners will be selected live during the event and benefit from visibility beyond the event itself.

The award reflects the strong collaboration between industry and academia: The jury includes renowned leaders from both fields, among them Prof. Thomas F. Hofmann, Prof. Isabell Welpe, Prof. Christoph Kaserer, Prof. Gunther Friedl, Prof. Horst Wildemann, Dr. Victoria Ossadnik, Stefan Padberg, Dr. Nadine Sterley, and Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier.

📅 Application deadline: 30 September 2026
🔗 Learn more and apply here: https://management-kolloquium.de/award/

Know a startup, spin-off, or project that belongs on this stage? Share this opportunity and help make innovation visible!

📷 Münchner Management Kolloquium 2026

What role do universities play in shaping entrepreneurial ecosystems?

Prof. Theresa Treffers, Prof. Isabell Welpe, Isabel Tretow, and Philipp Lemanczyk from the TUM Chair for Strategy and Organization, together with Prof. Bart Clarysse (ETH Zürich) and Prof. Johann Füller (Universität Innsbruck), explore this question in a new study examining entrepreneurship across the DACH region.

Based on data from more than 51,000 startups and 437 academic institutions, the report goes beyond startup counts to analyze startup creation, employment, funding success, startup survival, and founder pathways.

As universities are increasingly expected to drive innovation, knowledge transfer, and economic impact, the study offers new insights into their contribution to entrepreneurship across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

The study was launched at this year’s TUM Entrepreneurship Day. Alongside the event, the Chair hosted the From Lab to Launch conference at TUM Campus Heilbronn, fostering dialogue on science entrepreneurship across Europe.

📖 Read more about the study on our blog: https://www.mgt.tum.de/our-stories-with-impact/detail/beyond-rankings-how-universities-shape-entrepreneurial-ecosystems-across-the-dach-region