FAU Digital Tech Academy Program

Be Part of Something Unique!

The Digital Tech Academy is FAU’s Elite Entrepreneurship program open to outstanding innovative talents from all FAU degree programs and faculties! We impart all you need to follow your heart and passion for digitization, entrepreneurship and innovation.

DTA Application

Application for DTA Program Batch #12 is open till February 8th 2026. 👉 Click on “Apply here!” to fill out the form and apply for your spot!

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APPLICANT

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The personal data requested, such as gender, date of birth and nationality, are for statistical purposes only and are not part of any selection criteria for the program. After completion of the application process on July 31st, 2026 all submitted data will be deleted. Please find more information under Privacy Policy.

The benefits of the DTA 12-week program

Learn the latest state-of-the-art innovation methods.

Work in interdisciplinary teams.

Choose your own idea or join an exciting project.

Collaborate with top FAU talents and expert mentors.

Widen your professional & personal network.

Receive an official FAU certificate.

 

DTA Program Behind the Scenes

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Insights from DTA Program B#5
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Insights from DTA Program B#8

DTA Program Objectives

You can work either on your own start-up idea, or join a start-up idea from another participant – after the program you will have:

DTA Program Overview

We will guide you through the end-to-end design process and help you unlock the entrepreneur in YOU!

Get to know your Digital Tech Fellows, choose your start-up idea and assemble your interdisciplinary team. After the Kick-off weekend you will be fully set-up to start your entrepreneurial journey with the DTA.

In order to understand the holistic impact of your choosen start-up idea, eight discovery areas are being researched, e.g. to understand the world of a potential client, research the competition, etc.

In this workshop we dive deep into market and competitor analysis to create a great foundation for our future business model. On top of that we go through the best techniques and ways how to interview potential customers & users.

Using the discovered insights, several new business ideas are developed, prioritized and first drafted into a value proposition followed by a complete business model. Then Hypothese & Experiments are defined to validate the choosen business model. For validation different prototypes such as landing pages, videos, and mock-ups are created. Besides that we will spend a whole weekend in a nice location together and have lot’s of FUN 🙂

Throughout the validation phase, which serves to verify our business model with the help of different experiments and prototypes, we check in with each other and use the first generated insights to define a lean version of our future offering.

During the Pitching workshop we will cover the different types of pitches and learn how to best present our start-up idea.

In the review workshop we take a trip down memory lane and review the whole process and our developments together. We discuss which next steps we will take to further validate our Business model.

The financial modeling workshop will teach you everything you need to know about investment planning, cost planning & price calculation. At the end you will have a clear picture what your product or service is worth and how to calculate the numbers.

The final Demo Day marks the official end of the program, where all team pitch their start-up ideas to a large audience and share their next steps and plans for the future with us. Afterwards it’s time for our award ceremony and most importantly time to celebrate our Digital Tech Fellows with the rest of our DTA Community.

DTA Schedule – Batch #12

Name of the Event

 Date Venue Time
Kick-off Weekend 17.04.2026 – 19.04.2026 D.hip 9 am to 5 pm
DTA Community Event 18.04.2026 D.hip 5-9pm (optional)
Competitor Analysis and Interview Techniques Workshop tbd Online 5-8pm
Discover Deep Dive 30.04.2026 D.hip 1 pm to 5pm
Design Workshop 14.05.2026 – 16.05.2026 Forschungscampus

Waischenfeld

(Transportation & Accomodation included)

 9 am to 5 pm
Pitching Workshop 22.05.2026 D.hip 10 am to 4pm
DTA goes BERG 22.05.2026 Bergkirchweih Erlangen 6pm (optional)
Validate Workshop 29.05.2026 D.hip 10 am to 5 pm
Financial Modelling Workshop 25.06.2026 Online 5 pm to 8 pm
Review Workshop 19.06.2026 D.hip 1 pm to 6 pm
Pitch Test I 29.06.2026 Online Individual
Pitch Test II 06.07.2026 Freyeslebenstr. 1 Individual
Final Demo Day 10.07.2026 D.hip 9 am to 5 pm
DTA Celebration 10.07.2026 D.hip 5-10pm

 

DTA Alumni Coming Back

Our DTA Start-ups from the previous batches always come back and share their journey & advice with the upcoming entrepreneurs:


  • arfinity
    Lucia Grom-Baumgarten from our DTA B#3 Start-up arfinity sharing their journey since participating in the Digital Tech Academy Program back in 2018. Arfinity brings Augmented Reality to the world of trade fairs by enabling completely new ways of product presentation and interaction,  which eventually offer significant value for all stakeholders at trade fairs. In an easy and cost-efficient configuration tool, exhibitors can create their own AR content and showcase a bigger portfolio in the form of true-to-original 3D-models during events.



  • Oculai
    Constantin & Tim from our Batch#6 Start-up Oculai joined us as mentors for Batch#8 during the Design Weekend and shared great insights on how to grow fast and what not to underestimate when going all in with your start-up. Oculai offers a solution for camera-based data collection on construction sites. Intelligent computer vision algorithms extract data on resource utilization, construction performance and construction progress from image material. This automates time-consuming documentation and reveals productivity deficits in individual processes at an early stage.


  • Libati
    Katrin & Doro from our Batch#4 Start-up Libati shared helpful validation advice with our Digital Tech Fellows. They show the different mock-ups and prototypes they started out with and how long it took to have their final app (which is of course always work-in-progress) today.Libati offers an App for the chronically ill people to discover new places more freely and independently. The user simply creates his personal trigger factors and preferences like stairs, pet hair etc. at the beginning and sees at a glance which locations around him/her are suitable and which are not. The input is based on the ratings of other users.


  • INVRTUAL
    Markus, Spyros and Michi from our DTA B#4 Start-up INVRTUAL shared their journey of starting a start-up next to studying with our fellows. Their Do’s & Don’ts when starting a business were really helpful for our Digital Tech Fellows.INVRTUAL’s mission is to redefine the way people collaborate in the virtual space. With our XR communication platform, we enable a variety of customer-centric applications ranging from virtual training to product presentation.