2019

Since 1 December 2019, the former Fraunhofer Institute for Embedded Systems ESK has been known as the Fraunhofer Institute for Cognitive Systems IKS. With the renaming and the associated reorientation, the institute intends to conduct application-oriented research into reliable software engineering for safety-critical applications in the automotive and industrial 4.0 sectors. The aim is to secure artificial intelligence in such a way that it can also be used without hesitation in autonomous systems.

At which point does a trend technology actually deserve to be given its own strategy by the federal government? Are cryptocurrencies really the main application area of blockchains? Are blockchain users environmental sinners? Which processes do I have to break up if I as a company want to switch to blockchains and smart contracts? And when will the standardization and legal framework come? On November 5th, the Fraunhofer Blockchain Technology Day – organized by the Fraunhofer ICT Group in cooperation with the Federation of German Industries (BDI) – provided answers.

This year's presentation of the ICT Dissertation Awards of the Fraunhofer Group for IUK Technology was a premiere: For the first time, the jury found two works worthy of first prize.

The German Informatics Society (Gesellschaft für Informatik) has selected ten influential minds from the German history of artificial intelligence (AI). In the "Science Year 2019 – Artificial Intelligence" proclaimed by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the jury selected ten outstanding scientists who have a significant influence on AI in Germany. Prof. Dr. Stefan Wrobel, Deputy Chair of the Fraunhofer ICT and Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems IAIS in Sankt Augustin, was selected as an expert in the field of machine learning.

hub.berlin is turning into a fully-fledged digital trade fair. After the cancellation of CEBIT, the business festival of digitization in Berlin, held for the first time on two days, is likely to become the new marketplace for innovative solutions in A.I., Big Data, Blockchain and algorithms. Fraunhofer will therefore be consistently present with a 60 qm corporate booth in 2019.

Driven by our spirit of research, we invent the world of tomorrow. And the day after tomorrow.

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.

This year's edition of the New Year's Reception, which was organized almost traditionally – for the second time in a row – jointly by the Fraunhofer ICT Group and the German Informatics Society (GI), was devoted to the topic "Trustworthy AI - Opportunities and Risks". Together with Björn Böhning, Secretary of State at the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, the heads of the two associations – Hannes Federrath as President of the GI and Dieter Fellner as Chairman of the Fraunhofer ICT Group – discussed the effects of digitization and innovations in artificial intelligence on the world of work.