Research

Already in the late 1990s, Prof. Dr. Chandrajith came to Erlangen to receive a doctorate in Geochemistry from FAU. Ten years later, he came back to Erlangen in the frame of a George Forster Research Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to do postdoctoral research at FAU. From July 2019 until January 2020, Prof. Dr. Chandrajith is studying seawater intrusion in coastal aquifers and also the geo-environmental factors affecting the kidney disease with unknown etiology in Sri Lanka at FAU. His research stay is supported by a Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship.

Prof. Dr. Walter Daesslé-Heuser is Professor of Environmental Geosciences at the Independent University of Baja California, Mexico. In 2007, he received a George Forster Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to conduct research at the FAU on the sedimentology and hydrochemistry of the lower Colorado River Basin south of the American-Mexican border. He is currently back at FAU and is working with Prof. Johannes Barth on various groundwater studies.

FAU has unique expertise in the area of energy and climate research. Researchers are working across the faculties to develop innovative methods and processes for an integrated energy system.

The periodic table turns 150 this year. We took this as an opportunity to ask our scientists about their favorite element. Today: Prof. Dr. Büttner on gold.

11,000 votes cast, 10 selected AI newcomers and one FAU doctoral candidate: Elisabeth Hoppe from the Chair of Pattern Recognition has been voted AI Newcomer of the Year together with nine other nominees.

Highly efficient power semiconductors are to pave the way for a wide range of novel applications – from e-mobility to artificial intelligence. This is the objective of the recently launched joint project "power transistors based on AlN (ForMikro-LeitBAN)" coordinated by the Ferdinand-Braun-Institut and in which FAU is involved.

The German Research Foundation will establish a new Collaborative Research Centre. Two further CRCs which FAU is already participating in have been extended.

A research team led by FAU and involving other partners has presented the BATS bat-tracking system in Berlin, which automatically collects social contacts between wild animals on a second by second basis for the purpose of analysing social networks.

This year´s issues deals with all things hidden: things we lost sight of, objects too small for the bare eye to see. It also invites the reader to confront things they usually avoid: taboos. Some mechanisms we are not even aware of: Why do we behave the way we behave? And then there are secrets – everybody has them.

The Highly Cited Researchers List 2019 lists the world’s most influential researchers from 21 scientific disciplines, and this year it includes five FAU researchers.