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ePaper created 2013-09-24, 11:56:35 | version 1.25.20
This year the Fraunhofer IGB turns 60 and – as at its inception in 1953 – still bears “interfaces” in its name. Interfaces give rise to new phenomena, and 60 years mean six decades of in- novations and contributions to the sustainable development of industry and society. Thanks to its employees, the Fraun- hofer IGB has evolved over the last 60 years into an innovative institute at the forefront of interfacial R&D, shaped by its re- spective directors. Today, the institute serves the five business areas medicine, pharmacy, chemistry, environment and energy with its core competences in interfacial engineering and biotechnology. The success of our work was confirmed to us last year in a strategy audit involving 18 auditors. The experts were particu- larly impressed by the growth of the institute and its “markets beyond tomorrow” approach. This result is simultaneously an incentive and an obligation. Through its memberships in the Fraunhofer Life Sciences and MATERIALS groups as well as eight Fraunhofer alliances, the Fraunhofer IGB is firmly rooted in the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. Over and above this, the in- stitute benefits from its close association with the universities of Stuttgart, Tübingen, Würzburg and Munich and impulses from basic research that filter into the translation of applied research results into industrial practice. The reduction of global CO2 emissions, combating disease and hunger, and securing a global supply of water, raw materials and energy are the major challenges of the 21st century facing humanity. Against this backdrop, the development and imple- mentation of sustainable processes and products is becoming ever more significant. The Science Year 2012 “Project Earth: Our Future” underlined how important it is for us to base our behavior on the concept of sustainability. We thus endeavor to adopt an integrated, holistic approach to our activities and to constantly optimize not only our main research, but also our actions. The five Fraunhofer Institutes at the Stuttgart site last year published the first cross-institute sustainability report within the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. In it they commit them- selves to continual improvement, including meeting objec- tives they have set themselves. In this context, I would like to mention the Sustainability Action Day on June 29, 2012 and the Fraunhofer joint “House of Sustainability” booth at the 2012 Hanover Fair as positive examples. Sustainability requires continuity, and for this reason last year we began a project on sustainability reporting guidelines together with the head- quarters of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and the Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety and Energy Technology UMSICHT. The sustainable use of natural resources and the development of efficient value chains, processes and products are central bioeconomical research priorities. Here we made considerable progress last year with our work on the sustainable material and energetic utilization of renewable raw materials. Of sig- nificant note are the success of our Central German BioEcon- omy cluster in the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research’s (BMBF) Leading-Edge Cluster Competition and the opening of the Fraunhofer Center for Chemical-Biotechnolog- ical Processes CBP. The goal of the leading-edge BioEconomy cluster, in which some 80 companies and research establish- ments from Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt are active, is the inte- grated material and energetic use of non-food-use biomass for the production of innovative materials, chemicals, and en- ergy carriers. A sustainable supply of raw materials and energy on the basis of renewable resources is critically determined by the speed at which innovative processes can be translated from research into industrial scale. With the inauguration of the new building for the Fraunhofer CBP on October 2, 2012, in the presence of Federal Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel and 350 invited guests from industry, academia and politics, we have closed this gap between lab and practice. An important bioeconomy topic is bio- and chemical ca- talysis. Our Fraunhofer BioCat Project Group is working on 6 THE FRAUNHOFER IGB CELEBRATES 60 YEARS OF INNOVATIONS FOR THE “MARKETS BEYOND TOMORROW”