The blog ‘Talking about…’ provides a platform for a variety of people connected with TU Graz to write about topics relevant to the university. Students, graduates, teachers, researchers, staff, cooperation partners and friends of TU Graz all share ideas, experiences, opinions and tips.
Do you want to suggest a topic or write a blog post? Please contact the editorial team by email.
Why TU Graz?
I made my decision to apply for a semester at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) just under a year before I was due to start. A decisive reason for this was the "Graz School" of the 1970s-1990s at the Technical College of Graz (since 1972 known as Graz University of Technology),...
Ute WIEDNER
Online Communications
Rechbauerstraße 12/I
8010 Graz, Austria
Phone: +43 316 873 6005
kommunikation @tugraz.at
A broken mobile phone in the summer of 2018 was the impulse for "REELOQ", a patented belay tool for smartphones and co. I already summarized what I learned during my "tinkering phase" a year ago in the article "... from the idea to the product" for this blog.
A lot has happened since then. In this...
My study programme in Austria
The master’s programme in chemistry consists of compulsory lectures, elective subjects in the field of chemistry, laboratory and soft skills as well as free elective subjects. And without going into detail, the core message of this information is that Graz University...
I’m a student in the master's programme in chemical and process engineering at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz). Despite the crisis caused by corona, I took up an offer from Nedstack fuel cell technology B.V. in Arnhem last summer and started a two-month internship in the development...
Even before coming to Graz and studying at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz), I was excited about the whole student life experience – learning new things and improving my skills, but also spending time at campus and meeting new people. Campus life is in general really important for students,...
Working while studying
Graz is the self-proclaimed feelgood capital of Austria, where you can find many restaurants, cafés, bars and catering businesses who are always on the lookout for personnel. And you can usually arrange your working hours flexibly. Another good way to earn money is working...
Raphael. He studies biomedical engineering at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz), enjoys student life and needs a job in the summer to make a living. By chance he comes across a company where he can do good and earn money at the same time. He spends the summer in Germany, where he collects...
Arriving in Graz as international student
Moving abroad and starting a new life where you do not know anyone seems exciting but it is also daunting. I remember arriving in Graz on a sunny September day, ready to take on whatever challenges life threw at me. But I definitely was not ready for the...
About me
My name is Matko and I’m an international student at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz). Since I’m studying mechanical engineering, my days are usually filled with sitting and studying, especially in the exam period. Therefore, I really love to spend some time outside to recharge and...
Moving to another country and living on your own is a big step for every international student. Choosing suitable accommodation for yourself will make your student life much more comfortable and enjoyable. So, how to pick a new home for yourself when you have decided to study in Graz, Austria? ...
My name is Gergő Horváth and I come from Balatonfenyves, which is a small town in Hungary. In this blog post I want to present Graz to you as one of the best cities to study in.
In this blog post I want to present Graz to you as one of the best cities to study in.
Why exactly Graz?
Graz is a...
The most important tip: If you want to study abroad, plan ahead
"As soon as your vision to study abroad is crystal clear, you should start preparing all the necessary documents. Don’t be lazy, don’t leave it until tomorrow, start at that very moment."
It all starts when the idea pops up: “Hey, I...
In computer science in particular, we can carry out a large part of our research outside the office. In our Game Lab we develop and research games and virtual reality environments. Without the appropriate hardware, this is currently somewhat more difficult, and study programmes with students, for...
The microbiome is composed of microbiota and their surrounding habitat. All living microorganisms, bacteria, archaea, fungi, algae and protists – a certain group of single to multi-celled organisms – go to form microbiota. Viruses are not counted as part of the this, but do belong to the surrounding...
Who am I?
My journey began with a simple idea – to move away from my country and become an international student. Now before I tell you all about my journey, I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Lazar Gugleta and I come from Novi Sad, Serbia. It is the second largest city in my country that is...
First off, if we had unlimited resources at sonible, we would implement all the ideas we have. Simply because we have incredible fun developing new things. But reality showed us quite quickly that as an entrepreneur you sometimes need something urgently: focus. We – that is, Ralf Baumgartner, Peter...
I have found people at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) to be so kind and full of productive and helpful comments. The institutes and the labs have a warm and friendly environment. The professors, researchers, students and staff are always treated with respect and warmth. They helped me a lot...
Runtastic for the gym
Valentin Slawicek, the initiator of Studo and current Chief Technical Officer (CTO), was already programming in 2014 – but on a fitness app. “Back then, Runtastic was really big and since my colleague Christian was an avid fitness athlete, it was only logical to develop an app...
One should always make the best of a bad situation. But in the summer of 2018, quite frankly, that was a lot to ask. Had I known at that time what effects a broken mobile phone would have on my life, my frustration would have faded very quickly. But long story short – what happened? In a careless...
I have been a degree seeking student of the Chemical and Pharmaceutical Engineering (CPE) Master’s Programme at the TU Graz since October of 2017. Before coming to Graz, as soon as I got my acceptance letter the TU Graz Welcome Center got in contact with me. Elisabeth and Birgit, currently the main...
