FZI Open House 2025
40 Years of Innovation and Transfer
Research focuses: Applied Artificial Intelligence, Intelligent Transportation Systems and Logistics, Sustainable Engineering and Energy
The FZI Research Center for Information Technology is celebrating its 40th anniversary. At the FZI Open House 2025, the research institute demonstrated how it promotes research and innovation. Keynotes, expert forums, and live demos offered exciting insights into future technologies.
Karlsruhe, February 28, 2025 – The FZI Research Center for Information Technology demonstrated at yesterday’s FZI Open House how it sets impulses for research, business, and society. Since four decades, the FZI has been transferring research results into practice. In cooperation with business, science, and administration, it develops application-oriented solutions in fields such as Artificial Intelligence, Mobility, and IT Security. Close collaboration with partners produces practical solutions that accompany and support the digital transformation.
FZI Research Center for Information Technology – Paving the way for progress and technology transfer
Gabriele Luczak-Schwarz, First Mayoress of the City of Karlsruhe, acknowledged the role of the FZI as a driving force in the research landscape at the event: “The FZI can look back on four decades of cutting-edge research and has contributed significantly to making Karlsruhe visible as a location for innovation. The city of Karlsruhe is proud that the FZI’s headquarters are located in our city.” She emphasized the excellent cooperation with the FZI, especially in the fields of smart city and science communication. In acknowledgement of its special commitment to Karlsruhe as a business and science location, Gabriele Luczak-Schwarz honored the FZI as a “Place of Opportunity” on the occasion of its 40th anniversary.
By providing direct access to the latest research results, the FZI supports companies in understanding, applying, and further developing innovations early, from Artificial Intelligence and IT security to sustainable digital solutions. Application-oriented concepts are created as part of interdisciplinary research projects that help companies stay competitive and proactively shape digital change. In this way, the FZI combines science with practical application and promotes sustainable innovations that address societal challenges.
Dr. Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut, Minister of Economic Affairs, Labour and Tourism of the state of Baden-Württemberg, also emphasized the importance of the FZI for Baden-Württemberg as a business location: “The close cooperation between science and industry is a strength of our state. With its excellent work, the FZI has been making a valuable contribution to the competitivity of our companies and to the digital sovereignty of Baden-Württemberg for four decades.”
FZI Open House 2025 – Experience innovation live
The FZI Open House 2025 offered guests an insight into the latest information and communication technology developments. With top-class keynotes, exciting specialist forums, and workshops on generative AI, open source, and sustainability in engineering, the FZI showed how it works with partners on the technologies for an economy in transition.
Jan Wiesenberger, Executive Director of the FZI, emphasized the central role of research and transfer: “Research has a specific responsibility: it must not only produce innovations but also transfer them to society and the economy. Today’s event shows how important the exchange between research, business, and politics is in actively shaping the digital transformation.”
Focus on topics of the future
In interactive specialist forums and workshops, experts discussed current technological developments in areas such as generative AI and mobility, as well as innovations and regulatory drivers for a sustainable future. Moreover, the FZI presented many demonstrators, such as a charging station for bidirectional charging and the “Catch Me If You Can” simulation. Both illustrated current challenges in Artificial Intelligence in a practical way.
Bidirectional charging is more than just a technological vision. The demonstrator charging station showed how e-vehicles can draw energy and feed it back into the grid. This creates new possibilities for flexible energy management in companies and cities.
The “Catch Me If You Can” demonstrator showed what unexpected mistakes a vision-based AI can make when recognizing people. Guests could test whether they were correctly or incorrectly recognized or overlooked by the system. The demonstration made it clear that many factors – such as image composition or environment – affect the reliability of AI systems. It illustrates why new testing methods and interdisciplinary collaboration are necessary to make AI safer.
Research groups also presented innovative practical solutions during exclusive guided tours of the FZI House of Living Labs. Visitors experienced how IT security, IT in healthcare, robotics, and intelligent energy systems, for instance, will shape our future.
At the end of the event, the get-together in the FZI House of Living Labs was an opportunity to exchange ideas with researchers and make new contacts.
With this event, the FZI underlined its role as an innovation partner and central point of contact for applied research with a history of success in technology transfer that now spans forty years.
About the FZI
The FZI Research Center for Information Technology, with headquarters in Karlsruhe and a branch office in Berlin, is a non-profit institution for information technology application research and technology transfer. It delivers the latest scientific findings in information technology to companies and public institutions and qualifies individuals for academic and business careers or the leap into self-employment. Supervised by professors from various faculties, the research groups at the FZI develop interdisciplinary concepts, software, hardware, and system solutions for their clients and implement the solutions found as prototypes. The FZI House of Living Labs provides a unique research environment for application research. The FZI is an innovation partner of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and strategic partner of the German Informatics Society (GI).
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