The “Internet of Things” and “Cloud Computing” were among the topics of a seminar given by Prof. Dr. Ulrich Birkel and Mark Weber held at the University of Jaén. The two scientists from the Gießen Department of Electrical and Information Technology at the TH Mittelhessen were invited to Andalusia by the Departamento de Ingeniería de Telecomunicación.

Mahmoud Mansour and Andres Matz also traveled. The research assistants enrolled in the doctoral programme at the Spanish university. In their planned doctoral theses they want to deal with “smart grid technologies”. This refers to intelligent systems for the central control of electricity supply from generation to storage to consumption. The first cooperative doctorates in which the two universities are involved are supervised by Ulrich Birkel and his Spanish colleagues Prof. Joaquin Cañada Bago and Prof. José Ángel Prieto.

The THM 's cooperation with the Spanish partner university, which has around 15,000 students, is funded by the European Union's Erasmus programme. A cooperation agreement from 2014 enables master's students to acquire a German degree in "Control, Computer and Communications Engineering" and a Spanish degree in "Telecommunication Engineering" in four semesters. The students study for at least one semester at the partner university. The master's thesis is supervised by professors from Jaen and Gießen . Two to three students take advantage of this opportunity every year. The cooperation programme of the two universities also includes a regular exchange of lecturers.