Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum (SEZ)

The Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum (SEZ) is part of the Steinbeis Innovation gGmbH, an entity within the Steinbeis Foundation for Economic Promotion. This was founded by the government of Baden-Württemberg in 1971 and has a foundation capital of 15 million euro. The Foundation runs approximately 600 so-called "Technology Transfer Centres" mainly in Baden-Württemberg, but also in other regions in Germany and Europe. The Technology Transfer Centres are mostly attached to research organisations in order to guarantee close connection between R&D and industry. More than 3,000 researchers, consultants and engineers carry out more than 20,000 contracts per year to improve strategy, product and process development of companies. Within the Steinbeis Foundation SEZ is responsible for the support of European research projects and trans-national co-operation in Europe. It was founded in March 1990 and has been a member of the European network of Innovation Relay Centres (IRC) since 1995 and head of the IRC consortium responsible for Baden-Württemberg, Thuringia and North of Switzerland. Since 2008 SEZ is a member of the regional European Enterprise Network (EEN) consortia. SEZ is also official National Contact Point (NCP) for SMEs in the region of Baden Württemberg. The core activities of Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum are:

• to assist organisations to participate in European R&D projects,
• to support the management of international research projects,
• to give assistance in the exploitation of the research results,
• to promote trans-national technology transfer,
• to stimulate and support the innovation process in industrial companies
• to provide professional training. The SEZ has also a lot of experience in organising workshops, conferences and brokerage events for technology transfer, as well as finding partners for RTD-proposals. SEZ was involved in more than 40 European projects in the last years including two Integrated Projects under the 6th Framework Programme in the field of Nanotechnologies and Production.

SEZ – role and contribution to I-RAMP³ Within the I-RAMP³ project

Within the I-RAMP³ project SEZ is driver for the knowledge-transfer approach within and outside the I-RAMP³ consortium. Furthermore SEZ will be strongly involved in:
:
• IPR-Management inside I-RAMP³
• Driver of Exploitation activities and dissemination
• Development of sustainable training concepts
• Support for administrative and financial management