Recent Events

Gender-based violence (GBV) has received more attention in recent years but remains taboo in Higher Education Institutions (HEI) and other workplaces. Studies reflect that gender issues, cultural differences, stereotypes, and other social barriers continue to create inequality at higher education / research institutions and other workplaces. Despite of better access to quality education and professional training over the last few decades, a significant increase of women or people of different ethnicity in top management positions in academia and the corporate world has not yet been realized. Launching of various programs has provided a platform to support equal opportunities, however, the conventional roadblocks persist. Freie Universität Berlin (FUB) and Heidelberg University support gender equality in a variety of ways, including in its appointment policies, internal university agreements on goals for research and teaching activities, and special programs. At the same time, freedom of research is a core principle of the research institutions like Max Planck Society (MPG) and Fraunhofer Society (FhG).

To address this important topic a panel discussion was scheduled on 22^nd Sep 2023 at School of Innovation and Management in Hyderabad. The objective was to foster mutual learning and understanding in gender and diversity, policies, and practices in the context of higher education and research in India and Germany. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India was invited as a moderator for the session. The other panellists were Prof. Dr. Christiane Schwieren- Equal Opportunities Commissioner, University of Heidelberg, Dr. Heike Pantelmann- Managing Director, Margherita von Brentano Centre for Gender Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, Dr. Sheela Suryanarayanan-Associate Professor, Centre for Women Studies, University of Hyderabad, and Ms. Srividya Reddy G- Chairperson, CII IWN, School of Innovation and Management & Vice-Chairperson, G Pulla Reddy Educational Society. A high level of student participation contributed to the success of the session.

On 23^rd May 2023, G20 Seminar on Technology and Trade was organised at Bengaluru. The event focused on enhancement of trade with the use of technology. One of the panel discussions titled ‘Transforming tools for revolutionizing manufacturing and trade’ (Lead Agency EEPC India) featured renowned experts who gave their valuable insights. Among the esteemed panellists was Ms. Anandi Iyer Director of Fraunhofer India and Convenor of the EMPOWER Working Group on STEM along with notable figures such as Ms. Arti Singh-Chief Information Officer, Boeing India, Dr. Rene Van Berkel- Head Representative, UNIDO, India, Mr. Poul V Jensen- Managing Director, European Business & Technology Centre and Mr. Stefan Halusa- Director General, Indo- German Chamber of Commerce moderated the discussion. 

In 2021, the G20 Ministerial Conference on Women's Empowerment was held in Italy to bring together the multiple streams of discussions on gender equality within the G20. This year, under India’s G20 presidency, the focus shifted to Women-Led Development.

To address this important topic, Think20 (T20) India, G20 EMPOWER, Women20 (W20), and Civil20 (C20) collaborated on a day-long conference dedicated to Women Entrepreneurship, Women in STEM, and Women's Leadership.

One of the sessions, titled "Educating for the Future of Work: Women in STEM," featured esteemed speakers who shared valuable insights. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director of Fraunhofer India and Convenor of the EMPOWER Working Group on STEM, was among the contributors. Other notable speakers included Ms. Baratang Miya- Founder and CEO of Girlhype Women Who Code, representing T20; Ms. Bhavani Rao- Coordinator of the C20 Gender Equality Working Group in India, Dean of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Director of AMMACHI Labs and CWEGE Research Centers, and UNESCO Chair on Gender Equality & Women's Empowerment; and Ms. Erin Watson, Managing Director of Griffith Asia Institute and Baker & York, moderated the session.

During the session, the speakers explored G20’s potential to establish a shared action for greater participation of women in STEM, including the idea of setting "time-bound targets" for women in STEM, akin to the targets set for labour force participation.

Through collaboration among diverse G20 organizations, the conference made significant strides in promoting gender equality and advancing women's participation in these significant areas.

