Profile Topic Complex Interconnected Systems

Collaborative Research Projects

Collaborative research projects are projects in which scientists from different disciplines and often across universities work together to solve complex research questions and challenges that cannot be adequately addressed by a single discipline.

Current projects

Directors Prof. Michael Waidner
Duration since 2019
Website www.athene-center.de
Short description In the National Research Centre for Applied Cybersecurity, ATHENE (formerly CRISP), the TU Darmstadt with its profile topic Cybersecurity and Privacy, the University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt as well as the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology SIT and the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research IGD have joined forces to form Europe's largest alliance of research institutions in the field of cybersecurity. The approximately 450 scientists work on core issues of cybersecurity in society, business, and administration. They regularly advise business and public administration, provide assistance for new entrepreneurs and prepare expert reports for politics and business. ATHENE is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the state of Hesse.
Directors Prof. Matthias Hollick
Duration 1/2021 – 12/2024
Website https://www.emergencity.de/
Short description The research of the LOEWE Center emergenCITY aims to protect smart cities from disasters. For this they develop resilient infrastructures that save human lives. emergenCITY is organized as an interdisciplinary and multi-site cooperation led by Technische Universität Darmstadt, Universität Kassel, and Philipps-Universität Marburg as well as the Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance and the City of Darmstadt. The center partners with several other institutions from academia, industry, and public administration.
Directors Prof. Hans Schotten (Kaiserslautern)
Research partner at TU Darmstadt Prof. Anja Klein
Duration 1/2021 – 7/2025
Website https://www.open6ghub.de/
Short description Open6GHub develops a 6G vision for sovereign citizens in a hyper-connected world from 2030. The aim of the Open6GHub is to provide contributions to a global 6G harmonization process and standard in the European context. The project members consider German interests in terms of our societal needs (sustainability, climate protection, data protection, resilience, …) while maintaining the competitiveness of our companies and our technological sovereignty. Another interest is the position of Germany and Europe in the international competition for 6G. Open6GHub will contribute to the development of an overall 6G architecture, but also end-to-end solutions in the following, but not limited to, areas: advanced network topologies with highly agile organic networking, security and resilience, THz and photonic transmission methods, sensor functionalities in the network and their intelligent use, as well as processing and application-specific radio protocols.
Directors Prof. Ralf Steinmetz
Duration 2013 – 2025
Website www.maki.tu-darmstadt.de
Short description The Internet is growing with its tasks: more users, more applications, more data. At MAKI, researchers are working hard to improve the existing infrastructure of the Internet to make it fit for the future, to optimise user experience and to further its functionality. We look at communication systems to combine the underlying mechanisms from communication protocols to distribution systems efficiently. To this end, we use so-called “transition technology”.

Current Project Participation

Directors Prof. Jens Ivo Engels
Duration 10/2016 – 9/2025
Website https://www.kritis.tu-darmstadt.de/
Short description KRITIS is an interdisciplinary research training group dedicated to the study of critical infrastructures in cities. It has been in operation since October 2016 and is currently in its second funding phase, which will last until 2025. Here, historians, infrastructure and spatial planners, civil engineers, sociologists, electrical engineers, philosophers, political scientists, architects and computer scientists conduct research together. At the moment, the second cohort is working on their PhD theses.
Directors Prof. Petra Gehring
Duration since 11/2019
Website https://zevedi.de/
Short description The Centre Responsible Digitality (ZEVEDI) is a research network which actively reaches out into politics, society and the economy. It combines the scientific expertise of researchers based at Hessian universities in order to analyse the ethical and legal dimensions of digital transformation, thus contributing to shaping this transformation. ZEVEDI identifies and discusses responsibility as a crucial yet uncertain aspect of technological development and aims at making responsible digitality conceivable as well as practically feasible. ZEVEDI engages in research projects, promotes the transfer of scientific knowledge into society and the economy and provides research-based policy advice on the topic – for a digital transformation guided by a democratic and humane orientation.

LOEWE research cluster Cocoon

Directors Prof. Abdelhak Zoubir
Duration 2011 – 2014
Website https://proloewe.de/de/loewe-vorhaben/nach-themen/cocoon/
Short description “Cocoon” stands for “Cooperative Sensor Communication”: mobile phones, navigation devices, car keys – numerous devices send and receive signals wirelessly today. Cooperative sensor communication has the potential for many other services: for example in environmental protection, in medical care, in logistics and electromobility, in the provision of personalised information. The LOEWE focus Cocoon conducted basic research in the area of basic technologies and new network architectures. Building on the foundations of Cocoon, countless other research questions arose, for example how information and communication technology can network people and enable their cooperation in the event of a crisis, which were continued in the LOEWE priority NICER.

LOEWE research cluster NICER

Directors Prof. Matthias Hollick
Duration 2015 – 2018
Website https://www.nicer.tu-darmstadt.de
Short description Networked Infrastructureless Cooperation for Emergency Response (NICER) was a LOEWE priority program funded by the Hessian Ministry of Science and the Arts (HMWK). NICER researched how infrastructureless information and communication technology can network people in the event of a crisis and thus enable cooperation to manage the crisis.