The annual Fraunhofer Symposium "Netzwert", held in Munich, is the largest internal networking event for all Fraunhofer scientists. Especially in its anniversary year, this central Fraunhofer event is the ideal place to award the Hugo Geiger Prize to outstanding, application-oriented doctoral theses prepared in close cooperation with a Fraunhofer Institute in cooperation with the Free State of Bavaria. The prize is named after State Secretary Hugo Geiger, patron of the founding meeting of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft on March 26, 1949. Three prizes are awarded, endowed with 5,000, 3,000 and 2,000 euros. The submissions will be judged by a jury made up of representatives from research and development and industry. The assessment criteria are scientific quality, economic relevance, novelty and interdisciplinarity of the approaches.

Two prize winners came from the Fraunhofer ICT Group in this year's edition. First prize went to Dr. Max Limper from the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research IGD, who developed a new data standard (SRC) and a streaming method for 3D data as part of his dissertation.

The second prize went to Dr. Alpha Tom Kodamullil from Fraunhofer SCAI, who in her dissertation demonstrated that the pharmaceutical industry in Alzheimer's research has so far concentrated only on a small part of possible disease mechanisms. To this end, she analysed innovation strategies of the pharmaceutical industry using text mining methods.

In addition, the 5000 Euro Fraunhofer Founder Prize was awarded, which is jointly awarded by the Fraunhofer Venture Group and the High-Tech Gründerfond. Here, too, a team from the Fraunhofer ICT Group was successful. Visometry GmbH, a spin-off of the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research IGD, convinced the jury of Fraunhofer and High-Tech Gründerfonds with its Augmented Reality Tracking solutions for the digital value chain within the framework of Industry 4.0. The special tracking technology enables precise and reliable object recognition and tracking even in low-light and highly dynamic environments.

The pictures of the award ceremony can be seen in the picture gallery above.

To the press release of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft on the Hugo Geiger Prize

To the press release of the Fraunhofer Venture Group on the Founders Award