The Thüringer Innovationszentrum Mobilit (Thuringian Innovation Center for Mobility) at TU Ilmenau (ThIMo) is celebrating its tenth anniversary. Since it was launched in 2011 as the university's largest single project, it has developed into an internationally renowned science centre for mobility research. Scientists from 13 disciplines and four departments detect trends in sustainable mobility, develop innovative solutions and thus support the worldwide structural change of the automotive industry.
Profound structural change in the automotive industry
For ten years, highly specialized scientists, supported by an efficient team in technology and administration, have been developing technologies for safe and networked, environmentally friendly and resource-saving, low-emission and efficient mobility of the future in the Thuringian Innovation Center Mobility across disciplinary boundaries and in close cooperation with research institutions and industry. The state-of-the-art equipment in measurement and testing technology, together with considerable personnel and financial support from the TU Ilmenau, enables research into new technologies in five core areas of expertise: Drive Technology, Automotive Engineering, Radio and Information Technology, Plastics Technology and Lightweight Construction as well as Power Electronics and Functional Integration.
Profound structural change in the automotive industry
In order to drive the far-reaching structural change in the automotive sector and its supplier industry, but also in information and communication technologies, towards sustainable mobility, the Thuringian Innovation Center for Mobility, as a think tank, makes significant contributions to the transfer of knowledge, technologies, innovations and minds into industrially implementable solutions. The cooperation between science and industry covers the entire innovation chain, ranging from basic research and joint projects with end users to contract research and services. One research focus at ThIMo is road and rail-based mobility, but the Innovation Center is also an engineering training center for automotive industry professionals, a consulting center and a partner of the EU-initiated Specialization Strategy in Thuringia and the Automotive Agenda Thuringia, i.e. the Free State's roadmap to support the transformation process of Thuringia's automotive and supplier industry.
300 partners from business and science
In order to advance its research, the ThIMo has acquired third-party funding totaling around 50 million euros over the course of its ten-year existence. The center works with more than 300 partners from industry and science around the world. In Thuringia, it is linked to major industry networks, such as automotive thüringen, a network of 100 Thuringian automotive suppliers, the Thuringian plastics cluster PolymerMat and elmug, a network of 90 Thuringian institutions in the field of measurement and instrumentation technology.
Following the retirement of its founding father Prof. Klaus Augsburg, who initiated and left a lasting mark on the Thüringer Innovationszentrum Mobilität, the center has been under the leadership of a new management body since April, which now controls its scientific and operational tasks: Prof. Matthias Hein, who has been responsible for the area of radio and information technology since the founding of ThIMo, has been elected as the new director. The deputy director is Prof. Florian Puch, who has just been appointed head of the plastics technology department at the TU Ilmenau and scientific director of the Thuringian Institute for Textile and Plastics Research in Rudolstadt. He is responsible for the core competence of plastics technology and lightweight construction at the ThIMo. The management duo is supported by a four-member board, which covers all five ThIMo core competencies.
New goals for the future
The new ThIMo management team already has plans for a whole series of concrete projects for sustainable, intelligent mobility and logistics in Thuringia. These include the scientific monitoring of a project by the Ilm district, the city of Ilmenau and IOV Omnibusverkehr Ilmenau GmbH, in which autonomous, i.e. self-driving campus buses will soon be used between the university campus and the train station. The ThIMo is already involved in another project that, coordinated by the city of Ilmenau, is intended to make the region a 5G model region of the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure.
For the future, the ThIMo is gearing up for a research offensive on digital mobility. For example, it will submit its application to become a branch office of the German Center for Future Mobility, with which the federal government aims to make Germany the international leader in sustainable and future-oriented mobility. For this purpose, the ThIMo is developing a concept for the establishment of a "Digital Corridor Central Germany". The scientific-technical, geographical and logistical conditions of the Free State are to be used effectively to research the mobility of the future and make it economically viable. "Our experience, expertise and partner networks are ripe for the next decade of innovative mobility research," is Prof. Matthias Hein's vision.
Contact
Prof. Matthias Hein
Director of the Thuringian Innovation Center for Mobility