Press

The BayernFunk app is a data-secure social media platform exclusively for Bavarian municipalities and counties. It enables citizens, municipalities, associations, fire departments, and other volunteers to exchange information. They can communicate and coordinate bundled information on neighborhood assistance, association activities, and events in one central platform. This promotes togetherness and strengthens the local community.

In the new ICON research project “LOPAAS” (Layers of Protection Architecture for Autonomous Systems), Fraunhofer IESE is collaborating with Fraunhofer IKS and the University of York in England in the Assuring Autonomy International Programme (AAIP) to develop an approach to assuring the safety of autonomous systems and, in particular, autonomous vehicles. The internal Fraunhofer funding program “ICON – International Cooperation and Networking” supports bilateral cooperation projects with internationally renowned universities and non-university research institutions. Over the next three years, 3 million euros will be available for the collaboration to bring about the necessary paradigm shift in safety engineering of autonomous systems.

In June 2021, the research project “SPELL” was launched. Funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy, it will run for three years.

Vienna/Austria, June 24, 2021 – Major tech and automotive industry players officially partner to develop state-of-the-art technology for autonomous vehicles. The partners and leaders in their domain include Arm, Audi together with CARIAD – the automotive software company of VW group, BASELABS, CoreAVI, DENSO, Five, the German Fraunhofer IESE, NXP, the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology and TTTech Auto. Under the umbrella of “The Autonomous”, the members of this first Working Group are committed to working towards a safe system architecture for self-driving vehicles. The goal of this collaboration is to lay the basis for safety standardization and pave the way for mass autonomous vehicle production.

Dr. Jörg Dörr became Professor of Digital Farming at Technische Universität Kaiserslautern (TUK) at the beginning of April. Among other things, Dörr will focus on the digital transformation in agriculture, research new technologies, and develop these in an application-oriented manner. The main objective will be to build digital agricultural ecosystems, with the focus on software and systems engineering: managing and administering data and supporting agricultural processes with automation technologies. In addition to holding the new Chair, which is part of the Department of Computer Science, Professor Dörr’s responsibilities as a member of the extended institute management of Fraunhofer IESE include the research program Smart Farming. The association Friends of Digital Farming made it possible to establish this Chair at TUK, which will be supported in the long term by the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and the state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

This year, the Computer Society of the international engineering association IEEE (Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers) will award one of the highest honors for professional lifetime achievement – the Harlan D. Mills Award 2021 – to Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Dieter Rombach, in recognition of his many years of sustained and impactful contributions and leadership in research, teaching, and technology transfer in the area of empirical software engineering. Prof. Rombach has been a Fellow of the IEEE Computer Society since 2003. The award has been given since 1999 and is one of the most prestigious awards in the field of computer science and information technology.