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!
Jyväskylä
Value Creators of Tomorrow
Finland's defence has long relied on dispersed operations, where stretches of ordinary public road can be turned into temporary airstrips for aircraft. Most of the time these roads carry everyday traffic, suffer from frost heave, snow-plough damage and potholes, and are maintained to civilian standards. When they are needed in a real crisis, however, the surface must be flawless – at short notice, possibly in the middle of winter, at night, or after deliberate damage. New mobile technologies, such as equipment that produces hot asphalt on site and enables permanent repairs even in freezing conditions, open up new possibilities for closing the gap between everyday maintenance and crisis readiness. This project explores how the condition of a road airstrip can be ensured so that it is landing-ready exactly when it is needed. What does "landing-ready" actually mean for a road surface, and how could its condition be monitored continuously instead of inspected only before use? How might sensors, drones, vehicle-based scanning or AI image analysis detect damage in real time? How fast could a stretch of road be inspected, repaired and cleared in the harshest conditions, and what mobile capacity, logistics and people would it require? How might civilian road-maintenance companies become part of national preparedness, and could the same capability create everyday value for rescue services, emergency helicopter landings or disaster response? The repair technology already exists – the missing piece is the future system around it. This project aims to create a future vision of road airstrip readiness in the form of scenarios, concept designs and service models, combining engineering, security, logistics, service design and business perspectives.
Apply by 01 Nov
Jyväskylä
Human Beings in the Modern World
Background Patients in public healthcare often struggle to understand what will happen to them during their care. From first contact through diagnosis and treatment, the pathway a patient follows is, in most cases, fairly standard — but it is not visible or explained to the patient. This leaves people uncertain about what comes next, why certain steps happen, and how long the process will take, adding unnecessary stress on top of an already difficult situation. Challenge How can a patient pathway be automatically created and visualized as soon as a patient enters public healthcare services, and how could it be updated as the diagnosis is confirmed or the care progresses? Wellbeing services counties already publish large amounts of information — guidelines, condition descriptions, treatment options, rehabilitation advice — but this information is scattered, hard to find, and sometimes hard to understand. The project will investigate how such information could be attached to the right point in a patient's pathway, so individuals can easily learn what is happening next and why. ## Goal 1. Design a method to automatically generate a visual patient pathway from patient records and diagnosis data. 2. Enable the pathway to update dynamically as the diagnosis is refined or the care progresses. 3. Link relevant existing information (guidelines, condition descriptions, treatments, rehabilitation) to the corresponding steps of the pathway, so patients can understand what is happening and why. 4. Build a simple "pathway generator" prototype that produces a patient pathway based on patient records, diagnosis, and how the care is progressing. Scope The project is not aimed at a production-ready patient-facing application or full integration with real electronic health records, but at validating whether a patient pathway can be automatically generated, visualized, and kept up to date, and whether existing county information can be meaningfully attached to it. The scope is limited to one or two representative care pathways (e.g. common diagnoses) with simplified, illustrative data, so most effort goes into testing the generation and information-linking approach rather than building a polished end-user product. Expected Outcomes - A working prototype of a "pathway generator" that visualizes a patient's care journey based on records, diagnosis, and care progression. - A method for linking existing wellbeing services county information (guidelines, condition and treatment information, rehabilitation) to the relevant steps of the pathway. - Findings on how well the pathway can be kept up to date automatically as diagnosis or treatment changes, and where manual input or oversight is still needed.
Apply by 01 Nov
Jyväskylä
Future of Work
Background Generative AI use in software development is already mainstream: AI-assisted code generation, testing, and documentation are established practices, largely because vast amounts of training data (code repositories, documentation, forum discussions) are available. In hardware development — circuit design, component selection, PCB layout, mechanical design, HW testing — the situation is different: publicly available, structured training data is a fraction of what exists for software, and the toolchain (EDA software, datasheets, simulators) is more fragmented and less "open" to AI. As a result, AI's role in embedded system (hardware + software) development has so far remained far more modest than in pure software development, even though there is significant potential to accelerate the entire development process. Challenge How can AI be leveraged as broadly and practically as possible in an embedded system development project — from concept to working prototype? The project will investigate and test AI use across the following stages, among others: - Design and architecture: system-level design, block diagrams, interface definitions with AI assistance. - Component selection: datasheet interpretation, comparison of alternative components, availability/cost optimization, lifecycle risk identification. - Circuit design and PCB layout: AI-assisted schematic capture, layout recommendations, noise/interference checks. - Embedded software: drivers, protocols, firmware generation and review. - Testing and validation: can AI replace or supplement physical testing (simulation, automated test-case generation, result interpretation) — and where are the limits. These findings will be compiled into a practical "HW Developer's Handbook" that provides concrete guidance and tool recommendations on how to (and how not to) leverage AI at each stage of a hardware project. Goal 1. Map out and test AI tools and methods at different stages of embedded system development. 2. Identify where AI genuinely delivers speed or quality gains, and where its use is still unreliable or risky. 3. Produce a repeatable handbook on leveraging AI in hardware development, shareable with other teams and projects. 4. Test the handbook with a demo - create a simple hardware project where you apply the handbook guidelines. Scope The project is not aimed at a commercializable product, but at validating the process and method (the handbook) through one or two concrete demo devices. Device functionality is kept simple enough that most of the time goes into documenting and evaluating how AI was used, not into polishing the device itself. Expected Outcomes - A working demo device (home automation node), built using the handbook's methods. - An "HW Developer's AI Handbook": a step-by-step guide, tool recommendations, examples, and benefit/risk findings - A summary of where AI can replace or supplement traditional testing, and where it cannot.
