February 4, 2021

In November 2017, Prof. Dr. Franz Quint had been elected by the University Senate for a term of three years as Prorector for Research, Cooperations and Quality Management at Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences. For the now upcoming election he had run again and was confirmed in yesterday's meeting of the University Council and the University Senate with an overwhelming majority in the 1st ballot now in the main office. Thus he will be responsible for these areas of work at the university as Prorector for the next eight years.

Prof. Dr. Franz Quint thanked the University Council and the Senate for the trust they have placed in him and emphasized that a great deal of support in the responsible bodies of the university is an essential prerequisite for successful work in the management of the university with Rector Prof. Dr. Frank Artinger, Prorectors Prof. Dr. Angelika Altmann-Dieses and Prof. Dr. Robert Pawlowski, as well as Chancellor Daniela Schweitzer.

Corona-conditioned the university went in the election procedure also new ways, since both bodies could not meet in presence. Thus the conception of Professor Dr. Franz Quint took place in the presence of rector Professor Dr. Frank Artinger and the chairmen of the university advice Univ. Professor Dr. Marion Weissenberger Eibl, director of the Fraunhofer institute for system and innovation research, in the assembly hall of the university, was however on-line to the committee members and all university members transferred, who could place for their part over the on-line tool used still questions. The committee members were then able to cast their votes in an anonymous online tool, and the results of the election were then announced in the university public area.

Thankfully, Prof. Dr. Franz Quint accepted the renewed election and emphasized that not only since pandemic times have universities been assigned a socially important interface function in matters of digitization, which he would like to further promote in his office. "In terms of connected work, autonomous driving, artificial intelligence, Industry 4.0 and robotics, we still face many further developments that will influence all areas of life," said Prof. Dr. Franz Quint. This challenge must be taken up in teaching and research and lead to good results, especially at a university of applied sciences, because this type of university now trains around 60% of all engineers."

Franz Quint was born in Hatzfeld in the Romanian Banat in 1965 and now lives in Rastatt with his wife and three children. He passed his Abitur in 1983 at the Nikolaus Lenau Lyceum in Timisoara, Karlsruhe's Romanian twin city. In 1984, he began studying electrical engineering at the local Polytechnic University, which he continued at the University of Karlsruhe after leaving for Germany in 1987 and completed very successfully in 1990. Until 1997, he worked as a research assistant at the University of Karlsruhe and at the Karlsruhe Fraunhofer Institute for Information and Data Processing, as well as teaching at the Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences (today's Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences - Technology and Economics). In 1997, he was able to complete his doctorate with distinction at the University of Karlsruhe. From 1997 to 2002, he held various management positions at Daimler-Benz Aerospace AG (now Airbus), Ulm. In March 2002, he was appointed Professor of Communications Engineering at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences.

In November 2020, Prof. Dr. Franz Quint was elected spokesman of the tri-national alliance of universities of applied sciences in the Upper Rhine metropolitan region "TriRhenaTech" and is thus also a member of the alliance's executive board. Founded in 2014, it is a network of universities from Germany, France and Switzerland that together represent more than 50,000 students. The aim of this alliance is to promote European coherence through cooperation between partner institutions in teaching, research, knowledge and technology transfer, innovation and continuing education, and targeted student exchange, and to contribute to strengthening the Upper Rhine innovation ecosystem.