Transatlantic Research and Innovation: Competition or Collaboration?

Prof. Dr. Katja Patzel-Mattern has held the Chair of Economic and Social History at Heidelberg University since 2015. She currently serves as Vice-Rector and has previously held leadership roles including Dean of Studies and Equal Opportunity Officer of the Faculty of Philosophy. She studied history, political science, and communication at the University of Münster and the Universidad de Barcelona, received her PhD in 1994 (Münster), and completed her habilitation in 2008 at the University of Konstanz. Her research focuses on economic and corporate history, social and childhood history, gender studies, and memory and knowledge history. She is actively involved in academic governance, research evaluation (e.g. DFG, SNF), and mentoring, and has served on various advisory boards and steering committees.

Dr. Ann-Kristin Müller is an infectiologist and after completing her doctorate and working in London and Würzburg, she spent nine years leading a malaria research group at Heidelberg University Hospital, which led to her founding a spin-off. In 2018, she left university research completely for the start-up world.

Eva Zauke is a member of the Board of Directors of Bystronic AG, Switzerland. Until the end of 2024, she was Executive Vice President for Software Engineering at SAP SE and Engineering Location Lead for the SAP headquarters in Walldorf. Since joining SAP in 2005, she has held various management positions along the value chain (product management, engineering, go-to-market, education). Her professional career began at Deutsche Bahn, followed by a series of consulting and management roles at Oracle and Deutsche Post DHL Group. Eva Zauke has a degree in computer science from the University of Bonn and in business management from the University of Hagen. She has been a member of the Heidelberg University Council since 2020.

Dr. Jan Lüdert is Head of Programs at the German Center for Research and Innovation (DWIH) New York. Jan earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of British Columbia (UBC). He holds Harvard Kennedy’s School Public Leadership Credential; a First-Class Honors MA in International Relations from the Australian National University; and a BA in Public Policy from Hamburg University for Economics and Politics. He previously served as Associate Professor at City University of Seattle where he was the inaugural Director of Curriculum and Instruction. He held positions as Visiting Research Scholar at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at City University of New York's Graduate Center as well as Research Associate with the DFG 'Dynamics of Security' project at Philipps Marburg University. He is an alumnus of Seattle's World Affairs Council Fellows and UBC Liu Institute for Global Issues Scholar programs.

Dr. Katja Simons has been the Executive Director of Heidelberg University Association, the North America liaison office in New York, since September 2024. Katja has a strong background in nonprofit, higher education and research management, and has experience with building international networks and university partnerships, as well as alumni relations. Previously she was Executive Director at other German university liaison offices in the German House in New York, and was the founding Director of GAIN, a network of researchers and scholars in North America, at the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in New York. She has also worked at the Institute of International Education for the Generation Study Abroad initiative in New York. Katja studied sociology, political science, and history at the University of Freiburg and at Freie Universität Berlin in the 1990s, and she received her doctorate in the social sciences at the Ruhr-University Bochum in 2002.