Prof. Dr.-Ing. Ralf Sommer

Dr.-Ing. Ralf Sommer was appointed professor at the Technische Universität Ilmenau on November 6, 2006 and is the successor of Professor Gerd Scarbata as head  of Electronic Circuits and Systems Group at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology. At the same time he took over the position of the scientific managing director of IMMS gGmbH.

After studying electrical engineering at the Technical University of Braunschweig, he received his doctorate from the Institute for Network Theory and Circuitry at the university with a thesis on "Concepts and Methods for the Computer-Aided Design of Analog Circuits". In autumn 1993 he started working at the Center for Microelectronics at the University of Kaiserslautern (ZMK), where he established a group "Computer Aided Design of Analog Circuits", which also developed the now commercialized symbolic analysis tool "Analog Insydes". In 1998, the group moved to the newly founded Institute for Industrial Mathematics, the first Fraunhofer Institute for Mathematics - FhG ITWM. Through numerous industrial and publicly funded projects, some of which were carried out in an interdisciplinary cooperation with the Center for Computer Algebra at the University of Kaiserslautern (Prof. Greuel, Prof. Pfister), a close contact to the company Infineon Technologies AG developed. In 2000, he took over the management of the "Analog Simulation" group in Munich. At the same time he was co-responsible for the research complex "Design Automation" in the central CAD. In addition to introducing innovative methods and tools into the industrial design flow, which included symbolic and statistical analysis and yield optimization, he was also overall project manager of a large European joint project (ANASTASIA+). For his work in Ilmenau, Professor Sommer has set himself the goal of expanding the areas of the IMMS and its even closer networking with the university. A new strategic focus on "design technology" is to be created, which is aimed at sustainably increasing design productivity, especially for analogue/mixed-signal circuits and systems, through new innovative tools and methods. The aim is the joint development of the university and IMMS into a competence centre for design tools and the associated design methodology. This objective also includes in particular the expansion of the training of outstanding experts through new lectures and courses in the field of analog/mixed-signal circuits and design automation (EDA - Electronic Design Automation) and intensive cooperation with industrial companies.