HPI supports Sustainable Development Goals

On 25 September 2015, the 193 countries of the UN General Assembly adopted the 2030 Development Agenda and outlined the 17 Sustainable Development Goals to indicate action areas for a sustainable future of mankind. In an era of the omnipresent effects of globalization and digitization joint measures need to be taken to support human rights, prosperity, ecologically driven development and peace for all. Hasso Plattner Institute as the leading Digital Lab of Germany commits to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and takes its part to build a better future for humanity.

HPI's Sustainable Development Goals

As a leading research and educational institution, HPI is fully committed to the realization of SDGs and, in this sense, focuses its research and teaching activities on sustainable IT. HPI stands for first-class educational opportunities on campus and on the Internet, sustainable and energy-efficient use of all IT systems, research contributions to the development of climate-friendly digital solutions, and AI applications for all areas of social and economic life. This is particulary reflected in the field of health, sustainable on-campus mobility, and the promotion of gender equality. With its focus on excellence in digital engineering research and the design thinking approach, HPI promotes the sustainable design of digital transformation. HPI is committed to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals established worldwide through its collaborations, research projects and field offices.

The "clean-IT" initiative bundles projects with international partners from business, politics, and international organizations that promote "sustainability by design" and algorithmic efficiency in IT system development, thus helping to reduce the carbon footprint of digitization

Neuland Podcast Special: "Role of the SDGs in Digital Transformation"

During the launch of our clean-IT-initiative in Davos, a special of our podcast Neuland was created. HPI Director Prof. Dr. Christoph Meinel and Ann Rosenberg, Senior Vice President and Global Head of SAP Next-Gen, discussed the "Role of the SDGs in Digital Transformation". Listen now!

HPI Supports:

Good Health and Well-being

HPI Digital Health Center
The HPI Digital Health Center (DHC) brings together individuals from health sciences, human sciences, data sciences, digital engineering and society with a shared goal to improve health and wellbeing.
In March 2019 the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Mount Sinai in New York City became part of the HPI Digital Health family. The new institute was launched as the result of a merger of the Mount Sinai Health System (MSHS) and the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI). With world-class expertise and complementary resources in health care, data sciences and biomedical and digital engineeting, the new Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Mount Sinai will conduct patient-engaged and data driven research.
Research Group Digital Health - Machine Learning
The Machine Learning group (Prof. Dr. Christoph Lippert) at the HPI Digital Health Center (DHC) is a collaborator of the Africa Health Research Institute in South Africa, which leads the innovative population health screening program Vukuzazi to gain insights into fundamental interactions between HIV, tuberculosis (TB), environmental exposures and non-communicable diseases. The AHRI-HPI collaboration focuses on applying and evaluating AI-tools to infer new insights about TB.
HPI School of Design Thinking
- Cooperation with the Global Engineering Teams (GET) on a project targeting the lower limb replacement experience for people in developing countries who have limited access to existing solutions. The project became a social business named AMPARO with a clear goal: Empowering amputees worldwide by revolutionizing prosthetics. Using human-centered design, Amparo developed an innovative and adjustable prosthetic socket that is much simpler and faster to use than other existing options.
HPI School of Entrepreneurship
- HPI start-up ThinkSono have created the world's first software to diagnose 'deep vein thrombosis' (DVT) at the point of care. DVT is caused by a blood clot in the leg and is responsible for 800,000 deaths in Europe and USA. It's the number one preventable cause of death in hospitals and costs Europe €3 Billion and the US $15.5 Billion.
- HPI start-up Gemedico GmbH develops the first teleradiology software as a service. The entire process and the associated documentation are covered. The aim is to eliminate the currently used analog technology and the associated additional effort. Gemedico GmbH relies on a high-security data center for its services and would like to achieve high availability through its modular infrastructure. The teleradiologists are supported by artificial intelligence in the preparation of their findings in order to achieve a high level of precision even at night.
EU-Project: Smart4Health
Developing international standards and APIs for machine-readable and transferable patient records across hospitals and countries.
Cooperation: Data4life
Collaboration with the Digital Health startup “data4life” to establish a citizen-centered, secure cloud infrastructure in which everybody can upload and manage their personal medical health records. This improves citizen sovereignty, makes data donation for medical research and the development of new treatment schemes feasible.
Cooperation: openWHO
A cooperation between HPI and WHO on delivering medical information in crisis/epidemic areas instantly to contain diseases and to educate the broad public on health topics (over 70 MOOCs available on openWHO in English and French).

