News

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.

The Green ICT Award will be conferred for the second time in 2024 to inspire young researchers for microelectronics and especially for Green ICT. The student award was initiated by the Research Fab Microelectronics Germany, which aims to answer the questions of tomorrow with today's research activities in the field of microelectronics and attaches particular importance to the sustainable promotion of future talents. The prize rewards outstanding student theses in the field of resource-efficient information and communication technology. The winner will receive EUR 2,500 in prize money.

CEPIS DiversIT Charter, together with the German Informatics Society, the Fraunhofer ICT Group, and #SheTransformsIT, are organising a conference to try to find solutions to this lack of meaningful progress in retaining female tech talent. This free one-day conference, titled, ‘Stay in tech! – Policies and practices for attracting and retaining female tech talent’, aims to help companies overcome these challenges and identify ways to retain valuable colleagues.

Today we received the sad news that the former Chairman of the Fraunhofer ICT Group, Prof. Dr. Matthias Jarke, passed away on March 21, 2024.

Is your company facing a technological challenge? Does your team need support with innovation and transformation?

In Germany, we have no problems developing innovations. But we also have too many reasons not to bring them to the market... At Transform 2024, solution seekers meet solution providers. And Fraunhofer has many solutions to offer. See for yourself on March 6 and 7, 2024 at STATION Berlin.

Die preisgekrönten Dissertationen des ICT Dissertation Awards im Jahr 2023. drehen sich rund um das Thema »Maschinelles Lernen«, das aus verschiedenen Richtungen und Anwendungsdomänen heraus untersucht wird. Die Gewinner kommen aus den Fraunhofer-Instituten für Angewandte Informationstechnik FIT, für Angewandte und Integrierte Sicherheit AISEC sowie für Digitale Medientechnologie IDMT.

Anita Schöbel, Leiterin des Fraunhofer-Instituts für Techno- und Wirtschaftsmathematik ITWM, ist mit dem Wissenschaftspreis der Gesellschaft für Operations Research ausgezeichnet worden. Sie erhielt den Preis Ende August 2023 für ihr Lebenswerk.

For two days, hub.berlin will once again be all about tech innovations that are shaping our future. CEOs, leading minds in research, political decision-makers and industry experts will be in attendance. At hub.berlin, the topics that shape our time - and the future - will be discussed in a unique atmosphere. In recent years, hub.berlin has made a name for itself as a trendy place for networking and new beginnings.

The Fraunhofer ICT Group is participating at re:publica Berlin for the first time this year. The re:publica is the festival for the digital society and thus the largest conference of its kind in Europe. The participants of re:publica form a diverse cross-section of digital society, which include professionals from research, politics, economics, hacker culture, NGOs, media and marketing, as well as bloggers, activists, artists and social media experts.

Boris Otto has been appointed as the new chairman of the Fraunhofer ICT Group. As of January 1, 2022, he will succeed Dieter Fellner, whose six-year term as chairman of the Group will end in December 2021.

Manfred Hauswirth (Director Fraunhofer FOKUS), Karl Aberer (EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland) and Ali Salehi (Teradata) have won the "MDM Test of Time Award 2021". They received the award at the 22nd IEEE Mobile Data Management Conference for their 2007 paper "Infrastructure for data processing in large-scale interconnected sensor networks".

The expectations are gigantic, the stakes are high: quantum physics is reaching the reality of life. When quantum technologies come into use, the possibilities are hardly foreseeable yet, so enormous is the potential. The question is: When and how will quantum technologies come into use? The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft is tracking down the answers in countless projects and initiatives. In May 2021, the branch association Bitkom will host the first Quantum Summit. And, of course, Fraunhofer will be there.

The employees of Fraunhofer demonstrate research achievements of excellent quality. They contribute to Fraunhofer's leading position in research in Europe. Since 2015, the Fraunhofer ICT Dissertation Award has been presented annually at Group level. Here, the jury awards outstanding dissertations from the Fraunhofer institutes that deal with highly innovative developments and technologies in computer science, mathematics or related fields.

The "Fraunhofer Competence Network Quantum Computing" drives application-oriented research in the field of quantum computing. The heart of the network is an open quantum computing research platform around an "IBM Q System One" installed by IBM in Ehningen, which can be used exclusively by the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and its partners from research and industry.

From October 26-29, 2020, we will address four topics of high relevance to the innovative strength of Germany and Europe: Health. Digital economy. Plant and mechanical engineering. Mobility. Follow interesting presentations on current technology highlights and significant solutions, visit our exhibitors virtually and exchange ideas with Fraunhofer experts in live chats. In all four subject areas we focus on achieving a global competitive advantage with innovations and holistic solutions. Our goal is to ensure the technological sovereignty and resilience of the German and European economy. We remain a driving force even in crises and provide answers to the question of what makes a society more resilient. You can benefit from our know-how and our demand-, market-, technology- and industry-oriented research.

Since its launch in 2015, the EU-funded S+T+ARTS project has advanced the integration of artistic activity and innovation. The Fraunhofer IUK Group was an important partner in the S+T+ARTS Residencies subprogram, which was set up to support and finance artist residencies with technology partners. On July 2, 2020, the program was concluded at the conference "ART CREATES INDUSTRY: Empathic AI - Art shapes Industry".

At their New Year's Reception under the heading "Artificial Intelligence in Germany - Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow", the Fraunhofer ICT Group and the German Informatics Society honored ten influential figures in German AI history.