Human potential for technology and innovation: attracting the next generation

Attracting and engaging human talent early is a key success factor to meet the challenge of creating sustainable technology and infrastructure systems of the future. The field of transport is a key infrastructure which increasingly incorporates technology-enabled services to provide as intelligent transport systems. Yet, these emerging technology fields are rather abstract, lack concrete professional profiles as well as role models and are thus only vaguely associated with being attractive career choices by young people. Empirical evidence shows that attracting young talents to science and technology (S&T) is a complex task and many practical approaches often fail due to simplistic assumptions about factors affecting young people´s interest, motivation and career choice. This paper will thus present an integrated approach for attracting young talents to the field of intelligent transport systems (ITS) based on the conceptual model which covers consecutive levels - or goals - of science learning: awareness, literacy, involvement and choice. A series of workshops with experts from science education and science communication as well as research and technological innovation offered experience-based insights on the strengths and weaknesses of state-of-theart outreach measures. The analysis showed that a differentiated set of measures needs to be employed to create sustainable interest and motivation in a technology career. In order to maximize the impact, a coherent set of measures and instruments thus needs to be developed at the interface of science, technology and education which systematically covers all levels of education - from kindergarten to graduation.