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Imagine a city where every rooftop generates electricity, every battery communicates seamlessly with the grid, and algorithms make split-second decisions on how energy is distributed most efficiently. A digital neural system made of data spaces, AI, and cyber resilience that enables net-zero and affordable and secure energy supply – and every citizen and every company will become part of it. The digitalization of energy systems is one of the strategic research and development roadmaps within the Fraunhofer ICT Group. How we aim to lay the digital foundation for the energy networks of the future is explained by Professor Martin Braun.

With the Franco-German AI Executives’ Dialogue, Germany and France are sending a strong signal in support of a sovereign and competitive European ecosystem for artificial intelligence. Fraunhofer is a founding member of the initiative, and the Fraunhofer ICT Group serves as a core partner in organizing the overarching German-French dialogues and industry-specific AI workshops that took place in fall 2025. The initiative kicked off in January 2025 with a plenary dialogue at the French Embassy in Berlin. The focus was on taking stock of the situation: "Where does Europe stand in AI – and what levers must be activated now?"

The Innovation Award, granted by the Academy of Television Arts & Science (ATAS) in North Hollywood, will be presented on October 14, 2025, to Prof. Dr. Siegfried Fößel, Head of the Moving Picture Technologies Department at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS. The award recognizes the development of JPEG XS and the implementation of the video codec in products for forward-looking workflows in the media industry.

The Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied and Integrated Security AISEC, Prof. Dr. Claudia Eckert, will succeed Jan Wörner, who has led the German National Academy of Science and Engineering acatech for four years, on July 1, 2025. She will take over from Co-President Thomas Weber.

Worldwide, we are currently experiencing a phase of massive investments in artificial intelligence: The United States are forging ahead with its 500 billion dollar “Stargate” program and China has presented “DeepSeek”, a model that can possibly be trained much faster and more efficiently than comparable algorithms. More than once in recent weeks, the question has been asked where Germany and Europe stand in this technology, which is immanent for the digital transformation.

We once opened our Twitter channel in order to have a way of reaching our audience from the worlds of research, industry, politics and anyone else interested in innovation with handy information and links to exciting content. This is no longer possible for us. We have therefore decided to leave X and put our energy into other, more rewarding platforms.

The partners of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK) project OpenGPT-X have presented the large language model “Teuken-7B”, a powerful, multimedia open-source solution for generative AI applications. Teuken-7B is now available worldwide and provides a promising alternative for scientists and companies looking for commercially viable language models.

Karlheinz Brandenburg turned 70 in June of this year. With his work – and his team at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS in Erlangen - he is responsible for one of the greatest research successes in German history: his team developed the mp3 music format, which changed the way music is listened to and distributed forever.

Since June 1, 2024, Professor Sanaz Mostaghim has been the new Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Transportation and Infrastructure Systems IVI. In her position, she works together with the long-standing institute director Professor Matthias Klingner, who will remain in charge until the end of the year.

For our new episode of "Fraunhofer Innovisions: Nachgeforscht" we spoke to Philipp Terhörst. Philipp conducts research into biometrics and facial recognition methods based on artificial intelligence and provides information about facial representations, hard and soft biometric data, their bias and privacy concerns.