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.
Finland:Tampere, Oulu, Vaasa, Turku, Jyväskylä
Japan:Tokyo, Sapporo
Czechia:Prague, Ostrava
Hungary:Budapest
United Kingdom:Glasgow
India:DelhiIn 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.
Finland:Tampere, Oulu, Riihimäki
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!
Prague
Human Beings in the Modern World
How can a city create a living atmosphere through lighting that reacts to what is happening right now? Urban spaces are shaped not only by buildings and streets, but by light, mood, and movement. However, city lighting is often static and disconnected from the rhythms of everyday life. This Demola project invites students to imagine lighting as living urban art that responds in real time to the city and its people. The challenge is to explore how dynamic lighting installations can reflect the pulse of the city and its events, emotions, environmental changes, and human presence. By translating real-time signals and data such as weather, activity levels, or cultural moments into light, the city itself becomes a constantly evolving artwork. Teams will focus on artistic expression, storytelling, and citizen experience, using light to create atmosphere, provoke emotion, and strengthen a sense of belonging in public spaces. The emphasis is not on technology alone, but on meaning: how light can communicate, invite reflection, and connect people to their surroundings in subtle and beautiful ways. The outcomes may include conceptual artworks, visual narratives, spatial designs, or experiential prototypes that show how responsive lighting can transform everyday urban environments into shared, poetic experiences.
Apply by 01 Mar
Riihimaki
Future of Work
Finnish workplaces are becoming increasingly multicultural and more dependent on international talent. However, onboarding, communication, and leadership practices are often based on the Finnish language and an assumption of familiarity with Finnish working culture. This can lead to misunderstandings, inefficiency, and safety-related challenges in everyday work. The aim of this project is to develop a modern, multilingual onboarding and training solution that lowers language barriers and clearly explains the norms, expectations, and underlying logic of Finnish working life in a practical way. The solution takes cultural differences in communication and leadership into account and supports leadership practices that work in multicultural teams. The project seeks to improve multilingual and cross-cultural communication, reduce misunderstandings affecting work efficiency and safety, and strengthen trust within work communities so that employees feel safe to raise concerns and speak openly. Key question:What does an effective, multilingual onboarding and leadership solution for multicultural workplaces in Finland look like?
Apply by 01 Mar
Jyväskylä, Oulu, Prague, Riihimaki
Future of Work
Modern expert work is fragmented. During a single day, people switch between creating presentations, planning strategy, meeting customers, coordinating with colleagues, and organizing training sessions—often juggling multiple tools, files, and applications at once. While advanced users may employ agentic AI to partially streamline their workflow, it still requires effort, setup, and technical understanding. Imagine an AI-driven service that automatically understands your next task and prepares everything you need—before you even start. This project explores how Agentic AI could support seamless transitions between tasks, colleagues, and physical working environments. How might Agentic AI detect and predict the user’s next task in real time? How could the system open relevant apps, files, notes, and resources—or provide an instant recap of the task-in-progress? How might we support context switching not only individually, but also in relation to your team, shared responsibilities, and current workspace? What new value emerges when digital context, physical space, and team dynamics are all part of the experience? In this project we can assume we have smart office environment where the positioning data or cyber security is not an issue.
Apply by 01 Mar
Jyväskylä, Oulu, Prague, Riihimaki
Future of Work
How can a modern smart office become more responsive, human-centric, and energy-efficient through real-time context awareness? Let’s assume the office can reliably estimate the number of people and level of activity in any specific space. This project explores how the premises could adapt dynamically to active and quiet moments throughout the day in different areas of the office. The goal is to create prototypes that show how context-aware spaces can enhance: • Wellbeing & visitor experience • Sustainability & energy efficiency • Space utilization & operations How could the environment react when a space becomes busy, silent, or transitions between different activity levels? What newvalue could be created for employees and visitors through real-time responsiveness? Which use cases are most impactful for meeting spaces, lounges, offices, or shared facilities? In this project we can assume we have all the necessary data about the building, people, heating, ventilation, etc… How might we, for example, adjust lighting, music volume/style, heating, air flow, etc. to raise the comfort level and usefulness of the space to another level?
Apply by 01 Mar
Jyväskylä, Oulu, Prague, Riihimaki, Tampere
Future of Work
Future workplaces will operate on private 5G networks, creating a seamless digital layer that knows when employees arrive and leave. What if this network could act as a checkpoint—automatically saving your “work state” when you exit the office, and restoring it when you return? This project explores how smart offices, expert workflows, and private 5G networks could work together to create save-state productivity: capturing your progress, summarizing ongoing work, and helping you restart quickly—while also supporting better work–life boundaries. When an employee leaves the office, how could a system automatically “save” their current work context (documents, tasks, insights, recent actions, AI-generated notes)? What should the “resume state” look like when they come back the next day—or log in remotely? How might globally distributed teams working on similar topics receive automatic recaps or updates on each other’s progress? How could this reduce mental load and enable experts to continue their project more efficiently?
Apply by 01 Mar
Jyväskylä, Oulu, Prague, Riihimaki
Human Beings in the Modern World
Demonstrating new technologies requires always lots of money or imagination. It is extremely hard to visualize, for example, wireless network coverage, soundscape or interaction between people without actually building the space for it and taking people there in person. What if we would have a virtual showroom where these things could be visualized in metaverse-like environments and test different scenarios? This virtual showroom could be set up in different layouts and modified depending on the customer’s needs and experienced in an immersive way. In this project we want to create demonstrations of showrooms that visualize something invisible (such as wireless network coverage or acoustics). What kind of technologies (such as WebXR) should be used when creating a virtual showroom? How should the invisible elements be visualized so that the user can play around with different kinds of layouts and test different scenarios? What would be the most dazzling examples to demonstrate in the virtual showroom? This project is about highlighting what could be done with a proper virtual showroom that goes beyond just showcasing cool 3D models of the physical products. If you are interested in VR or WebXR, join the project and let’s start building cool environments!
Apply by 01 Mar
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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