Ever since the start of 6th grade I started to develop a greater interest in technology and science. So when one of my friends told me about a project, that their sister was once part of, whose goal is to get more girls invested in IT and science and provides the opportunity of a summer job at the...
Every year, the Institute of Chemical Engineering and Environmental Technology of TU Graz in cooperation with the Yokohama National University organises the International Summer School on PEFCs, at which teaching staff from six different countries help students and researchers to further develop...
I wasn’t aware before that microelectronics is developed and produced in Austria. For me microelectronics was always far away in Silicon Valley or in the Asian region. But, in fact, I can reach a manufacturing facility within the hour from my flat in Graz – comfortably even by public transport. ...
Scant sustainable forms of mobility, vacant shops in the town centres and stagnation in the implementation of the energy revolution particularly affect small and medium-sized towns and European urban regions. The Institute of Urbanism at TU Graz is giving its attention to this topic and together...
Wikipedia defines the new economy as the ‘transition from a manufacturing-based economy to a service-based economy’. In plain language: Spotify, Netflix and Dropbox instead of MP3 players, DVDs and USB sticks. And of course, this includes every type of service, for instance – financial and medical...
How can you overcome the hot summer month of July? Ideally with an English refresher. All “Dad jokes” aside, this July I attended the programme “Teach, Present and Publish in English” at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz). Do you publish papers in international journals, correspond with partner...
In my last school year before taking the ‘Matura’ – which are the school leaving exams for university entrance – I thought about whether I wanted to go to university or not, and if so, what I wanted to study. After all, all the admission procedures and admission deadlines are all different for the...
What do the student teams of TU Graz and Lisa Friessnig have in common? An event! More precisely, the ‘TU Graz StreeTech – the next generation’ which takes place in the heart of the Graz old town on 16th June. Just for one day Main Square and ‘Eiserne Tor’ will become a playground for student...
At the end of April we were ready. The High Performance Sailing (HPS) TU Graz Student Team was the first Austrian team to take part in the 50th EDHEC regatta in Brest (France). The team was proud to secure eighth position among the 25 Student Teams in our boat class – that’s in the top middle. But...
We the Field Robotics Team TEDUSAR (Technology and EDucation for Urban Search And Rescue robots) of TU Graz, are students who share a fascination: robots. More precisely – autonomous robots which can perform certain tasks independently without outside help.
It all began with the development of...
There are problems and tasks everywhere in this world and in a variety of shapes and sizes. From ‘small’ challenges in biotechnology to seas contaminated with plastic and climate change. The ‘international genetically engineered machine (iGEM)’ competition inspires students throughout the world to...
How did I enter the team?
My interest in Neurotechnology as well as the International Welcome Days, organized by the University, made me aware of the Graz BCI Racing Team – Mirage 91. The team has considerable experience in developing state of the art Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) and in...
In February 2018 I was given the honour of becoming a member of the field crew of the AMADEE-18 Mars Simulation project in the Dhofar region in Oman. In February the Austrian Space Forum (OeWF) carried out an analog Mars mission to test technologies, procedures and experiments for suitability on...
TERA TU Graz is a student team that develops energy-efficient vehicles. We are students of various Graz universities, and we work together because we want to educate ourselves further and because we want to help shape the future of mobility.
What does the TERA team actually do?
Since 2010 we’ve...
Membership of LosFuzzys can be briefly described as: challenges, weekly training sessions and a family-like environment. In addition to participation in CTF cyber security challenges, the focus is on knowledge transfer and community. This combination of things is what being a member of LosFuzzys is...
I was part of the Betonkanu TU Graz. team in 2015, while studying civil engineering. As a team we were able to brilliantly master the challenge of building the lightest concrete canoe of the regatta and win in this category. Our canoe weighed 3.1 kg per linear metre and had a total length of 5.39 m,...
Selecting a mobility programme
First, you need to choose the right mobility programme for your placement abroad. This will depend on what you want to study or research, as well as your language skills. If you want to do a placement abroad, but can’t decide whether you want to stay in Europe or go...
A challenge during retirement
Retirement after 43 years in Austrian teacher training and continuing education? That can’t be everything, surely! My life has always been full of exciting tasks. In the late 1980s, when I was 40 and working full time, I enrolled in a university computer science...
First of all, my parents always wanted me to see the world, study abroad, get precious experience. After finishing my bachelor’s at home and having worked for a bit, I also realized that I’m still young and not ready yet to stay firmly in one place – I have the whole world waiting for me!
However,...
Every year since 1951, the Nobel Laureate Meeting in Lindau on Lake Constance has taken place with the aim of bringing together young, promising researchers with Nobel prizewinners of the same specialty. Dialogue and the exchange of knowledge between the generations of scientists is promoted in...
I will spend 2017/2018, the coming academic year, in Bordeaux, France. A stay abroad offers students boundless opportunities and possibilities, combining university education with personal development and an enormous accumulation of experience.
One of my professors at TU Graz specifically pointed...
As Rector of TU Graz I have many reasons every day to feel proud of this institution. We are an international university with a wide range of English master’s programmes, a highly desirable cooperation partner for business and science, our research focuses are at the top of the international...
