Profile - Fraunhofer IZB

Fraunhofer Institute Centre Schloss Birlinghoven

Welcome to the Fraunhofer Institute Centre Schloss Birlinghoven, one of the largest research centres for informatics and applied mathematics in Germany. About 600 scientists in three institutes and one research institution work on application-oriented solutions for industry and society.

Selected research areas

Grid and Cloud Computing – extension of the worldwide web to other services in the field of information technology as well as Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) which will form a new basis for software developments and business procedures,
Datamining – intelligent handling of large amounts of data and retrieval of knowledge by automated extraction,
Man-machine interaction – adaptation of appliances and systems to the user's environment and his / her specific working and living conditions.

Main innovations

Mathematical models used worldwide – most well-known are the "Petri" nets, named after the former institute director Carl Adam Petri,
Technical developments – such as one of the first virtual reality installations in Germany, the first parallel program for medium-term weather predictions as well as highly developed simulation techniques based on the fastest solvers worldwide for large systems of equations,
Pioneering application developments – such as the internationally most frequently used public software for teamwork via the worldwide web, the analysis of the effects of Federal Government social legislation, the German-Austrian office of the Worldwide Web Consortium and the Digital Beethoven-House at Bonn.