Actions, Awards, Events

The TUM-IAS has strengthened and ­expanded its portfolio with new ­­projects and programs in 2022.­ ­We congratulate our Fellows on ­prestigious prizes ­and awards.

“Philosopher in Residence” program

Thanks to the support of the TÜV SÜD Foundation, the TUM-IAS 2022 was able to initiate a new program that is unique in Germany ­– the “Philosopher in Residence” Fellowship.

It was launched against the backdrop that innovative research in natural sciences and technical disciplines raises numerous questions – of an internal nature, but also of societal scope. This requires deeper reflection and classification in the context of future-oriented social developments, not least under the aspect of sustainability and resilience. Philosophy has the possibility and the tools to meet these challenges and to shed light on them – especially from the point of view of responsibility towards people and nature. It promotes transdisciplinary discourse and makes fundamental contributions to making innovative scientific approaches effective in a democratic, inclusive and sustainable way in order to successfully and beneficially shape the upcoming transformations.

The new program is aimed at high‑­level ­international philosophers interested in ­philosophically engaging with and embedding the latest research and innovative ­approaches in the natural, engineering, life and health ­sciences. During the one-year Fellowship, ­a scientific project is carried out with ­a TUM Host in extended presence at the IAS.

Siemens funding for IAS Fellowships

Last year, the TUM-IAS was able to win over Siemens AG to once again fund six Hans Fischer (Senior) Fellowships with over ­­2.4 million euros. Over the next few years, international experts will work together with TUM professors in the area of the Industrial Metaverse, focusing on “Token Economics,” “Web3 Architecture,” “Digital Twin,” “Autono­mous Systems” and “Trustworthy Artificial ­Intelligence.” With the help of the funding from Siemens AG, TUM is thus strengthening its focus on digitalization, artificial ­intelligence and robotics, as well as computer simulation. In the industrial metaverse, technical plants, buildings, cities or even energy networks and transport systems and their functions can be simulated, including the behavior of operators and users. In this digital world, problems can be anticipated, ­errors found and processes improved without ­risking damage in the real world.

Cooperation with Nobel Sustainability Trust

The Nobel Sustainability Trust (NST) and TUM will jointly award three new prizes for international research and initiatives on sustainability. The prize money totalling 1.3 million ­Swedish kronor (currently approx. 120,000 euros) comes from the Nobel Sustainability Trust. The awards are given in three categories: for outstanding research and development in the fields of water and energy, and for leadership in implementing relevant sustainability projects. The award winners are selected by a jury of international experts and professors from TUM. The TUM-IAS is responsible for the entire selection process.

Hans Fischer Fellowship of the Georg Nemetschek Institute

Conceiving, designing and maintaining the built environment is one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century. The use of state-of-the-art computer technologies, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning offers completely new possibilities for ecologically and economically sustainable solutions. Thanks to a generous donation from the Nemetschek Innovation Foundation, TUM has founded the “TUM Georg Nemetschek Institute Artificial Intelligence for the Built World” to conduct research on this forward-looking technological focus. To this end, it also funds Fellowships at TUM-IAS with a corresponding thematic focus. Prof. Shioban Rockcastle is the first scientist to be appointed a Fellow in this new program in 2022. She is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Oregon, Director of the Baker Lighting Lab and co-founder of OCULIGHT dynamics, ­a company offering daylight design support to promote healthy indoor occupation.

TUM-IAS Fellowships of the Dieter Schwarz Foundation

The Dieter Schwarz Foundation (DSS) is ­increasing its long-term commitment to the ­further expansion of the TUM Campus ­Heilbronn. The expansion provides for ten additional professorships with a focus on data science and artificial intelligence. At the same time, it is establishing the new ­“Dieter Schwarz Fellowship” to attract ­excellent ­international professors to Heilbronn who will build a bridge to the TUM Campus Garching as Fellows of TUM-IAS. In addition, the ­“Dieter Schwarz Courageous Research Grant” will be established as an IAS Fellowship to promote courageous project ideas. In global competition, internationally outstanding scientists will be given the opportunity to carry out potential “High Risk - High Gain” ­research projects on the topics of digitalization and sustainability in collaboration with TUM. The first calls for proposals will be issued in 2023.