Quality Education

Hasso Plattner Institute
HPI´s mission is to educate future leaders in IT and set new standards in computer science research related to real-life problems. HPI’s objective is to foster innovation at the intersection between excellent teaching and research in the field of IT, user-centricity with the Design Thinking approach and to encourage entrepreneurship. Education and research at HPI are conducted hands-on and with strong partners from public administration and industry. Various research projects have already had a tremendous impact on innovation around the globe, e. g.
- Development of the innovative Design Thinking approach, which is now taught in countless places worldwide
- “In-Memory-Database”-Technology, which enables companies and researchers to conduct real-time Big Data analysis for the first time in human history. This enabling technology has led to many innovations in fields like digital health, cybersecurity, energy management, retail and public services.
HPI School of Design Thinking
The HPI D-School offers a supplementary study program for students in all fields of expertise and from all universities and all countries to gain knowledge in the internationally successful Design Thinking approach.The first academic programm was created by HPI in Stanford and Potsdam. Students learn to approach “wicked” global problems in diverse teams, open spaces and an iterative process to find new solutions for the world of tomorrow. The goal is to foster an open and innovative mindset to address societal challenges for a better future. The study program is free of charge for HPI students. Every semester student teams work on challenges provided by various NGO´s and other organisations to create innovativ solutions for a better world.
- The Annual Global Design Thinking Week offers a series of short programs focussing on five topics: Inspiration, Prototyping, Global Impact, Team(ed) Leadership and Strategic Futures. Students from all around the world tackle global societal issues, e. g. in March 2019 targeting unemployment for young generations in Mexico together with BDI and different institutions from the government of Mexico (specifically the Bajío area).
- Cooperation with Montessori School in Potsdam - "The School of the Future": The aim of the project is to empower pupils and educators to co-design their educational concept and learning environment. This makes schools more innovative and able to integrate all stakeholders involved in the learning process.
HPI School for Entrepreneurship
- HPI start-up Auratikum is a SaaS solution that enables scientists funnel thoughts into intellectual innovation by providing a structured and repeatable end-to-end process for academic writing, which is influenced by Niklas Luhmanns ‘Zettelkasten’ method. Thereby making the use of different tools for reference management, note taking, writing etc. obsolete. The product guides inexperienced undergraduate students through the process of writing their first scientific papers.It also provides powerful tools for professional researchers to capture their knowledge in one central location which allows them to publish their research more efficiently.
openHPI
Free of charge MOOCs offer ubiquitous education for everybody on information technologies, health, entrepreneurship (currently over 300 available MOOCs in English, German, French, Chinese, more than 5 million learners worldwide on the various instances of openHPI).
Research Group Human Computer Interaction
- Kyub: The 3D Editor Kyub is an interactive editing system for laser cutting. It allows users to create 3D models, which are then unfolded into the 2D plates by laser cutters. This enables rapid prototyping in education processes.
HPI School-Cloud
HPI develops a cloud-based education platform, which can easily be used in the context of school education to include digital media at a low threshold in regular school teaching settings via web-based applications. The HPI school cloud is currently rolled-out in more than 200 schools Germany-wide as well as in a number of international schools in many countries worldwide. The HPI school cloud is highly scalable and is fit to revolutionize education in any global education context.
HPI Youth Academy
Every year HPI offers free-of-charge activities related to coding and IT education for high school students and helps to build a bridge between high school education and academic computer science. It also supports raising interest in future digital technologies particularly for female students in the male-dominated area of IT.

Gender Equality

Affordable and Clean Energy

Decent Work and Economic Growth / Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

Hasso Plattner Institute
HPI´s mission is to educate future leaders in IT and set new standards in computer science research related to real-life problems. HPI’s objective is to foster innovation at the intersection between excellent teaching and research in the field of IT, user-centricity with the Design Thinking approach and to encourage entrepreneurship. Education and research at HPI are conducted hands-on and with strong partners from public administration and industry. Various research projects have already had a tremendous impact on innovation around the globe, e. g.
- Development of the innovative Design Thinking approach, which is now taught in countless places worldwide
- “In-Memory-Database”-Technology, which enables companies and researchers to conduct real-time Big Data analysis for the first time in human history. This enabling technology has led to many innovations in fields like digital health, cybersecurity, energy management, retail and public services.
FutureSOC-Lab:
HPI hosts a supercomputer lab with latest computing hardware for academic and industry research. Biannually, research teams can apply with their research proposals to use top-notch hardware and the latest software to conduct experiments, which require high computing power. Participation is open to all researchers worldwide and free of charge. Research results are publicly disseminated.
HPI School of Entrepreneurship
- HPI start-up Synfioo is a cloud service that predicts and visualizes disturbances in supply chains in real-time. In logistics, small disruptions in the supply chain can cost millions. Synfioo makes it possible to warn shippers, drivers, and transport planners at an early stage about any disturbance and their consequences. Complementing any existing systems, Synfioo accordingly enables automated transport planning. This result means significant savings for any logistic company
- HPI start-up Industrial Analytics is an industrial IoT B2B vertical company with the aim to support the German industry and machine operators with digitalization. The core product are cross-linked machines and new data driven services in order to increase availability and reduce OPEX. The benefit of improved machine monitoring is not only a reduced maintenance cost through predictive maintenance but also through improved efficiency and increased flexibility as well as the prevention of unplanned downtime.
- HPI start-up NeXenio GmbH offers IT services as well as product development and the operation of IT applications and services in the area of cloud storage, real-time collaboration, social media analytics, and data mining. NeXenio presents a cloud solution with nexboard that combines design thinking with global collaboration and provides a unique opportunity for a shared work experience. From what started with simple post-its and went on to become integrated video transmission, neXboard facilitates the smooth interaction between, for example, product development and consulting.