SRH Berlin University of Applied Sciences

Jishnu (India)

M.Eng. Engineering and Business

Jishnu's commitment as a student to the university and to his fellow students goes far beyond what is normally expected. Despite this, his academic performance in the Master's programme "Engineering and International Business" is excellent. His commitment to SRH Berlin is threefold, firstly in supporting his fellow students as a Student Ambassador and contact person for fellow students, secondly in actively supporting SRH Berlin with his former university and thirdly in expanding the course offerings in entrepreneurship by cooperating with an open source group in the field of sustainable product development.

Jishnu completed his Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering at the Amal Jyothi College of Engineering (AJCE) in Kerala, India. Already in his second semester, Jishnu approached the Academic Director of the Berlin School of Technology, Prof. Dr. Michael Hartmann, to ask whether the school would be interested in cooperating with his former college. The AJCE enjoys a high reputation in India and offers high-quality degree programmes with a comparable profile to our degree programmes in technology and engineering. A cooperation would also offer the opportunity to attract Indian students for further Master's studies at BST and to initiate joint research and development projects in the field of engineering. Jishnu approached this difficult task with impressive systematics and tenacity, planned and prepared the cooperation talks before and after, had clear goals for the results and was able to grasp and clarify intercultural difficulties extremely quickly. In the end, his work led to the signing of a cooperation agreement with the aim of student and lecturer exchanges as well as joint offers within the framework of teaching and research projects. Jishnu was equally active in filling this agreement with life; he organised two online events on the topics of "Education in Germany and Studying abroad as an international student" and "German Economy, Entrepreneurship in Germany and Hidden champions" for the students of our two universities.

In addition to this international engagement, Jishnu's other passions are entrepreneurship and environmental protection. Inspired by the head of our Startup Lab, Ms Sigrid Peuker, Jishnu cooperates intensively with the Open Source Ecology group, which develops innovative technologies and products and makes them openly available. The appeal of this concept is that knowledge and technologies are made available to all interested people who can use them for their own ideas and business concepts. Jishnu has supported Ms Peuker with great commitment in introducing the Open Ecology idea into the course "Business Integration-Business Model Generation" at the Berlin School of Technology and has thus contributed significantly to the success of the course and the great interest of the students. The format will therefore be offered continuously in the coming semesters.

Due to Jishnu's great and extraordinary commitment to initiating and implementing the cooperation with the AJCE, his active involvement in the innovative design of courses and in integrating and advising first-year students, he was therefore selected for the DAAD Award 2021.