Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST

The new Fraunhofer Project Center for Energy Storage and Systems ZESS was inaugurated on February 7, 2019 in Braunschweig. It is a joint initiative of the Fraunhofer Institutes IKTS, IFAM, and IST – in close cooperation with the TU Braunschweig. The purpose is to develop existing energy storage systems, both mobile and stationary, to the level of industrial maturity, and to demonstrate new solutions.

On January 28^th, 2019 in South Africa, Prof. Reimund Neugebauer, President of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, and Prof. Eugene Cloete, Vice Rector of Stellenbosch University, signed the contract for the implementation of an ICON project between the university and Fraunhofer. The participants are the Fraunhofer Institutes IGB, ISE, IOSB and IST.

Over 100 million people in Southern Africa have no access to clean water – many sources in rural areas are contaminated. In the SafeWaterAfrica project, African and European partners are working closely together to develop a decentralized system solution for water purification that can be operated and maintained autonomously by rural inhabitants. Researchers at the Fraunhofer IST are coordinating the project.