Practical experience
Landing a job takes more than talent, it takes action. Demola gives you the chance to tackle real challenges, collaborate with others, and build proof of what you can do even when things are uncertain. By actively participating in a Demola project, you can turn your skills into competencies and concrete experience.
Partnered with Innovative Companies
Our platform, created together with leading companies and professors, connects you to real-world innovation projects. You’ll work as part of a team on an innovation and development project, guided by Demola’s expert facilitators. Participating in a project will give you practical experience and the confidence to deal with complexity in any job.
At Demola, innovation projects are built around real-world project topics co-designed with companies and public-sector organisations. If selected, you'll join an innovation team working to develop meaningful solutions that respond to validated needs.
Our projects tackle complex, relevant problems grounded in industry and societal needs. You'll work in a team to design and demo solutions, benefiting from the insights and findings of previous Demola projects. Most Demola projects last around two months, but the exact duration depends on the programme they are part of.
Each team benefits from expert guidance through coaching sessions and facilitated community events. Demola's facilitators bring years of experience in innovation and adapt their support to match your ambition and commitment. You are expected to take an active role, both individually and as a team.
You'll co-create with other teams and Demola's experts, and validate and test your solutions with real stakeholders to continuously refine your approach. High-performing teams gain access to a network of professionals from Demola's industry partners for further input and exposure.
You'll build in-demand, career-ready skills in creative problem-solving, AI-assisted innovation, project management, international collaboration, and resilience - all while working in an environment that mirrors real innovation practices.
Your team owns the outcomes created during the project. Use them in job interviews, your portfolio, a Master's thesis, or even as the foundation of a startup. In some cases, your work may also earn you academic credit (ECTS) if you are a student.
The impact
Ready to turn your skills into competence? Our claims are backed by feedback from our community of participants and alumni.
Strongly agree (49.3%)
Agree (43.6%)
Neither agree or disagree (5.3%)
Disagree (1.3%)
Strongly disagree (0.5%)
2 272 people took part in the survey.
New skills
65.6%
Valuable work experience
63.9%
New friends
51.5%
Startup ideas
34.4%
International teamwork experience
30.5%
Industry contacts
23.9%
Self-esteem
23.9%
New motivation to study
22.8%
Confidence in career choices
20.3%
Researcher contacts
17.6%
Better position in the labor market
13.5%
Other
1.5%
Based on Q4/2022 survey
If you’re currently studying at or near one of our Demola locations or partner universities, you’re welcome to join a Demola project.
In our partner cities, the projects are also open to graduates and professionals who are exploring new career paths or interested in co-creating and launching startups in the future.
Many alumni have participated in more than one Demola project – the current record is seven. For active alumni, we facilitate further development in their academic studies or future careers:
Explore or fine-tune your Master’s thesis topic through a Demola project and find a potential industry collaborator for your Master’s thesis after the project.
Develop an expert profile that highlights your project contributions, as well as innovation and interpersonal skills. Top-performing participants will have their expert profiles shared and recommended within Demola’s partner network, verifying their skills and proactive mindset.
Build on your project results, connect with like-minded teammates, and use your entrepreneurial mindset to lay the groundwork for a startup.
Get onboarded with Demola
Create a Demola profile.
Browse project in your location and apply to those that interest you.
If you get selected, confirm your seat and start the teamwork.
Apply to one or more projects today!
Oulu
Human Beings in the Modern World
Urban planning decisions shape cities for decades, yet citizen engagement remains PDFs, public hearings, and comment forms — processes that reach only the most motivated, most vocal residents. The majority never engage, not because they don’t care, but because the mechanism doesn’t meet them where they are. XR changes the proposition entirely: instead of asking residents to imagine a proposal from a floor plan, you place it at full scale in the actual location through their phone. Feedback becomes spatial, immediate, and accessible to anyone who happens to walk past — not just those who attend a council meeting.Which planning proposal types benefit most from spatial XR presentation, and what fidelity level is actually needed to support meaningful feedback? How should a planner without 3D or development skills publish a proposal, anchor it to a location, and manage the feedback it generates? What feedback mechanisms work in XR — open text, spatial annotation, structured rating — and how are outputs structured for practical planning team use? We are looking to develop a functional web AR demo covering both the planner publishing flow and the citizen feedback experience, demonstrated on at least one real or realistic planning scenario.
