2021

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOF, together with their partner, have been awarded the Lothar Späth Award for the development of metal-optical precision instruments. The high-performance telescope GALA is to be used in the ESA JUICE mission planned for 2023 to explore Jupiter's moon Ganymede. The award ceremony took place on November 19 in Stuttgart, Germany.

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VMAP, an international collaborative ITEA project led by Fraunhofer SCAI, has created a vendor-neutral standard for CAE data storage and transfer to enhance interoperability in virtual engineering workflows, which has already been adopted by a lot of tool providers. The VMAP Standard Community will be established to further disseminate the VMAP Standard and its development. Thanks to these outstanding outcomes, VMAP received the ITEA Award of Excellence for Standardisation.

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The "Fraunhofer Versatile Video Encoder " (VVenC) software developed by Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI) won first place at the "Best Open Source Project Awards". Award winners were announced during this year's IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo (ICME). VVenC is a fast and efficient encoder implementation of the video coding standard H.266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC) released last year. The VVenC open source project was realized by a research team from Fraunhofer HHI’s "Video Communication and Applications"department under the leadership of Adam Wieckowski.

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Prize-winning semiconductor technology: The Fraunhofer Institutes IAF and IIS together with the University of Freiburg/INATECH win second place with their joint project “EdgeLimit – Evaluation of Power Electronics in Modern Edge Cloud Systems” in the innovation competition “Electronics for Energy-Saving Information and Communications Technology” launched by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The project consortium is funded by the BMBF to realize their solution for energy-saving mobile radio base stations.

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The International Institute for FRP (fiber-reinforced polymer) in Construction (IIFC) has honored Professor Libo Yan, PhD, with the IIFC Distinguished Young Researcher Award 2021. The Senior Scientist at the Fraunhofer WKI has received the award for his contributions to the application of FRP composites to civil infrastructure, and especially for the promotion of natural FRP composites.

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Digital processes facilitate much more rapid and efficient planning and construction of urban infrastructure. Fraunhofer IPM has developed a tool which automatically interprets 3D environmental data using artificial intelligence methods to generate smart planning maps. Baden-Württemberg Minister of Economic Affairs, Dr. Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut, has crowned the team of researchers “AI Champions Baden-Württemberg” for their innovative development.

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The scientific paper “Infrastructure for data processing in large-scale interconnected sensor networks”, written by Prof. Dr. Karl Aberer (EPFL), Prof. Dr. Manfred Hauswirth (Director Fraunhofer FOKUS and Chair for “Open Distributed Systems” TU Berlin) and Dr. Ali Salehi (EPFL, now Teradata) will be awarded the Test-of-Time Award at the IEEE Mobile Data Management Conference on June 18th.

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Either the battery gives up or else the latest model is simply too tempting: smartphones and other mobile end devices tend to have a short product service life and thus create a substantial environmental burden. As part of the sustainablySMART project, a team of researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration (IZM) have modeled the available sustainable alternatives, and how approaches from the recycling economy can be best applied to consumer goods. Their comprehensive approach has now won them the award for outstanding collaborative research at the European level and the associated scientific communication of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

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Chronic heart failure, a condition suffered by more than two million people in Germany alone, to date can only be treated to a limited extent. Today, Prof. Thomas Thum, Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Toxicology and Experimental Medicine ITEM and Head of the Institute for Molecular and Translational Therapy Strategies (IMTTS) at the Hannover Medical School (MHH), has been awarded the Paul Martini Prize for the identification and further development of novel RNA-based therapies for chronic heart failure. The prize is awarded each year by the Paul Martini Foundation, Berlin, for outstanding achievements in the field of clinical pharmacology and is worth 50,000 euros. "Professor Thum and his team have identified a variety of new therapeutic targets, have developed novel therapies based on these and have now tested one of these RNA therapeutics in patients for the first time. This gives hope for treatment progress and is an excellent example of translation from bench to bedside,” Prof. Dr. Stefan Endres of the University of Munich paid tribute to the awardee on behalf of the six-member jury.

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The Fraunhofer Institute for Microstructure of Materials and Systems IMWS in Halle (Saale) has been honored twice this year in the "Most Innovative Projects in Applied Research" category at the Innovation Award of the State of Saxony-Anhalt. A team led by Prof. Mario Beiner received first place for the development of a biomimetic synthetic rubber, the use of which enables lower abrasion in tire applications. Second place goes to Dr Christian Schmelzer, Tobias Hedtke and Dr Marco Götze, who developed an innovative solution to process natural elastin into wound dressing materials.

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The Fraunhofer Institute for Microstructure of Materials and Systems IMWS in Halle (Saale) is among the most innovative companies and research institutions in Germany. That is the result of surveys conducted among industry and innovation specialists by the business magazine “Capital” in cooperation with the market research firm “Statista”. The Fraunhofer Center for Silicon Photovoltaics CSP is also in the ranking with the best rating.

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Dr. Haya Shulman wins first place in the 8th German IT Security Award, securing prize money of 100,000 euros. The prize is awarded by the Horst Görtz Foundation and is considered the most prestigious and highest endowed prize for IT security in Germany. The award winner works as a cybersecurity researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology SIT and the National Research Center for Applied Cybersecurity ATHENE in Darmstadt. She received the award for developing "Cache Test," a cybersecurity solution for protecting Internet infrastructures. The award was presented on Thursday during a virtual innovation conference in the presence of award founder Dr. Horst Görtz and the Hessian Minister for Digital Development and Strategy Prof. Dr. Kristina Sinemus, the patron of the award.

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Fraunhofer ITMP is pioneering the development of a new class of active substances in the PROXIDRUGS project together with seven regional partners, under the leadership of the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. The project has now been designated as a cluster for future by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and will be funded with up to 15 million euros.

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