Cooperative Research Projects

The Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and TU Dresden operate a particle accelerator in the former ice storage facility of the Felsenkeller brewery in Dresden – two tunnels, shielded by almost 50 metres of rock ed. The facility enables physicists to simulate the processes that take place inside our sun. This gives them a glimpse into how the chemical elements are formed in the cosmos.

The Time Machine Initiative is building a large-scale simulator that depicts 2000 years of European history and transforms kilometres of archives and large museum collections into a digital information system. This “big data” of the past is a common resource for the future and promises to have enormous cultural, economic and social impact. Based on a multi-scale architecture, the “Time Machine” integrates the four dimensions of space and time in the form of a continually growing networked information system, thus enabling the development of new methods of accessing and communicating our cultural heritage. The project involves numerous partners from SAC 4, SAC 2 and from abroad.

The research project “Transparent Figures – Exhibition Icons of the 20^th Century”, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, focuses on the plastic cellulose acetate, using which the workshops of the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum have been making transparent humans and animals for decades. For the first time, a conservation and restoration concept for these anatomical illustrative models will be developed in cooperation with the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, TU Dresden and TH Köln, which will ensure their preservation and can be transferred to other museum collections.

The entire research chain is covered, from materials research and the development of memory modules, to integration into energy systems. Alongside the humanities and social sciences, questions of sustainability, economic efficiency, and acceptance of energy storage systems are also researched. The CSSI is characterised by the intensive involvement of industry from the very beginning and thus stands for a strong transfer drive in companies, politics and society. At the CSSI, scientists from the Dresden-based Fraunhofer, Leibniz, Helmholtz and Max Planck Institutes conduct research in conjunction with TU Dresden.

Research at the DKTK focuses on improving radio-oncological treatment, specifically on personalised and technically optimised cancer medicine. The focus in Dresden (and in the radio-oncological part of the “Radiotherapy and Imaging” Programme) is on high-precision radiation therapy with a focus on particle therapy. As one of the most important techniques for innovative combination therapy for cancer, proton therapy is also used. Imaging techniques and radiation-specific biomarkers are combined to provide personalised cancer treatment. Radiation methods are also used in combination with targeted molecular drugs that can be used to modify the radiation response.

The performance centre “Functional Integration for Micro-/Nanoelectronics”, embedded in the microelectronics location of Saxony, combines the skills of the four Fraunhofer Institutes IPMS, ENAS, IIS-EAS and IZM-ASSID as well the universities and higher education institutions TU Dresden, TU Chemnitz and HTW Dresden along the value chain for products of microelectronics and microsystems technology. With the performance centre, a cross-institute platform for the core competences system design, component and manufacturing technologies, system integration and reliability assessment has been created.

The Construction Research Centre is an interdisciplinary scientific institution and a research and service provider at TU Dresden, which investigates current construction-related topics in an interdisciplinary way. The Centre was founded in 2016 by 16 institutes and chairs from the faculties of architecture, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, computer science, environmental sciences and economics. For the implementation of joint projects, it has laboratory, hall and office space, which forms a representative laboratory complex at the centre of the university campus.

Joining is a central challenge in production and often a signification cost factor. Current developments in joining technology can, in many cases, provide important improvements and impulses. Therefore, the Fraunhofer IWS in cooperation with TU Dresden, HTW Dresden and other partners established the joining technology centre “Tailored Joining”. It intends to give users an overview of the possibilities and limits of various joining processes, to enable their direct and unbiased comparison, to present new developments in a compact way and to point out business-related solutions. The basis of the centre is the extraordinarily wide range of joining processes, not only in Germany but also internationally, which are intensively investigated and further developed in Dresden.