Fraunhofer has created a new group -- the Fraunhofer Group for Innovation Research -- with the aim of strengthening its future role in research, technology, and innovation policy dialogue with industry, politics, and society.
The Center for Virtual Engineering ZVE, headquarters of the Fraunhofer IAO, founding member of the new alliance. Image courtesy of Fraunhofer.The new group started work on 1 July and initially constitutes four research institutes with over 500 employees: the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO in Stuttgart, Germany; the Fraunhofer Center for International Management and Knowledge Economy IMW in Leipzig, Germany; the Fraunhofer Institute for Technological Trend Analysis INT in Euskirchen, Germany; and the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI in Karlsruhe, Germany.
The group sees itself as a platform for addressing system-relevant technological issues in the future and will support an aspect of the newly launched Research Fab Microelectronics Germany (FMD). The project, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), has furnished 11 Fraunhofer and two Leibniz Institutes with state-of-the-art equipment and systems costing around 350 million euros.
The Fraunhofer Group for Innovation Research brings the total number of Fraunhofer groups to eight -- the other groups deal with information and communication technology, life sciences, light and surfaces, microelectronics, production, defense and security research, and materials and components.
