# Research Partners

[Research Partners](https://iits-consulting.de/en/research-partners)

## Research partners

We take part in funded research projects, so the newest AI methods make it into the software we build for you.

## Research that ends up in production

These are collaborative, publicly funded projects where universities, research institutes, industry, and public bodies tackle a hard problem together. The academic partners bring the science; we bring the software and AI engineering that turns it into something that runs. It keeps us at the edge of what's possible, and it means the methods we use on client work are current and grounded in evidence.

## The projects

### Smart-DLWD

2024–2027

Bringing AI within reach of the municipal companies that run essential public services. Our work focuses on the practical side: street-cleaning operations, and monitoring construction sites and road signs. The goal is low-threshold AI that cuts costs and opens new value for organisations that can't usually afford a dedicated AI team.

We work in a consortium with Fraunhofer IML, TU Dortmund, EDG Entsorgung Dortmund, Spherity and Building Information Cloud. Funded by the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and the European Union through NEXT.IN.NRW (EFRE/JTF programme NRW), grant number EFRE-20800507.

[About the project](https://iits-consulting.de/en/smart-dlwd/index.md)

### Industrial AI Cloud

2026

We supported Deutsche Telekom's operations team in building and running the GPU cluster behind its Industrial AI Cloud, Europe's largest private-sector platform for sovereign, compliant AI. Our work centred on SLURM, the system that schedules and manages workloads across the cluster's GPUs.

The platform's first client was SOOFI, a project training an open European language model, so the infrastructure had to handle large-scale training from day one.

### GRIPSS-X

2022–2024

A GAIA-X-based platform for co-producing complex industrial services, with AI services that cut the coordination overhead between providers, all with the data sovereignty that GAIA-X brings.

We took part alongside TU Dortmund and Fraunhofer ISST.

## Who we work with

### TU Dortmund

A leading German technical university, with real strength in logistics, production, and applied AI. We work with its Chair of Enterprise Logistics (LFO), on AI and data-driven services for industry and the public sector.

[Explore more](https://www.tu-dortmund.de/en/)

### Fraunhofer

Europe's largest applied-research organisation, working where science meets industry. We've collaborated with two of its institutes: the Institute for Material Flow and Logistics (IML), on AI and data-driven services, and the Institute for Software and Systems Engineering (ISST), on software and data platforms.

[Explore more](https://www.fraunhofer.de/en.html)

## Why it matters for your project

Research keeps our knowledge fresh, but the point is what it does for your work. The techniques we prove in these projects, and the judgement we build about what does and doesn't hold up in practice, are exactly what we bring when you hire us to build something real.

## Too new for a standard project?

Then it’s a fit for us. We like working on questions that have no ready-made answer yet. Let’s talk about it.

[Talk to our team](https://iits-consulting.de/en/contact/index.md)

[See our work](https://iits-consulting.de/en/our-work/index.md)

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