Press

On 26 October 2017, Gerd Höfner will chair his first Advisory Board meeting at the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering IESE in Kaiserslautern. The Siemens manager took over as chairman in March 2017, after being a member of the Advisory Board for three years.

Effective immediately, the institute director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering IESE and holder of the software engineering chair at the University of Kaiserslautern, Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Dieter Rombach, will take over the role of spokesman of the Software-Cluster, which is already the largest software cluster in Europe today (www.software-cluster.com).

The project EPICSAVE is one of the “Landmarks 2017”. The project is about the development, implementation, and testing of digital media in vocational training in the area of emergency medicine. Its aim is to develop a new training approach for teaching paramedics competencies for handling rare critical emergencies. The interdisciplinary consortium consisting of emergency physicians, experts in medical didactics, Virtual Reality (VR) und Serious Game specialists also includes Fraunhofer IESE from Kaiserslautern. Fraunhofer IESE is responsible for the medical didactics concept, the medical contents, and the evaluation of the project. “Germany – Land of Ideas” is a joint initiative of the German federal government and the German economy, represented by BDI.

“Smart networking creates unlimited opportunities in the digital world, but the individual user does not want to be continuously screened either. This is why we need a good balance between data protection and data usage in order to develop projects such as the Digital Villages for rural areas”, demanded Representative Heike Raab at the #DigitalBreakfast of the State’s Permanent Representation in Berlin. Together with Prof. Peter Liggesmeyer, Executive Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering IESE and professor for Software Engineering at the University of Kaiserslautern, she discussed the digital transformation in Germany using Rhineland-Palatinate as an example.

On 8 June 2017, the Rhineland-Palatinate Interior Minister Roger Lewentz met with Prof. Peter Liggesmeyer, Executive Director of Fraunhofer IESE. On the premises of the institute in Kaiserslautern, the Interior Minister found out more about data usage control with IND²UCE and about the second project phase of “Digital Villages 2.0”, for which he had already personally presented the funding decisions to Fraunhofer IESE and the participating municipalities on 24 April 2017.

On 30 May 2017, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft presented a team from the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering IESE, Kaiserslautern, with the Joseph-von-Fraunhofer Prize for Human-Centered Technology. The researchers received this award for excellent scientific research at the annual conference in Dresden for their project SUSI TD. With SUSI TD (Safety and Support for Senior Citizens through the Integration of Technology and Services), the researchers Rolf van Lengen, Mario Schmitt, and Cornelius Moucha together with their partners Anne Gebert from the German Institute for Applied Care Research [Deutsches Institut für angewandte Pflegeforschung e.V. (DIP)], and Bernd Klein from CIBEK GmbH developed a system that enables elderly people to live longer independent lives in their own homes.

Following today’s presentation of the funding decisions by the Interior Minister of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate, Roger Lewentz, the project “Digital Villages” enters the second round. The project demonstrates how innovative solutions can be used in a sensible way to use the opportunities offered by digitization in rural areas as well. The “Digital Villages” are a joint project of the Ministry of the Interior and for Sport, of the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering IESE, Kaiserslautern, of the Rhineland-Palatinate Development Agency, and of the Rhineland-Palatinate municipalities Betzdorf-Gebhardshain, Eisenberg, and Göllheim.