Jens Rockel

Jens Rockel holds a degree in economics and has been working for Fraunhofer since 2012, initially as a research fellow in the Knowledge and Technology Transfer Department at the Fraunhofer Centre for International Management and Knowledge Economy (IMW) in Leipzig. Since 2015, he has been Deputy Head of the Crowd Innovation Unit, which has been part of Fraunhofer ISI location in Leipzig since 1 January 2025. Prior to this, he studied economics at the Leipzig University, specializing in public finance and banking, and graduated in 2011. In addition to his academic and practice-oriented work in this field, his responsibilities at Fraunhofer IMW included serving as project manager for the coordination of the research project "Crowdfunding and Credit Financing: A Sustainable Co-Financing Model?”,  the aim of which was to investigate the potential, institutional framework conditions and specific co-financing concepts for the use of crowdfunding in the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe. As a project manager, he is currently involved in the “Crowd Innovation” innovation project, funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space, which develops and tests crowd-based investment instruments to enable society to participate in innovation projects in business, research and society. As a qualified banker and through his work at the Technology Start-up Fund Saxony (TGFS), Jens Rockel also has several years’ professional experience in the