Fellowships for Ukrainian Scientists

Immediately after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, TUM launched an ad-hoc program for students and scientists. A Fellowship program was set up at TUM-IAS for established researchers, which awarded Fellowships for an initial six-month research stay at TUM. We were able to award ten of these Fellowships from March 2022 and also extend some of them until 2023. More

Carl von Linde Fellowships

The previous Carl von Linde Senior Fellowship of the TUM-IAS will in future be used more in terms of university strategy and has been awarded for the first time in its ­further ­developed form under the name Carl von Linde (CvL) Fellowship. It is aimed at TUM professors who have achieved excellent, ­internationally recognized achievements in research and who wish to pursue research work of particular originality and a high ­degree of innovation, preferably in an interdisciplinary team with other TUM-IAS ­Fellows. Up to two CvL Fellowships of 250,000 euros each can be awarded each year for a period of two years. In 2022, Prof. Eugénia ­da Conceição-Heldt, TUM School of Social ­Sciences and Technologies, ­became a Carl von Linde Fellow with her project ­“A multidisciplinary analyses of disruptions ­in politics and technology.”

Bundling TUM activities in AvH programs at the TUM-IAS

Over the years, the award winners and ­Fellows of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (AvH) have contributed thematic initiatives to TUM and opened up new research perspectives. They are automatically also members of the TUM-IAS. In order to strengthen the cooperation between TUM and the ­Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, ­to better ­connect guests and award winners at TUM and to deepen interaction with the TUM-IAS ­Fellows, the TUM-IAS will in future be the ­central ­administrative point of contact for Humboldt Award winners and AvH ­Fellowship programs at TUM. The aim is to achieve ­closer ­interaction between TUM-IAS Fellows and AvH programs.

Innovation Networks

With interdisciplinary TUM Innovation Networks (each with ten Principal Investigators plus PhD students), the Technical University of Munich aims to create even more scope for scientific creativity and groundbreaking developments. As an institute for excellence and creative research, the IAS is involved both in the selection process and in the ­organization and implementation of so-called “Exploratory Workshops,” from which the ­Innovation Networks emerge if successful.

After a successful start of the TUM Innovation Networks eXprt (Exoskeleton and wearables enhanced prevention and treatment) and NextGenDrugs (Next generation drug design) the TUM Board of Management selected three new promising concepts in the fall of 2022, for which TUM-IAS officially kicked off the initiatives and hosted the “Exploratory Workshops” dedicated to structuring the networks. With the new Innovation Networks CoConstruct, EarthCare, and GoTransTech, TUM fosters transdisciplinary research in specific fields from construction engineering, geodesy to economics and social sciences, and targets on a midterm perspective the development of Excellence Clusters.

Collaborative Construction ­(CoConstruct)

Coordinated by Prof. Christoph Gehlen (Materials Science and Testing), CoConstruct brings together researchers from the fields of civil engineering, mechanical engineering, material science, computer science, and architecture. They explore novel collaboration concepts between humans and machines for a sustainable transformation of the architecture, ­engineering, and construction domain.

Governing Transformative Technologies (GoTransTech)

Prof. Sebastian Pfotenhauer (Innovation ­Research), Prof. Hanna Hottenrott (Economics of Innovation) and Prof. Holger ­Patzelt (Business Administration and Entrepreneurship) are coordinating GoTransTech. ­Researchers from the TUM School of ­Social Sciences and Technology, and the TUM School of Management associate experts in engineering in order to address the ambivalence and impacts of transformative dynamics and technologies from the perspective of individuals, organizations, and societies.

