Schönenberger climbs TUM ladder to VP

Helmut Schönenberger, managing director of Technical University of Munich (TUM)’s innovation arm Unternehmertum, was appointed as vice-president entrepreneurship at the university on Friday.
He has joined the university’s board of management, where he will be responsible for the design and continued development of TUM’s entrepreneurship strategy.
He will also be tasked with building new entrepreneurship activities, working with president Thomas Hofmann, executive vice-president Gerhard Kramer, head of technology transfer Alexandros Papaderos and entrepreneurship faculty.
The appointment comes after the university named Schönenberger as an honorary professor last year.
Schönenberger has been in charge of Unternehmertum since 2002, having co-founded the office after writing a thesis that compared the Stanford University ecosystem with that of TUM and argued that Munich needed an innovation centre.
He also co-founded, and became managing director of, Unternehmertum Venture Capital (UVC) Partners as a venture capital affiliate of Unternehmertum in 2011.
He similarly co-founded, and is the managing director of, Unternemertum MakerSpace, a high-tech workshop and community space open to the public, in 2014.
Schönenberger, together with his fellow managing partners of Unternehmertum – Ingo Potthof and Johannes von Borries – was recognised in the GUV Powerlist 2018 as a leader in his field.
– Photo courtesy of UVC Partners