HPU Associate Professor Bernhard Bengler.
HPU’s partnership with Spain-based is off to a running start in 2022. A total of 16 project-based learning experiences in four classes brought together undergraduate and graduate students to work with companies in Europe on real-world challenges. Students in spring 2022 worked in teams for several months to deliver versatile presentations to executives in Europe. The outcomes were exemplary.
“HPU students beat the results from universities in Germany, Finland, and other countries in the E.U.,” said Associate Professor of Information Systems Bernhard Bengler, D.B.A. “We have received internship opportunities from Telanto business partners throughout Europe, all based on the results of HPU students’ projects this past semester.”
HPU and Telanto began its partnership in 2021, providing students with experiential learning opportunities and connecting industry with academia. Telanto is a digital platform that connects HPU with industry partners to work on real-world projects online. HPU faculty from all colleges can access projects around the world and incorporate those projects into their coursework.
In Bernhard’s information security foundation course (IS 6341) this spring, he saw two industry partners from Spain and Germany work with four groups of HPU students. Feedback from the businesses were extremely positive, with one executive stating, “We are overwhelmingly impressed by how the HPU students engaged with the technical aspects of the project.” Another executive stated that “HPU students dug deep and brought up a list of very fruitful improvement recommendations. The students went above and beyond our expectations.”
Bernhard’s disruptive information security course (IS 6997) saw a total of three teams collaborate with a bank in Germany. Students were tasked to work on the applications of artificial intelligence from within and outside the finance industry as well as securing artifacts of artificial intelligence against manipulation.
“The results from this project-based challenge were impressive,” said Bengler. “Not only was the business extremely impressed by our students, but they referenced our students’ top-notch results. The bank was able to gain a new understanding from our students’ work.”
Companies that are among Telanto’s partners are tech startups, SMEs, and Fortune 500 leaders like Bayer, Allianz, Intel, De’Longhi, and Software One.
Telanto was founded in Barcelona in 2015 and through its university-industry-collaboration platform it is partnered with 1,000 universities in 51 countries. HPU is the only partner institution in Hawai‘i.
