SAP shepherds 40 PhDs through its HANA Campus as it steps up AI research

SAP has lifted the lid on the work that PhD students have been undertaking at the company’s HANA Campus.

To date, the campus has seen 40 PhD students pass through its doors, working on research projects based on SAP’s software. Software such as HANA, SAP BTP (Business Technology Platform) and SAP BDC (Business Data Cloud).

The HANA Campus was established over 20 years ago at the company’s headquarters in the German town of Walldorf. Most students who have carried out their doctoral research at the HANA Campus have come from universities within the country, according to SAP.

While pursuing their PhDs, students don’t have to teach. Instead, they work on projects chosen and financed by the software giant, with access to its development teams and test environments. They’re also encouraged and funded to take part in local conferences, including the SIGMOD/PODS International Conference on Management of Data.

According to SAP, it established the practice of PhD students joining SAP in-house after the company found a knowledge gap around the technologies that would later go on to form part of HANA. SAP then worked with the Technical University of Dresden’s Professor Wolfgang Lehner to bring the university’s students to work on research needs within SAP, to help bridge that gap. 

Two more PhD students are expected to join the campus this year and, according SAP, most of those who complete their PhDs at SAP will carry on working for the company after they graduate.

TechFinitive knows of similar schemes at IBM Research’s Zurich-based labs, with its students drawn from universities such as ETH Zurich.

Update on SAP

In its latest set of financial results, which covered the second financial quarter of 2025, SAP made €85 million from its Infrastructure-as-a-service products, with the majority of revenue attributed to HANA. The in-memory database went live in 2010.

Alongside the PhD students at the HANA Campus, SAP has been furthering its research interests with investments at other institutions.

Earlier this year, a $2 million donation from the software company allowed the University of California, Irvine to establish the Hasso Plattner Endowed Chair in artificial intelligence, a position named after SAP’s Co-Founder.

Last year, SAP also announced a collaboration with the University of California, Berkeley for research centred on AI.

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