Twin Earth Methodologies for Biodiversity, Natural Hazards, and Urbanization (EarthCare)

Coordinated by Prof. Xiaoxiang Zhu (Data Science in Earth Observation), EarthCare is composed of engineers, life scientists and data scientists. The project will merge innovative methodologies such as AI for Earth Observation and Earth System ­Modelling for use cases in biodiversity and forestry, the urban domain, and natural ­hazards.

In total, since 2021, eight TUM Innovation Networks are funded under the Excellence Strategy of the Federal Government and the Länder (ARTEMIS, RISE, NEUROTECH, eXprt, NextGenDrugs, CoConstruct, EarthCare, and GoTransTech).

Sustainability Goals of the United Nations

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, is a common approach to peace and prosperity. At its core are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which represent an urgent call to action by all countries in a global partnership. They recognize that eradicating poverty and other deprivations must go hand in hand with strategies to improve health and education, reduce inequality and boost economic growth – all while combating climate change and working to protect our oceans and forests. From these goals, TUM has identified six priority themes to which it can make a particular contribution based on its portfolio of subjects: Health (SDG 3), Energy (SDG 7), Urban Systems (SDG 11), Circular Economy (SDG 12), Climate Protection (SDG 13) and Biodiversity (SDG 15). Of the currently 70 active Focus Groups of the TUM-IAS, almost half worked thematically in these areas in 2022, thus supporting the sustainability strategy of the TUM and contributing to the realization of the UN SDGs.

Future lab Green hydrogen in the IAS

Hydrogen produced in a climate-neutral way is considered one of the most important energy sources of the future. That is why an international future lab is being set up at TUM with researchers from 13 countries. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is providing up to five million euros over three years. The research project “REDEFINE Hydrogen Economy” is coordinated by Prof. Hartmut Spliethoff, head of the Chair of Energy Systems at the TUM School of Engineering and Design. The special feature of the future laboratory “REDEFINE H2E” is the combination of innovative technologies such as high-temperature electrolysis, innovative gasification processes and the synthesis of basic chemicals and energy carriers. The researchers come to TUM from renowned institutions around the globe, including Australia, Brazil, Germany, Canada, Lithuania, Sweden, the USA and the UK, to jointly lay the foundations of a future hydrogen-based circular economy. The group will work at TUM-IAS and hold international workshops and conferences there.

ERC Grants

TUM-IAS Fellows and Rudolf Mößbauer Tenure Track Assistant Professors Angelika Harbauer and Laura Leal-Taixé received an ERC Starting Grant. IAS-Member Prof. Jia Chen and Prof. Matthias Feige were awarded the prestigious ERC Consolidator Grants.

Prof. Jia Chen has also been awarded the Arnold Sommerfeld Award 2021. The Bavarian Academy of Sciences honours Professor Chen’s fundamental contributions to research on climate change and urban pollution.

Highly cited researchers

The frequency of citations of a study is a good indicator of research quality. To determine the Highly Cited Researchers, the US company Clarivate each year evaluates the Web of Science database it operates, which records scientific publications from a broad range of subjects.

The new edition of the evaluation shows the scientists who were cited most frequently in their respective fields between 2011 and 2021. Researchers who are cited particularly often in different fields are listed in the Cross-Field category. In total, the list comprises around 6,900 people in no particular order, including the following TUM-IAS Fellows Prof. Ib Chorkendorff (Chemistry), ­­DTU Copenhagen | Prof. Naomi Halas (Material Science), Rice University | Prof. Laura ­Herz­ (Cross-Field), ­University of Oxford | Prof. ­Bernhard Küster (Cross-Field), TUM | Prof. ­Peter Nordlander ­(Material Science), Rice University | Prof. Robert Schmitz (Cross Field), University of Georgia | Prof. ­Yang Shao-Horn (Chemistry), MIT

Prof. Eugénia da Conceição-Heldt, TUM-IAS Carl von Linde Fellow, has been invited to become Visiting Research Scholar at Princeton University's School of Public and International Affairs in 2022.

