In 2025, FAU will once again honor exceptional individuals for their services to FAU and for FAU with the FAU Awards in the run-up to Dies Academicus, its founding day. These are this year's winners of the FAU Awards.
Prof. Dr. Bastian Etzold, holder of the Chair of Power-to-X Technologies at FAU, is working on a method to simulate different scenarios for individual companies in the chemical industry in a matter of seconds, providing company managers with a reliable decision-making aid for costly investments.
When babies are born prematurely, they often cannot breathe without assistance. To keep their lungs clear, mucus must be removed from the ventilation tube several times a day – a necessary but risky procedure. Researchers at FAU and Erlangen University Hospital are working on an intelligent system that protects babies' sensitive lungs.
Exactly 50 years ago, FAU took a step that continues to benefit it today: it was the first university in Germany to establish a chair dedicated explicitly to the recognition of patterns in data. This made it a pioneer in Germany in a discipline that can be considered the basis of the current AI boom.
The nationwide online mentoring program CyberMentor started a new round of mentoring on 20 October 2025 and is thus celebrating its 20th anniversary. The aim of the program is to get girls interested in STEM subjects at an early age, provide them with long-term support and thus increase the proportion of women in technical and scientific professions.
In order to achieve the Paris targets, renewables must be expanded to one hundred percent by the 2030s, but increasing land use is leading to resistance among the population. How can the wishes of citizens be incorporated into the planning of energy systems? This question was addressed by a team from ETH Zurich, FAU and the Research Institute for Sustainability (RIFS).
Bacteria use surfaces to form complex heterogeneous communities known as biofilms. How these biofilms develop is the subject of a new international research project at FAU. The German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) are supporting the collaboration with around 750,000 euros over three years.
A stumbling block in front of the FAU Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences building in Findelgasse commemorates eleven schoolgirls murdered during the National Socialist era as well as the 120 or so pupils who were expelled from the former girls' secondary school.
On Friday, November 4, at 4 p.m., the University invites you to the Heinrich-Lades-Halle in Erlangen to celebrate its foundation day with all its members, friends and supporters. The event is open to the public and participation is free of charge.
How does the wind change the distribution of snow on glaciers and what effects does this have on their melting behavior? Doctoral student Manuel Saigger from FAU is investigating these questions as part of the M³OCCA doctoral program. At the Institute of Geography, he is using AI to calculate how snow drifts influence glacier mass.
