Excellent news and a great honor for Prof. Dr. Jens Foerderer, Professor for Innovation and Digitalization at the TUM Campus Heilbronn: The ambitious professor will be funded by the European Research Council (ERC) with a total of 1.5 million euros over the next five years. 

His research project "Fair Competition in App Markets" convinced the ERC committee. His pioneering research aims to understand how Apple's and Google's obligations under the European Union's Digital Markets Directive affect competition and innovation in their app stores. 

With this prestigious funding, Prof. Förderer will advance his research goals in a targeted and focused manner. He has a clear vision: "Digital markets play an immensely important role in the global economy, but are controlled by a few platforms. We need to better understand how to ensure competition, innovation and fairness in digital markets.

The grant approval is an important milestone in this journey, as research is costly and the funds can be used to establish an academic working group for the winning project. In addition, many research projects were competing for these important resources. Jens Förderer is therefore happy and proud of the Research Council's decision: "This funding is an award that very few researchers receive. I am overjoyed that my research convinced the Commission and the reviewers.