Archive: News of Technical University of Darmstadt

Determined and combative – TU alumnus Michael Fitzke in portrait

Michael Fitzke is a fighter. With lots of motivation and firm determination he worked for his enrolment in Mathematics at TU Darmstadt; after all, his parents had not gone to university, and he had to take the route via an Advanced Vocational Certificate of Education. “The first two semesters were tough,” the alumnus says, “but after that, I really enjoyed it.” His sense of purpose has led him to his present leadership position with the US corporation Mars. As a specialist for Machine Learning and Big Data analysis, Fitzke works on developing AI systems in veterinary medicine with the objective to enable vets to make faster and more precise diagnoses in cases of cancer, coronary diseases, or joint problems in pets.

The University Assembly elects new Vice Presidents

A new Executive Board – including three newly elected members and one reappointed member – will take up its duties on 1 January 2023. The candidates proposed by TU President Professor Tanja Brühl were thus elected by the University Assembly.

PhD network MetRaZymes receives funding as Marie Skłodowska-Curie action

TU Darmstadt coordinates the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Network “Metal-Containing Radical Enzymes – MetRaZymes” under the leadership of Professor Nico Bruns from the Department of Chemistry. The project, funded by the EU, Switzerland and the UK with more than three million euros, will enable 13 PhD students to develop novel enzymes as environmentally friendly and efficient catalysts for radical reactions to produce drugs, polymers and other chemical compounds.

The two vice-presidents are the rectors of two Unite! partner universities, Ilkka Niemelä from Aalto University and Daniel Crespo from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya · BarcelonaTech.

Based on the feedback from the European Commission, Unite! has decided to strengthen its leadership and establish two new Vice President positions. President Ilkka Niemelä from Aalto University and Rector Daniel Crespo from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya were elected for these positions by the Academic Forum of Unite! on 29 November, 2022.

Third Alexander von Humboldt Professorship for TU Darmstadt – Dr Marcus Rohrbach awarded

The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation has once again granted TU Darmstadt a Humboldt Professorship, Germany’s most highly endowed research award. The winner Dr Marcus Rohrbach – an expert in multimodal learning who was nominated by TU now has the chance to conduct research as a Humboldt Professor of Artificial Intelligence (AI) at the TU and at the Hessian Centre for Artificial Intelligence (hessian.AI). He reinforces a field of research in which the Technical University of Darmstadt plays a leading international role.

ERC Starting Grant for TU project MECERDIS by materials scientist Dr Xufei Fang

The MECERDIS research project at the Technical University of Darmstadt is awarded an ERC Starting Grant by the European Research Council. Dr Xufei Fang's work is being funded with around 1.5 million euros. The TU materials scientist is researching improved ceramic materials that will enable new applications.

Unite! has closed its pilot phase to launch the new Erasmus + proposal for the next four years, to implement the European university of innovation, technology and engineering

From 1 to 3 November, the Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) hosted the first Unite! Steering Committee since the EU announced the decision to fund the alliance for another four years in the Erasmus+ program. The Unite! Steering Committee, made up of the Unite! Secretariat, the Key Liaison Officers from each partner university, the Work Package Leaders of the new proposal and the Students in Unite! for Representation and Empowerment (SURE!), discussed in detail the new goals and projects of this new phase.

Pieter Christiaan Doornenbal stay at the Institut für Kernphysik

Dr Pieter Doornenbal, RIKEN Nishina Center, Japan, received a Friedrich Wilhem Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt foundation. The prize consists a research fellowship and the awardees can choose an host institution in Germany for collaborations during stays from few months to a year. Dr Doornenbal selected TU Darmstadt.

From research to practice: PRORETA 5 cooperation successfully concluded

Developing building blocks for automated urban driving to improve road safety in the city was the aim of the PRORETA 5 project that has now been brought to a successful conclusion. This also marked the end of the 20-year interdisciplinary research cooperation between Continental, the Technical University of Darmstadt, the University of Bremen, and the Technical University of Iaşi in Romania.

TU Darmstadt alumni Klaus Bollinger and Manfred Grohmann have built an international engineering company with 400 employees worldwide

Not only did they study Civil Engineering at TU Darmstadt together and share an apartment, but 40 years ago, they also founded what has grown into one of the most renowned international engineering companies, with 17 local offices worldwide: Klaus Bollinger and Manfred Grohmann. This October 50 years ago, the two engineers started their course of studies at what was then “Technische Hochschule Darmstadt”. Today – shortly before their retirement – they can look back on a professional career encompassing famous buildings like the European Central Bank, the Louvre in Lens, and the subterranean Garden Halls of the Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main; complemented by a rich vita as university professors.

Visit the Unite! virtual fair for students

Are you interested in increasing your international network? Would you like to study at other European universities as well and get to know local cultures? Or would you like to work out solutions to grand societal challenges together with other students around Europe? Join the Unite! Virtual Fair and check the offers for students created by the nine universities in the European university network Unite! that TU Darmstadt is a part of. Time: Wednesday, November 9, 2022 at 16-18 CET Location: Spatial Chat, link will be sent to registered participants

First cooperation project between Unite! and EPICUR

The University Partnership for Acceleration of European Universities (aUPaEu) project has received 3.4 million funding from the European Commission in the framework of the European Research Area call (HORIZON-WIDERA-2022-ERA-01) for the integration and implementation of acceleration services and will start in January 2023

Joint project PUMA supports the energy transition

Powerful magnets can be used for effective cooling, heat and power generation. They make a decisive contribution to the energy transition. A consortium led by the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE) is therefore researching new magnetic materials that are efficient and environmentally compatible. Partners in the PUMA project are the Technical University of Darmstadt and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR). The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research is funding PUMA with two million euros for four years starting in October.

TU Graz and Wroclaw Tech are now official Unite! partners

On September 20th, during the VI Unite! Dialogue hosted by Politecnico di Torino. Prof. Dr. Harald Kainz, Rector of the Graz University of Technology, and Prof. Dr. Arkadiusz Wójs, President of the Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, signed the Unite! Charter confirming the full inclusion of both universities to the Unite! alliance. The signature act has taken place during the Unite! Governing Platform in the presence of Unite!'s president Tanja Brühl and all the rectors/presidents of the different Unite! partner universities.

International research team publishes universal framework in the journal Science

Novel materials are the key for our transition to a more sustainable economy. However, the search for and design of new materials matching specific technology requirements are time and cost-intensive. An international research team developed now a closed-loop active machine-learning framework that enhances the experimental efficiency in identifying new alloys with desired properties by orders of magnitude, saving time and costs.