Fraunhofer ICT Group

After a three-year break, more than 200 participants from 26 countries met again at the 9th FOKUS Media Web Symposium (MWS) in Berlin on June 21 and 22. Under the motto "And still diving deeper", the experts discussed topics such as Internet Delivered Media, 5G Media, streaming technologies, artificial intelligence, standardization, and market development.

Keeping things constantly connected to the internet costs a lot of energy. Even small IoT nodes run out of battery in just a few weeks. All of this is changing with the RFicient® chip, developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS, which saves power consumption by up to 99 percent. This development is a big step forward for the Internet of Things and has secured the Joseph-von-Fraunhofer Prize for the developer team.  

The AIOLOS project (Artificial Intelligence Tools for Outbreak Detection and Response) has received approval from the French and German governments to develop a digital platform designed to allow for early detection of new respiratory pathogens epidemics, monitor their spread and inform decisions on appropriate counter measures. AIOLOS will provide insights for private and public decision-making in a web-based dashboard, which leverages real-time data from multiple data sources, advanced artificial intelligence (AI), and predictive modeling.  

In January 2022, the newly founded Fraunhofer Center for Security of Socio-Technical Systems SIRIOS in Berlin started operations. In comprehensive research and development projects, it bundles the competencies of four Fraunhofer institutes. The aim is to set up a research, test and training environment for security authorities, rescue services and operators of critical infrastructure over the next four years. There, complex security scenarios can be simulated, experienced virtually and tested in real life. The direct participation of citizens should also be made possible, e.g. by assessing the subjective sense of security.

In FAIR Data Spaces, the federated secure data infrastructure Gaia-X and the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) are developing a shared cloud-based data space for industry and research. The FAIR principles will be taken into account, meaning that the data will be shared in a findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable manner (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable). The FAIR Data Spaces project is scheduled to run for three years and is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

Pablo Wilke Berenguer, research associate at the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute HHI, completed his dissertation on "Physical Layer Reliability Aspects in Industrial Optical Wireless Communication" at the Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin) with the final mark summa cum laude, in June 2019.

Criminals have been finding weaknesses in biometric photos for some time now. “Face morphing”, as it is called, plays not least into the hands of human smugglers. Fraunhofer IGD technology is helping uncover forged documents and make IDs more forgery-proof.