Silicon Valley Summer School: Four students in the land of innovation
29 August, 2023
For five weeks, the students of UAS Technikum Wien received in-depth insights around product and service development as well as marketing. The trip was financed by UAS Technikum Wien and Wüstenrot Technology.
This summer, for the second time, UAS Technikum Wien sent four students to the home of Google, Apple and Co. The participants of the Silicon Valley Summer School got the chance to spend five weeks at San José State University (SJSU), in the middle of one of the leading innovation regions worldwide.
They completed a product development course at SJSU, had a social program with company visits and time for a tourist trip or two on the weekends. Travel, accommodation and participation in the Summer School were financed by UAS Technikum Wien together with Wüstenrot Technology.
The four participants Katja Gruber (Master’s program Ecotoxicology & Environmental Management), Anna-Katharina Heinzle (Bachelor’s program Electronics & Economics), Sebastian Neuhofer (Bachelor’s program Mechatronics / Robotics) and Christian Straßmayr (Bachelor’s program Business Informatics) were selected on the basis of creatively submitted motivational videos and letters. All bachelor students of UAS Technikum Wien in their 3rd and 5th semester as well as all master students were eligible to apply. One person per faculty was given the chance.
Visits to Apple, Intel and start-up-experts
In the academic part of the program, the students were given in-depth insights into the topics of product and service development and marketing for five weeks from the beginning of July. The history of innovation and corporate culture in Silicon Valley were also taught to the students at SJSU. The Summer School schedule also included visits to institutions such as the Plug and Play Tech Center, the Computer History Museum and the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3), to companies such as Apple and Intel, and meetings with start-up experts.
The participants were able to organize their own weekends with leisure activities. They were able to use free public transportation to visit the San Francisco Bay Area, UC Berkeley, Stanford University, the beaches of Santa Cruz, and the wineries of Napa Valley, as well as more distant cities and regions such as Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Yosemite National Park.
We would like to thank mentors Earl Schaffer (VISA USA) and Georg Fürlinger (Atlantics Innovation) for their support, as well as Christian Fuchs and Stefan Bauer (Wüstenrot Technology financed this year’s Summer School trip together with FHTW).
Here are some details about this year’s program:
https://www.sjsu.edu/igateways/programs/silicon-valley/
On the pictures and in the video: The four participants Katja Gruber (Master program Ecotoxicology & Environmental Management), Anna-Katharina Heinzle (Bachelor program Electronics & Economics), Sebastian Neuhofer (Bachelor program Mechatronics / Robotics) and Christian Straßmayr (Bachelor program Business Informatics) during their trip to the Silicon Valley Summer School at San José State University (USA).