Apply by 14 Apr
Oulu
Future of Work
The tools available for creating immersive XR content sit at two extremes. At one end: professional platforms like Unity, Unreal Engine, and Blender — powerful, but requiring months of learning and specialist skills that most communicators, educators, journalists, and brand creators don’t have. At the other end: consumer-facing filters and effects on Instagram or TikTok — easy to use, but locked inside specific platforms, limited in spatial depth, and impossible to customise meaningfully. The enormous middle ground is almost entirely unserved: a content creator who wants to build a spatially layered story, an educator placing a 3D model inside a real classroom, a journalist anchoring a data visualisation to a physical location. The creator economy has shown repeatedly that when the right tools exist at the right level of abstraction, enormous amounts of quality content follows. No equivalent moment has happened for spatial and XR content — not because the technology isn’t ready, but because no one has built the right tools.What is the minimum viable set of XR content basic tools a non-technical creator actually needs: 3D object placement, spatial audio, location anchoring, interactive hotspots, AR text overlays, animated sequences? Which deliver the most creative value relative to complexity? What is the right mental and interaction model for a creator who has never worked in 3D space — should the tool feel like a slide deck, a stage, a map, or something else entirely? How does a creator get 3D content into the tool without modelling skills — smartphone scanning, AI generation from photos, pre-made asset library, or integration with existing stock libraries? What use cases drive the strongest creator motivation to invest time in a new tool: product storytelling, education, journalism, cultural heritage, live events? In this project we simply build the first prototype of simple toolkit that helps the content creators get started with XR content creation in easy and understandable way.
Apply by 14 Apr
Oulu
Value Creators of Tomorrow
Finnish cities publish remarkable quantities of open data — footfall counts, zoning changes, permit applications, event calendars, demographic shifts, traffic patterns, public transport usage, construction pipelines. This data is free, current, and highly relevant to local business decisions. Yet the businesses that could benefit most — independent cafés, retailers, service providers, small contractors — never use it. The interface is a developer portal. The output is a JSON feed. There is no layer between raw municipal data and the business owner sitting in their shop wondering whether to hire a summer employee, open a second location, or change their opening hours. The opportunity is to build that layer: a spatial, visual, SME-facing intelligence tool that translates city open data into concrete business signals — not dashboards for analysts, but answers to the questions small business owners actually ask every day.Which open data streams are genuinely decision-relevant for SMEs — footfall, demographics, competitor permits, event schedules, construction disruptions, transit changes — and which are noise for a non-analyst business owner? What is the right interface for an SME owner with no data background: an AI-powered conversational query, a spatial map layer, a weekly digest, an alert? How do you combine multiple open data sources to surface insights that none of them contain alone — for example, correlating a new tram stop opening with residential density growth and retail permit activity to identify an emerging micro-location opportunity?In this project we are looking to create an SME intelligence prototype — a working spatial tool that ingests real Oulu open data sources and surfaces business-relevant insights for a defined SME type. Non-technical SME owners must be able to interpret the output without explanation.
Apply by 14 Apr
Budapest
Healing the Planet
The shift toward sustainable mobility has brought a range of powertrain technologies — ICE, hybrid, BEV, FCEV, CNG, and synthetic fuels — yet a comprehensive, system-level understanding of their total lifecycle energy efficiency remains fragmented. Decision-makers and policymakers need a transparent, comparable framework covering the full chain from energy production to end-use.Efficiency and environmental impact are region-specific. The same technology can perform very differently depending on:National energy mix (renewables vs fossil-based electricity)Fuel production pathwaysInfrastructure maturityIndustrial and supply chain characteristicsThere is no universally optimal solution — but stakeholders currently lack the tools to assess these regional differences clearly.The team is expected to build a quantitative, engineering-focused model that analyzes the full energy conversion chain of different powertrains — from source to wheel (source → processing → storage → conversion → drivetrain → wheel) — under region-specific conditions. Special emphasis should be placed on energy storage technologies (batteries, hydrogen, fuel systems) as key drivers of system efficiency and losses. The project should identify efficiency bottlenecks at each stage, evaluate real-world performance across key use cases, and integrate local factors such as energy mix and infrastructure. The outcomes can include solutions and frameworks that help stakeholders choose and optimize the right powertrain technology for their specific region.
