Press / Newsroom

Seaweed may not seem like much, but it has a lot to offer. It could play a vital role in providing food for the growing global popula-tion. Algae have been producing oxygen for 3.5 billion years. Every second oxygen molecule that we inhale originates from them. These photosynthesizing miracle workers could help supply us with food in the future.

In this interview, Bundestag President Bärbel Bas is brimming with confidence – not least because, with Fraunhofer, she sees Germany as well-positioned in terms of applied research.

The risks are greater than ever before − how can we secure our power supply and compensate for faults? Fraunhofer scientists believe the answer lies in the digital transformation of the energy system and innovative technologies.

Resilience, defense capability and increased protection for civilians and against cyberattacks have become topics of public debate almost overnight. Fraunhofer is working on intelligent solutions – including measures for the best possible deployment of the 100 billion euros in special funding awarded to the German armed forces.

Chemical seed treatment rids seeds of fungi, viruses and bacteria. However, this comes at a high cost: The active agents used can also have harmful effects for farmers, the soil and the environment. On the other hand, electrons can be used to treat seeds in an environmentally friendly, sustainable and economical way — a method which helped the E-VITA GmbH start-up, a joint venture of the Fraunhofer Institute for Organic Electronics, Electron Beam and Plasma Technology FEP and Ceravis AG, to win the Fraunhofer Founder Award for 2021.

Ensuring that power plants operate without breaking down and that vehicles run energy-efficiently ultimately depends on just a few atoms. A virtual ma-terial probe makes it possible to see, and therefore control, tribological processes at the atomic level. A team of researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials IWM is being awarded the Stifterverband Science Prize 2022 for this development.

“Qualitative” and “quantitative” may be just a couple of letters apart, but the difference is huge. When it comes to fluorescence measurement technology, for example, it has so far been used almost exclusively for qualitative anal-yses. Now, for the first time, a team of researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Physical Measurement Techniques IPM is successfully using the method to obtain quantitative measurements with a high local resolution, and is receiv-ing the Joseph von Fraunhofer Prize in recognition of this achievement.

Keeping things constantly connected to the internet costs energy — a lot of energy. Even small Internet-of-Things nodes run out of battery entirely 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 consump-tion by up to 99 percent. This development is a big step forward for the Inter-net of Things and has secured the Joseph von Fraunhofer Prize for the devel-oper team.

New hope in the fight against cancer: A research team at the Fraunhofer Insti-tute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOF has worked closely with Varian Medical Systems (Fraunhofer IOF’s industrial partner) to develop a novel system for tumor radiotherapy, which improves cancer patients’ chances of recovery. The scientists behind the project were awarded the Joseph von Fraunhofer Prize for the overall system, which is ready for production.

Interview with Cem Özdemir, German Federal Minister for Food and Agriculture. He sees agricultural policy as propping up an “exploitative system” and strongly believes that “things can’t go on as they are.” Germany’s new agriculture minister Cem Özdemir talks to us about what he wants to improve – and how Fraunhofer technology is helping him achieving these goals.