Scientifc Awards 2020

On this page you will find a selection of the current scientific prizes and awards of our professors, scientific staff, students or start-ups. Prizes and awards that have been awarded to members of our faculty in recent years can be found one level below.

• Professor Ph. D. Ferdinanda Ponci, Research Area Monitoring and Distributed Control for Power Systems, and Professor Ph. D. Antonello Monti, director of the Institute ACS and head of the Chair for Automation of Complex Power Systems, have received the 2020 Best Paper Award of the IEEE Open Access Journal of Power and Energy for their publication "A benchmark system for hardware-in-the-loop testing of distributed energy resources".
• The 2020 Brigitte Gilles Award was presented to Professor Dr.-Ing. Janina Fels and Ms. Karin Loh of the Institute of Hearing Technology and Acoustics (IHTA) for their initiative "The interactive experience of acoustics for big and small children". The Brigitte Gilles Award 2020 honors projects and initiatives that improve the conditions for study, teaching and research for women at the university. In this initiative, concepts were developed that enable girls between the ages of three and twelve to explore and learn about hearing and acoustics in a playful and interactive way.
• Professor Dr. rer. nat. Dirk Uwe Sauer is appointed as the new Rectorate Representative for Thailand. One reason for this is his long-standing commitment to the Thai-German Graduate School of Engineering. The TGGS and the Institute for Power Electronics and Electrical Drives are closely linked - this is also reflected in the fact that the dean of the TGGS, Professor Dr. -Ing. Nisai Fuengwarodsakul, visited Professor Dr. ir. Dr. h. c. De Doncker for his doctorate.

• Prof. Dr. Dirk Uwe Sauer from the Institute for Power Electronics and Electrical Drives was awarded the RWTH Teaching Prize in the "Lecturer" category at RWTHtransparent on January 31, 2020. RWTH Aachen University has been awarding a teaching prize since 2001 to recognize outstanding achievements in teaching at the university. The prize is awarded for the restructuring of the Electrical Engineering I lecture.

• Dr.-Ing. Chrisoph Hoog Antink has been a new member of the Junge Kolleg NRW since January 2020. As one of 7 new fellows of the Junge Kolleg, he will receive annual funding of 10,000 euros for a period of four years. Admission to the Junge Kolleg of the NRW Academy of Sciences and Arts is one of the most important awards and sponsorships for young scientists.

• German Research Foundation (DFG) funds the Research Training Group "innovative interfaces to the retina for optimized artificial vision - InnoRetVision". The faculty of Research Training Group 2610 includes researchers from eleven different scientific institutions at RWTH Aachen University, the University of Duisburg-Essen and Forschungszentrum Jülich. The project's spokesperson is Prof. Dr. med. Peter Walter from the clinic for Ophthalmology at RWTH Aachen University; the deputy spokespersons are Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Wilfried Mokwa and Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Sven Ingebrandt, the former and current directors of the Institute for Materials in Electrical Engineering 1 at RWTH Aachen University.

• June 2020: The teaching and research area for Information Theory and Systematic Design of Communication Systems ISEK has developed the 5GComet project in collaboration with Fraunhofer IPT, WZL and other partners. As one of 13 projects, it was funded with a total of 26 million euros as part of the 5G.NRW competition.

• Dr. Gebrekidan Gebresilassie Eshetu, Senior Scientist at ISEA, receives an Adjunct Professorship at Mekelle University in Ethiopia. Mekelle Institute of Technology is the No. 1 engineering institute in Ethiopia. Dr. Eshetu is conducting research with Prof. Figgemeier in the field of electrolyte additives and electrode formulations to extend battery life.

• With the "FAMOS for Family" award, RWTH Aachen University honours executives of the university for their family-friendly personnel work. The award winners of 2020 and 2021 were recently honoured digitally. The prize was awarded to six leaders in each of the two years. We are pleased that representatives from our faculty are also included, who are committed to ensuring that RWTH remains an attractive employer for excellent professionals. Professor Dirk Uwe Sauer from the Institute of Power Electronics and Electrical Drives and Professor Michael Vorländer, Chair of Technical Acoustics were among the award winners for 2020. In 2021, Professor Jeremy Witzens, holder of the Chair of Integrated Photonics, was among the honorees.

• Professor Dirk Uwe Sauer is a new member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science, which transcends disciplinary and national borders. For more than 300 years, the Academy has brought together outstanding scientists, among them 80 Nobel Prize winners. Professor Sauer is a member of the Academy's technical science class. At our faculty, Professor Sauer holds the Chair of Electrochemical Energy Conversion and Storage Systems Technology. His chair is an integral part of the Institute for Power Electronics and Electrical Drives (ISEA), the Institute for Power Generation and Storage Systems (PGS), and the joint Helmholtz Institute HIMS with Forschungszentrum Jülich and the University of Münster. With his work, Dirk Uwe Sauer is significantly advancing the field of battery research in Germany, which is highly application-oriented. In addition to his actual research, he also always keeps an eye on the overall view of future energy systems, so that he can carefully evaluate alternative technologies along the time axis, such as hydrogen versus battery technologies. His expertise also makes him a sought-after advisor to policymakers: for example, he is a member of the German government's National Platform for Electromobility and Platform for Mobility and is on the BMBF's Battery Research Advisory Board.