Apply by 19 Apr
Budapest
Human Beings in the Modern World
Addiction is present in every large organization — nicotine, alcohol, social media, pornography, gambling — draining productivity through absenteeism, turnover, and lost performance. Most HR directors sense this. What they lack is two things that would make action possible: a number that justifies intervention, and a language that makes it safe to start the conversation. Without a quantified cost, there is no business case. Without a communication framework, silence holds — because nobody knows how to raise the topic without causing harm or stigma. Organizations are stuck not from indifference, but from the absence of the right tools.What cost categories should a comprehensive addiction cost model cover across major addiction types, and what Hungarian and EU-level data can make it defensible enough to build a real business case from? How should an ROI calculator be designed so that HR directors and university wellness offices can actually use it to unlock budget and commitment? And once the case is made — what does effective internal communication about addiction look like, what approaches backfire, and what would a ready-to-use organizational playbook need to contain to take a manager from awareness to action?In this project we are looking to develop a tool that helps HR and wellness offices calculate ROI, or solutions around improving internal communication on addiction.
Apply by 19 Apr
Budapest
Value Creators of Tomorrow
Cashless, platform-driven commerce has dramatically lowered the barrier to running a micro-business — but banking infrastructure for these users has not kept up. Creators, freelancers, gig workers, and small-scale e-commerce sellers operate financially like businesses, yet they are poorly served by both consumer and corporate banking products. Their income is irregular, their financial needs are entangled with the platforms they work on, and traditional bank products were built for neither. Meanwhile, BigTech platforms in e-commerce, delivery, and the creator economy are already filling the vacuum — offering credit, BNPL, and revenue-based advances directly to micro-entrepreneurs, bypassing banks and capturing the primary financial relationship.What specific financial pain points do micro-entrepreneurs face that existing bank products fail to address — and where is BigTech already filling the gap? How could a bank design a product that combines personal and business finance in a way that fits irregular, platform-driven income flows? What would it take for a bank to remain the primary financial relationship for a creator or gig worker — and how can its regulated status and institutional trust become a competitive asset rather than a liability against faster-moving platform finance?In this project, we are looking for concepts that explore what a bank built for the one-person business could look like — one that meets micro-entrepreneurs where they already work.
Apply by 19 Apr
See how Demola has helped students around the world succeed in their careers and personal lives.
Master’s Degree student in Research and Innovation in Higher Education
Excellent
20/04/2023
“I enjoy connecting with other people who are not from the same area and field, and creating new things. I think Demola is a very great platform and, since I’m interested in education, I think this is a great idea to help students and other people to learn in a different way and to be closer to the work life.”
Master’s Student in Public and Global Health
Excellent
20/04/2023
“I joined Demola for the third time already, since I enjoy how my personal skills are developing here and I love the feeling of freedom of thoughts, to be able to think, feel and express anything.”
Master’s Student in Sustainable Digitalisation
Excellent
20/04/2023
“I wanted more experience in interdisciplinary project work and real-life, tangible development of solutions with external stakeholders. I also wanted to practice what the design process is like in the real world and how to present novel ideas in an attractive, business- oriented way. And Demola delivered!”
Master’s Degree Student in Engineering and Technology
Excellent
10/06/2022
“In Demola we focused on creating solutions that can and should be applicable and should happen in real life, concrete and implementable solutions that can have an impact. Those type of solutions that go way beyond than just making a new website or a nice social media page.”
Master of Business
Excellent
17/04/2023
“If you have successfully completed the Demola project, it is proof of your passion and that your mindset is inevitably customer-oriented. Demola is definitely an experience I can recommend to all students.”
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