The Physical Internet – is this just another buzzword or a solid concept which will revolutionise freight logistics? Outlined roughly, the Physical Internet (PI) is a completely new system which will move, store, sort and supply physical objects in the future. Instead of sending packets of data...
“amm – architektInnen machen möbel” does exactly what it says: TU Graz architecture students design furniture. The label was initiated in the Furniture Design Production course in 2012 by Irmgard Frank at the Institute of Spatial Design – and has been very successful in the last few years since with...
In my master’s thesis, I considered how a city can develop and function in the future. How to expand the urban planning horizon through an architectural idea without pretensions to solving particular problems. The thesis made use of Los Angeles. The creative and fictional aura around the dream...
From the view of a team of advisors at the TU Graz fair stand, a day at the fair can be exciting and even quite challenging when we have to answer detailed questions on particular fields of study. Here is a selection of the most frequently asked questions which we’ve compiled for you.
What study...
Sometimes I still dream of space. It’s mostly when I’m reminded of the spaceflight, when I meet people from that time or see things which remind me of my stay in space station Mir. That was over 25 years ago and I still remember very well the hard preparation time for the Austromir mission. The...
On the way to work or to the supermarket each day, every one of us performs constantly recurring movement patterns without always consciously thinking about them. These movement patterns can be recorded, and an autonomous vehicle can learn about typical patterns using algorithms to predict movement....
“In reality I drive much better,” were my unbelievably contrite and apologetic words as I got used to the simulator driving seat at Inffeldgasse. I had lost my orientation, started off on the wrong side of the road, trembled discretely while staying in lane, and immediately exceeded the maximum...
An observation often tested, especially in summer times! Fortunately, scientific work does not stop at such (primitive) observations: it seeks an explanation for the effect.
For the situation of wet sand, it took a while to find the latter: the first scientifically-sound explanation for the...
Around 1870 the radiance of the Technical College of Graz was felt way beyond the borders of Styria. In those days, especially talented students interested in technology from north Italy and southeast Europe found their way to the Styrian provincial capital. The most gifted of them was without a...
Ok, I admit it: I’ve got the ‘timber bug’. Not only because I am working for a company dedicated to promoting the use of timber but above all because I am convinced that the future belongs to timber construction. Indeed, building in wood brings out the best in this natural material. And now new...
When we developed the first prototype of our app, we had no idea that one day it would lead to a company. In 2011 TU Graz was looking for a tool which could make mass interactions possible in the lecture room. Our supervisor and mentor, Martin Ebner, who leads the TU Graz Educational Technology...
Two full years of intensive preparations are coming to an end. Today is the day when we have to show how far these two years have brought us. Our brain-computer interface has to harmonise with the pilot. It’s time to concentrate. Not an easy job in the sold-out SWISS Arena and the amazing joyful...
Borrowing from Star Trek, there are also farther reaches of space at the Innovation Marathon – those of the mind. And our adventure also boldly went where no man has gone before: 24 hours, eight teams with five members each, three phases, one mission, and no sleep till you get back home. It was a...
What makes the graphic novel “In Mind” so interesting is its two-level context – i.e. the level of architecture and the level of the escape – that makes sense through the artistic form of the comic. The novel tells of our environment and the perspective from which we perceive it. This may sound...
In the 1960s, the old geoscientific concept of an expanding earth – i.e., the notion of an ever broadening and growing world – underwent a Renaissance. This theory has since been scientifically proven wrong; in fact, today our earth appears to be shrinking every day. That is not strictly...
Monday, 14 February 2011, 5am. It’s hardly been one year since, after much consideration, I decided to plunge back into university life. And now, just a couple of days after saying goodbye to my last employer, I got into my car on a cold winter’s morning and drove to an unknown city in a different...
The word “mathematics” comes from the Greek; as far as I know it derives from an expression which means more or less “the art of learning”. I find this a very beautiful and apt description. I feel scholarly work in mathematics is a constant learning process. I learn in order to understand something...
Armed conflicts, streams of refugees, financial crisis and such like – in view of these worrying developments should we, may we, think aloud at all about topics such as the future of science or should we instead be putting all our energy into solving the problems of the present? We may and should do...
“Everyone can get an education”: under this slogan, in the month of May, Students’ Unions from the whole of Austria bring courses out of their usual venues directly to the people. Whether during a walk through the town or the park, while drinking coffee in the little café next door, or while driving...
Welcome to the city where every day holds a story and paradox is commonplace. A brief outline of a day in Tehran. There is hardly any other city which inspires such curiosity and interest in me as this one. I’m fascinated how people sound out existing boundaries every day and interpret them anew....
When I read scientific literature, I always ask myself the question: WTF? I’m not the brightest candle on the cake, but sometimes it’s just impossible to decipher scientists’ justifications and inferences. Everyone knows this feeling! Why is it so difficult to write reports in a brief, concise and...
Having passed their school leaving examination qualifying them for university entrance, the world is virtually completely open to school graduates. Often it is very difficult to make the right decision: there are just so many opportunities available. And today, more so than ever. But even when I...