We are pleased to announce that our Chair is co-funded as part of the project "CellPort – A Network for Smart Logistics." The project is part of the state and federal 5-StandorteProgramm, which supports former hard coal power plant sites in North Rhine-Westphalia in their transformation into future-ready innovation regions. The corresponding funding notices were handed over to the University of Duisburg-Essen on September 3, 2026, by State Secretary Paul Frederik Höller (Ministry of Economic Affairs, Industry, Climate Action and Energy of NRW).

CellPort is creating an innovation and transfer ecosystem at the Port of Duisburg at the intersection of smart logistics, 5G/6G, and digitalization – jointly driven by Duisburg Business & Innovation GmbH (DBI), startport GmbH, and UDE. Technology-focused start-ups will gain access to a prototyping workspace, business and investor contacts, and state-of-the-art 5G/6G test infrastructure, allowing them to develop and test new solutions directly in real operating environments.

Our chair is contributing to this initiative together with our colleagues from the Rhine-Ruhr Institute of Information Systems – Prof. Dr. Frederik Ahlemann and Prof. Dr. Ralf Plattfaut. We look forward to the collaboration and to bringing our expertise in digital ecosystems to the further development of the Port of Duisburg as a real-world lab for the logistics of tomorrow.

For more information on the funding and the accompanying project "D3AM Field Lab," see the UDE news release.