News
On September 22, 2026, UNIPRENEURS honoured Hannes Rothe, Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE), whose field is “Sustainability and Innovation in Digital Ecosystems”. The award is co-sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space and the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy and was presented by Matthias Hauer, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space, and Johannes Steiniger, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy.
Unlocking The Potential For Entrepreneurship
UNIPRENEURS award recipients are particularly successful university professors who actively encourage and support students in pursuing entrepreneurship and founding startups. The aim of UNIPRENEURS is to unlock the enormous potential of universities for spin-offs and thereby promote entrepreneurship. A distinguished board of trustees selected twenty UNIPRENEURS 2026 award recipients from more than 800 professors from across Germany who had been nominated by founders.
Professor Rothe is a Co-Lead of the Sustainability & Climate Change Hub, one of the six Aurora Educational Hubs. Together with the members of his Chair, he is actively involved in several Aurora teams working on: project Management, transdisciplinary european research-driven educational hubs, mobility and exchange, and, of course, social entrepreneurship and innovation. This year, his Chair organized a Blended Intensive Programme (BIP) on Digital Resilience in partnership with Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Copenhagen Business School and Pavol Jozef Šafárik University. Besides that, the Chair of Professor Rothe, together with other partners from Aurora universities, is developing an existing platform into an AI-powered mentoring environment within the new European project “AURORA Seismic EIT-KIC”. Around 4,000 students across Europe are expected to benefit from it.
Professor Dr. Barbara Albert, President of the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE), is delighted with this achievement: “Professor Hannes Rothe not only leads a particularly innovative field of research, but also, as head of our ‘PlaceBeyond Bytes’ incubator, is highly successful in supporting startup activities from the initial idea through to the creation of spin-offs. His UNIPRENEURS award is also a great success for us as the University of Duisburg-Essen, as we place a very high priority on our transfer and innovation activities, including through our partnerships with the Ruhr region in the BRYCK Startup Alliance.”
Connecting Scientists With The Startup Ecosystem
The award recipient is an information systems scholar and heads one of the University of Duisburg-Essen’s two Co-Creation Labs, Place Beyond Bytes. The lab promotes business formation with a focus on digital technologies. Researchers and students are supported in developing digital solutions for a sustainable future. The incubator complements Rothe’s academic activities in research and teaching. His courses and mentoring activities have already led to AI-based solutions for inclusive personnel selection, new diagnostic procedures, automation in logistics and the energy sector, and other applications.
“Knowledge-intensive startups have always fascinated me because they usually involve complex products that address important challenges facing society. To connect scientists with the startup ecosystem, I co-founded the Digital Entrepreneurship Hub in Berlin and the Postdocs-to-Innovators Network about ten years ago. Since then, we have been developing state- and federally funded initiatives for entrepreneurship education in the field of deep tech,” says Rothe.
About Prof. Dr. Hannes Rothe
Information systems scholar, Professor of Sustainability and Innovation in Digital Ecosystems, University of Duisburg-Essen.
Rothe has been a professor at the University of Duisburg-Essen since 2023. He heads the Co-Creation Lab ‘Place Beyond Bytes’ and serves on the board of the University of Duisburg-Essen’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innopreneurship (GUIDE). In 2024, WirtschaftsWoche named him one of the ‘Young Stars of Business Administration’.
His research findings have been published in leading journals in information systems and strategic management. He is a (co-)editor of several renowned academic journals and has been a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge (UK)and Graz University of Technology (Austria). From 2013 to 2021, he coordinated the development of entrepreneurship education at Freie Universität Berlin. In 2017, together with partners from Cambridge, Paris and Innsbruck as well as international companies, he founded the Postdocs-to-Innovators Network and contributed to several state- and federally funded initiatives promoting entrepreneurship education in the field of deep tech. In 2021 and 2022, he was an Associate Professor at the Grande École ICN Business School (Nancy, Paris, Berlin).
About UNIPRENEURS
UNIPRENEURS is an initiative aimed at strengthening spin-offs from German universities. It was launched by Matthias Hilpert and Martin Schilling. The Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft is responsible for organizing and implementing the joint initiative. The German Startup Association, Bitkom and AddedVal.io support UNIPRENEURS as partners.
Every three years, UNIPRENEURS presents Germany’s highest recognition for outstanding commitment to entrepreneurship at universities. The Federal Minister for Research, Technology and Space and the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy jointly serve as patrons of UNIPRENEURS.