euMOVE closing event 2025 (July 25)

The euMOVE course program is completed for the summer semester 2025. At the final event on 24.07.2025 in the Thierschbau (Z3) on the TUM campus, 11 students presented innovative mobility solutions for Munich in 3 groups.

You can find this year's results here: https://www.mos.ed.tum.de/ftm/lehre/internationale-studierendenprojekte/eumove-2025/

Carolin Zimmer from the Chair of Settlement Structure and Transport Planning and Sebastian Preiß from the Hans Sauer Foundation explain in an interview what the project has achieved and what makes it special.

What is euMOVE / what is special about the euMOVE project?

CZ: euMOVE is an interdisciplinary student project on innovative and sustainable mobility in Europe. The course is coordinated by the Chair of Automotive Engineering, the Chair of Settlement Structure and Transport Planning and the Chair of Innovation Research and is significantly supported by the Munich Cluster for the Future of Mobility in Metropolitan Regions (MCube). For two years now, we have also been receiving support from the Hans Sauer Foundation. The project is based on intensive group work over the course of a summer semester. The groups have the opportunity to visit a European city in order to get to know and examine different mobility cultures and use these findings to develop a responsible transfer approach for Munich.

How has the program developed over the course of 6 years/what are the milestones and innovations in the project design?

CZ: euMOVE was launched in 2019 by the three chairs mentioned above - at that time, the applications for the first funding phase of the MCube Cluster were also being prepared. For the first time, the course gave 12 students the opportunity to participate in a European mobility benchmark as part of a student project. The students analyzed mobility innovations in the cities of Barcelona, Tallinn, Helsinki and Stockholm. At the same time, they compared local developments with those in the Munich metropolitan region. The research results flowed directly into the project development of the first MCube phase.

Since then, the semester project has been repeated every year - student groups have been to more than 27 cities and regions so far. Various topics have been on the agenda. This year, the focus was on the topic of autonomous driving and society.
For the past two years, the students have been tasked with working out whether and how mobility innovations and successful approaches can be transferred to Munich. Not least, social issues play a role here. With the Hans Sauer Foundation, we have a partner on board that focuses on precisely these issues.

SP: Establishing mobility innovations requires a prudent approach. The acceptance of the population plays a central role. Different user groups each have their own needs and requirements. Since the beginning of the first phase in the MCube Cluster, we have been working on bringing diverse perspectives together and integrating them into the innovation process. With the foundation's purpose of promoting science and research, we see ourselves as an intermediary organization at the interface between science and society. Based on participatory methods, we want to integrate social needs into knowledge production and thus contribute to a socio-ecological transformation. We have now also used this experience in the euMOVE project course to teach students appropriate attitudes and methods.

Wow do students conduct their research on the course and during their research stay - and what do they take away from it?

CZ: The course is open to all TUM students as an elective subject, so we have a wide range of disciplines involved: urban studies, automotive and transportation engineering and environmental engineering, but also social science disciplines such as science and technology studies. The interdisciplinary cooperation in the (international) teams is the great opportunity of the course - but often also a great challenge for the students at the beginning. It is also often new for students to deal with the openness and creative freedom of the course.

SP: At the beginning of the course, we teach students how to bring different personal and disciplinary perspectives into an exchange. The structure of the course is based on a social design process: different phases in which the participants alternately explore options and then make decisions again create orientation while maintaining openness. At the same time, we teach approaches for identifying stakeholders, relevant actors or previously overlooked groups and incorporating their needs into the development process. Students apply specific methods, such as a stakeholder system map or persona development.

CZ: In addition, we can integrate the knowledge and experience of three chairs into the course and thus make the teaching very practical. During their research stay, the groups carry out various research formats. Through qualitative interviews in particular, they come into intensive contact and exchange with relevant actors from various sectors of society, but also with decision-makers from different hierarchical levels. This can range from the users of a mobility innovation right up to the city's responsible transport senator. And it's always great fun for the students - you can usually feel the energy they get from their stay abroad right through to the final event.

What significance does the course have for MCube - and for teaching at TUM in general?

SP: MCube exemplifies transdisciplinary, interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration - but in teaching, the courses on offer are still strongly anchored in the individual disciplines. euMOVE is the transfer of the MCube principles and ideas to the .

CZ: We teach students how to research and work with other social partners on the mobility of tomorrow - in a practical, application-oriented and responsible way. For the students, this is a great preparation for their professional life.
Many of our alumni are pursuing careers in the field of mobility and already have a good understanding of key topics, as their experience in interdisciplinary projects means they are already familiar with cooperation between science, society, administration and business. Occasionally, we have also heard from alumni who have been able to start their careers with organizations from the MCube network. euMOVE thus fits into MCube's diverse and comprehensive educational offering in the field of mobility - from summer schools and international certificate courses to continuing education programs for specialists and managers.