Apply by 01 Nov
Jyväskylä, RAIDE portfolio
Human Beings in the Modern World
Electric aircraft replace refuelling with charging or battery swapping, and this single change cascades through every part of ground handling. Ramp crews today are trained, equipped, and certified around liquid fuel operations — procedures, safety protocols, and turnaround timing all assume a refuelling truck and a fixed set of tasks. Electric aviation breaks that assumption: charging takes longer, battery swapping requires new handling equipment and safety procedures, and some tasks that were manual for decades become candidates for automation in a way fuel handling never was. Airports preparing for electric aviation need to know what ground operations will actually look like before aircraft start arriving, not after. Key questions to be answered in the project: 1. How does the sequencing of ground turnaround tasks change between a charging scenario and a battery-swap scenario? 2. What new roles, skills, or certifications are needed for ground crews working with electric aircraft? 3. Which existing ground-handling tasks disappear entirely, and which remain but change in nature? 4. Which tasks are realistic candidates for automation, and what would be required to automate them? In this project we aim to... - Produce a future-state operations map for a small electric-aviation airport, covering both charging and battery-swap turnaround scenarios. - Define role descriptions for the ground crew of the future, including new skills and certifications required. - Identify training and certification gaps against current ground-handling qualifications. - Build a candidate-tasks-for-automation list with reasoning for each, drawing on aviation ground-handling procedures and heavy-duty EV charging operations as the closest available analogue.
Apply by 01 Nov
Jyväskylä, Oulu, Prague
Future of Work
The Challenge Marine crews rotate. A new captain steps aboard a vessel they've never seen before. The previous captain spent six weeks getting to know the quirks of this specific ship — which cylinder always runs slightly hot, which fuel pump is finicky, which weather the engine room copes badly with. The handover is a brief in-person walkthrough plus a stack of paperwork, and then the new captain sails. Worse: expert advice given to one crew ("your equipment is acting strange — probably because of this") often never reaches the next one. At its core this is a communication problem — how do we make sure crucial information survives the handover? Handing the new crew a 20-page report and trusting they read it is not the answer. The same failure mode exists in any shift-rotation environment, from process plants to hospital shift changes. The Data The briefing draws on two layers. Static data: what is on board — equipment inventory, engine type and surrounding subsystems, reference materials and manuals (every vessel is different: a cargo vessel and a bulk carrier may share almost nothing, so "here is where to find the manual for this system" is already valuable). Dynamic data: what has happened — logbook entries, alerts and incidents from navigational and automation subsystems, and known-but-not-yet-resolved issues flagged by remote experts analysing the vessel's data in the cloud. Mission Build a crew-handover briefing generator, in phases. Start with the static layer: compile "here is what you're taking over" — equipment, reference links, manuals — into a single structured onboarding briefing, everything in one place. Then layer in the dynamic history: compress the most important crew-relevant patterns, incidents and open expert advisories into a briefing the incoming crew will actually absorb. Design the ingestion interfaces to be document-agnostic, so nothing in the pipeline depends on maritime data standards — the same engine should brief a hospital shift as easily as a ship's crew. Test the briefing format with experienced operators for clarity, trust and adoption. Why we suggest this Rotating crews lose institutional knowledge at every handover. Compressed, AI-generated briefings tailored to the specific equipment a new crew is taking over solve a problem that exists in any shift-rotation industry — vessels, process plants, hospitals, security operations. Underexplored as a product area. *Project will use AI-generated synthetic operational histories; anonymised real handover/incident report examples from the partner serve as a reference for structure and content.*
Apply by 01 Nov
Jyväskylä, Oulu, Prague
Healing the Planet
The Challenge Industrial service providers do clever technical work to make their customers' operations more efficient — saving fuel, reducing emissions, extending equipment life. But the customer in many cases is a corporate sustainability office or a shipping company's investor relations team. They don't speak in compression ratios and exhaust gas temperatures; they speak in CO2 tonnes, ESG ratings and regulatory compliance. Today, translating engineering wins into customer-facing sustainability narratives is a slow, manual, expensive job. Can AI do it automatically and credibly? Mission Build a system that takes engineering-level efficiency improvements (fuel saved, emissions reduced, equipment life extended) and generates customer-facing narratives at multiple audiences: ESG report contribution, investor relations talking points, regulatory compliance evidence. Validate the narratives for accuracy with engineers and for resonance with sustainability professionals. Why we suggest this The translation layer between engineering metrics and customer-facing sustainability narratives is a manual cottage industry across the industrial sector. Decarbonisation services and ESG reporting are fast-growing revenue areas; the supporting communications infrastructure is not. Strong cross-portfolio applicability across any B2B sustainability services business. *Project will use AI-generated synthetic engineering improvement data and publicly available ESG reporting frameworks.*
Apply by 01 Nov
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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