Thorsten has been involved in university-industry innovation for more than 5 years. Affiliated with the Science-to-Business Marketing Research Centre at Münster University of Applied Sciences in Germany, he researches, lectures and conducts industry projects at the intersection of innovation, entrepreneurship and marketing.

Thorsten is Co-founder and Chairman of the University Industry Innovation Network (UIIN, www.uiin.org), a spin-off organisation of the Science-to-Business Marketing Research Centre. In addition, he is the Chair of the Accreditation Council for Entrepreneurial and Engaged Universities (ACEEU).

His prior work experience includes Deloitte Australia's Innovation Acceleration Team, the Institute for Innovation and Knowledge Management (INGENIO) at the Polytechnic University of Valencia in Spain, the Centre of Marketing Management at Zurich University of Applied Sciences in Switzerland as well as the eArchitecture Lab at Constance University of Applied Sciences in Germany.

Connecting IT, market-oriented thinking and acting as well as entrepreneurship, Thorsten is passionate about developing new ways to improve relationships between academia and business.

Thorsten frequently serves on international committees / boards (e.g. InnovationKT 2013, ICIMTR 2012, ICKM 2009-2011), frequently reviews papers for international journals (e.g. International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management, International Journal of Business Innovation and Research, Journal of Knowledge Globalization). He is also the Co-Chair of the 2013 University-Industry Interaction Conference in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Amongst other awards and recognitions, Thorsten has won the TAKE IT UP Best Pitching Award 2010 (Brussels, Belgium) and the Best Paper Runner Up @ Sprott Doctoral Symposium 2009 (Ottawa, Canada).

Thorsten has a proven track record in acquiring third-party money with more than 750.000€ being acquired in the last 5 years (as leading proposal manager only). His research interests include university-industry relationships, collaborative innovation, knowledge and technology commercialisation, partnership and network management, entrepreneurial thinking and acting in universities, B2B marketing (in general: topics related to and especially combining innovation, entrepreneurship and marketing / market research).