KIT Presidential Committee appreciates “District Future”

For its extraordinary achievements in the field of real-world lab work, the KIT Presidential Committee now honored the team of “District Future”. This was preceded in October 2021 by the Joachim Reutter Prize for Social Innovation.
Dr. Volker Stelzer und KIT-Präsident Holger Hanselka
At the “President’s Evening of Honor” in July 2022, Dr. Volker Stelzer (right) accepts the award from KIT President Holger Hanselka. (Source: KIT)

On 2 July 2022, the “President’s Evening of Honor” brought together the winners at KIT who had received important awards in the past two years or had rendered outstanding services to the Research University in the Helmholtz Association in other ways. Among the honorees was the team from what is now the Karlsruhe Transformation Center for Sustainability and Cultural Change (KAT) at ITAS.

Ten years of real-world lab research

In 2021, Oliver Parodi and his team were awarded the Joachim Reutter Prize for Social Innovation for their many years of real-world lab work in the “District Future.” Decisive for the award were especially the research on sustainable development and the opening of transdisciplinary experimental spaces for social and technical sustainability innovations within an urban district. The prize, worth 15,000 euros, is awarded every two years. The prize money flows equally into the research, practical, and educational goals of the “District Future.”

The lab as an interface between science and society

At the “President’s Evening of Honor,” Dr. Volker Stelzer, energy expert and longtime employee of the real-world lab “District Future,” accepted the honor from President Holger Hanselka on behalf of the entire KAT team. “Our approach in the real-world lab is not common in the German research landscape. We want to act as an interface between society and science and make room for sustainability and sustainability experiments in everyday life. We are all the more pleased about the award and appreciation of the KIT Presidential Committee,” says Stelzer.

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