For developing light-powered “antenna-reactor” catalysts that can substantially lower the temperatures required for industrial-scale hydrogen production, Prof. Naomi Halas and Prof. Peter Nordlander, both from Rice University, have received the prestigious ENI Energy Transition Award 2022. It is endowed with 200,000 US dollars. Halas, a chemist, physicist and engineer, and Nordlander, a theoretical and computational physicist, were recognized for leading the development of commercially viable light-activated nanoparticle catalysts that can insert energy into chemical reactions with surgical precision.

Laura Herz, Hans Fischer Senior Fellow and Professor for Physics at Oxford University, has been awarded the Environment, Sustainability & Energy Division mid-career Prize of the Royal Society of Chemistry. She is honored for her pioneering work advancing the development of solar cells through fundamental understanding of electronic, structural and chemical properties of next-generation light-harvesting materials.

The Italian Knowledge Leaders prize 2022 was awarded to Dr. Sara Lucatello, former TUM-IAS Anna Boyksen Fellow.

Hans Fischer Fellow Dr. Luca Magri (Imperial College) has secured funding within the extremely competitive New Horizon program by the British Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council EPSRC. Each project focuses on high risk, speculative engineering or information and communication technologies research with a potentially transformative impact. His aim is to create a framework and toolbox to marry over 60 years of high-performance computing with quantum computing to revolutionize understanding, modelling, and simulation of fluid mechanics.

Prof. Matthias Senge, Hans Fischer ­Senior Fellow, won a five years research grant of over 1.2 million euros from the Science ­Foundation Ireland for his project “Re-engineering Porphyrins – From Shape to Function.”

For his scientific work on imaging techniques to improve image quality and for his algorithms for data storage in DNA, IAS-Fellow and Rudolf Mößbauer Tenure Track Assistant Professor Reinhard Heckel received the Young Scientist Honor from the Werner von Siemens Foundation.

TUM Distinguished Affiliated Professor and new IAS Member

Alan Irwin, Professor in the Department of ­Organization at Copenhagen Business School, will be appointed Distinguished Affiliated ­Professor at the Technical University of Munich and as such will become a Member of the IAS. His research focuses on issues of science and technology policy, scientific governance, ­environmental sociology and science-public relations; he is currently working on ­research and innovation policy. Alan Irwin was the Vice-President of Entrepreneurship and ­Innovation and Dean of Research at CBS. ­He was in addition Acting President during 2011. Previously, he was Professor at the University of Liverpool, and he has held appointments at Manchester and Brunel University. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, a foreign member of the Royal ­Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, and an Honorary Fellow of the British Association.

Maja Horst, TUM-IAS Hans Fischer Senior Fellow and Professor for Responsible Innovation and Design at Danish Technical University, DTU, Copenhagen, opened with her Linde Lecture the 2022 General Assembly. Her talk on “Responsibility, Science Communication and Social Cohesion” made a plea for co-creation and demanded co-creation, in which the collaboration of diverse actors, e.g. companies, universities, policymakers and members of the public gives an opportunity for making innovation processes more socially inclusive and responsible.

The 2022 General Assembly concluded with an exclusive sneak preview of the documentary “Rivers above the canopy,” which the French-German station “arte” ­broadcasted later on November 12, in its program. ­Dr. ­Anastassia Makarieva, Anna Boyksen ­Fellow of the IAS and member of the International Expert Group on Earth System Preservation (IESP), was one of the scientific contributors.

Sustainabiliity day

On October 27, 2022, TUM celebrated the launch of its Sustainable Futures Strategy 2030 with the first university wide TUM ­Sustainability Day. To this end, the IAS hosted a highlight event with presentations, lectures and public discussion, including speakers and students from TUM Campus Straubing on Biotechnology and Sustainability.