AU to open innovation office in Horsens

The office is being established as part of a partnership agreement signed in January by Aarhus University and VIA’s engineering programmes, with the joint goal of educating the engineers of the future for Horsens and the entire Central Denmark Region.

Another goal is to facilitate collaboration around research and innovation capacity by giving the local business community an open door to the research groups at VIA and Aarhus University. While the framework for this aspect of the agreement has not been finalised yet, both institutions are committed to working more closely together to promote engineering education and innovation in Horsens.

“Our ambition is for the university’s research and knowledge to benefit business and industry. That’s why working more closely together is a good idea. And that’s what we’ve decided to do in Horsens, where we can work together on innovation and our work-integrated MSc programmes. This, combined with a close collaboration with VIA and the companies in the new industrial park, will create the best conditions for bringing research, education, development and innovation into play effectively,” says Brian Bech Nielsen, rector of Aarhus University.

Horsens already has a thriving business and industry ecosystem, which will soon be enhanced by the new industrial park Nova, which is aimed at manufacturing companies within areas like automated production, food, biosolutions and technology for defence and aviation. The idea is that the companies in the new industrial park will see the value of close proximity to the research and innovation communities at AU and VIA, and that they will become active partners in some of the new work-integrated MSc programmes.

"This is an important step for Horsens and the surrounding area that will future-proof Horsens as an attractive place to study as well as a centre for innovation. We have the young people, and we have a business community with a strong demand for the expertise that Aarhus University will bring to Horsens,” says Peter Sørensen, mayor of Horsens Municipality.

For VIA, the expanded collaboration means that the already highly-regarded engineering degree programmes that have been in Horsens for more than a century will be further enhanced by access to a number of work-integrated Master’s degree programmes at AU. The same applies to the innovation ecosystem that has already been built, explains Gitte Sommer Harrits, rector of VIA:

"VIA and AU both offer excellent engineering degree programmes that complement each other very well. We’ve decided to take advantage of this by establishing a close collaboration around research, innovation and business outreach for the engineering programmes in Horsens. The goal is to bring together practice-oriented and academic traditions in new ways, and the result will be something completely unique in the Danish educational landscape – to the benefit of both students and companies in Horsens and the surrounding area. We’re really looking forward to this collaboration.”