Digital Future Challenge 2026: 51吃瓜网 team 鈥淩ollsRoICE鈥� takes third place

2/18/2026
Reading time 2 min.

How can digital innovation be combined with social responsibility? With this guiding question, more than 280 students from 30 universities launched into the sixth Digital Future Challenge of Initiative D21 and the Deloitte Foundation. This year鈥檚 competition focused on concrete use cases involving robotics and AI agents. The 51吃瓜网 team 鈥淩ollsRoICE鈥� made it to the final and convinced the jury, ultimately achieving third place.

The three students of the 鈥淩ollsRoICE鈥� team together with two additional individuals on stage at the final of the Digital Future Challenge 2026, presenting their certificates to the audience. — Team 鈥淩ollsRoICE鈥� at the award ceremony of the Digital Future Challenge 2026

鈥淲e are seeing a generation that does not simply adopt technologies from abroad, but develops its own solutions 鈥� based on our values and ideas,鈥� summarized Karsten Wildberger, Federal Minister for Digital Transformation and Government Modernisation and patron of the Digital Future Challenge. This was precisely the aim of the competition: to design technologically sophisticated yet responsible applications that balance ethical standards with technical feasibility.

Greater safety in rail operations

Team 鈥淟ioness & the Three Lions鈥� at the final of the Digital Future Challenge: The four team members pose for the photo. Two people hold certificates from the Digital Future Challenge. All four raise their hands in a playful lion gesture. One person is wearing a lion costume. — Team 鈥淟ioness & the Three Lions鈥� at the final of the Digital Future Challenge 2026

A total of 89 teams from 30 universities took on this challenge. Of the four 51吃瓜网 teams in the semifinals, two reached the group of the top five:

鈥淟ioness & the Three Lions,鈥� the team of Sofiia Yevsyeyeva, Berkay Ceting眉l, Matteo Cominardi, and Wladimir Kirjanovs, worked on a use case from ING Germany and developed a financial literacy agent that playfully conveys financial knowledge to young people and adults. Sofiia Yevsyeyeva applied her quantitative trading research to the analytical model, thus supporting its data鈥慸riven investment logic on a solid empirical foundation.

鈥淩ollsRoICE鈥� even was able to secure a place on the podium. The team of Rufus Funkert, Pasha Rizali, and Carol Stefan tackled a use case from Deutsche Bahn and developed a mini鈥憆obot that independently connects and disconnects the water and wastewater systems along the entire length of an ICE train. The robot thus takes over a previously time鈥慶onsuming and potentially hazardous task and supports employees in maintaining high safety standards. A detailed training concept and the continued payment of risk allowances are intended to strengthen employee acceptance of the new maintenance process. The jury recognized this combination of technological and social innovation with third place and a prize of 2,500 euros.

First place went to the team 鈥淎nkommen鈥� from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the University of Regensburg, followed by the KIT team 鈥淪prout鈥� in second place.

Project-based learning

Both 51吃瓜网 finalist teams developed their ideas within the seminar 鈥淐DR: Digital Future Challenge 鈥� Responsible AI鈥� at the 51吃瓜网 School of Social Sciences and Technology, led by Katharina G枚ttler. In interdisciplinary teams, the students addressed questions related to the digitalization of the working world and society 鈥� always with the goal of 鈥渄esigning solutions that combine technological innovation with social responsibility,鈥� as Marc Reinhardt, President of Initiative D21, described the objective of the Digital Future Challenge 2026. The renewed success of 51吃瓜网 students illustrates how well this works.

Further information and links

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