FICCI’s National Executive Committee meeting was scheduled on 29^th April 2023 at Chennai. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India was invited as a moderator for the session on “Public Digital Infrastructure - Private Sector Opportunities”. The other panelists were Prof. Pratyush Kumar, CEO - Nilekani Centre for AI for Bharat at IIT Madras, Mr. Nitin Nair, Senior Vice President, ONDC - Open Network for Digital Commerce, Mr. C V Madhukar, CEO, Co-Develop and Mr. Shailesh K Pathak, Secretary General, FICCI. The event also had the presence of Thiru. M. K. Stalin, Hon'ble Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu for a special session. The event was very well received by excellent audience participation. 

During the celebration of NuernbergMessse India’s 10 years anniversary on 27th April 2023 Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India was invited as a panellist for the session on “Sustainable Supply Chains” and it focused on sustainable business policies, processes, technology, training and practices. The other panellists were Prof. Dr. Roland Fleck, CEO, NuernbergMesse GmbH (Former Deputy Mayor, City of Nuernberg), Mr. Prashanth Doreswamy - President & CEO - Continental India, Mr. Agneshwar Sen, Associate Partner, International Trade Practice, Ernst & Young, Ms. Jyoti Pradhan, CEO, Kurlon and Mr. Vinay Shenoy, Managing Director, Infineon Technologies India. The panel discussion was very well received by the excellent audience participation.

The Women in Science and Entrepreneurship (WISE) Council is an initiative of the FICCI Science, Technology, and Innovation Committee. It was launched on March 7, 2022 by the Hon’ble Minister Smt. Smriti. Irani, Minister, women, and child development. The WISE council is chaired by Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India and Member, FICCI ST&I Committee and has eminent members including Dr. Shailja Vaidya Gupta, Senior Adviser/Scientist 'H', Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, Dr. Anita Gupta, Scientist 'G' and Head - NSTEDB, Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, Ms. Kavitha Krishnan, Head, SAP Innovation Centre Network, Ms. Simmi Dhamija, COO, APMEA Wipro Technologies, Dr. Janhavi Raut, General Manager, Global R&D Hygiene and Health, HUL, Ms. Seema Gaur, Sr. Executive Director and Head IT at IFFCO Tokio General Insurance Co. Ltd, Ms. Neeti Wahi, Group CIO and Digital Officer, Sterlite Power Transmission Ltd. and Ms. Anjali Malhotra, Founder & CEO, C-Xcel.

Named after the chairman and founder of the Hero Group, Dr. Brijmohan Lall Munjal, BML Munjal University is engaged in creating, preserving, and imparting internationally benchmarked knowledge and skills to a diverse community of students from across the world. BMU’s aim is to nurture ethical leaders who are skilled, knowledgeable, and have the life skills needed to lead organizations to success. BMU seeks to transform higher education in India by creating a world-class and innovative teaching, learning and research environment. Founded by the Hero Group and was mentored by Imperial College London, BMU is a not-for-profit initiative offering undergraduate and post-graduate courses.

The launch of FICCI WISE and BML Munjal University on Women in Leadership programme took place on 14^th March 2023. The event began with an inaugural address by Prof. Shyam Menon, Vice Chancellor of BML Munjal University followed by keynote speeches from Mr. Rajeev Chaba, President and MD of MG Motors India and Dr. Sangeeta Reddy, Joint MD of Apollo Hospitals Group and Former President of FICCI. Mr. Sunil Munjal, Chancellor, BML Munjal University introduced the partnership and Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India and Chairperson, Women in Science and Entrepreneurship (WISE)  gave a presentation on WISE Council and introduced the council members. Ms. Anandi Iyer was invited as a speaker in the panel discussion “Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Women in Leadership”. The programme was very well received by the excellent audience participation.

The delegation from DAAD and GIZ visited Fraunhofer Office India on 15 Feb 2023 to understand the activities of Applied Research in India. There were around 20 delegates from Germany, India and other countries with a background in Urban Sustainability, Green and Smart Cities and Urban Planning. The delegates were warmly welcomed by Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India and Mr. Sanmati Naik, Manager-Energy (RE), Fraunhofer Office India. Ms. Anandi Iyer gave a brief presentation on the activities of Fraunhofer Office India and the delegates were also given a tour of the experience theatre at Fraunhofer Office India where Fraunhofer competencies in different technologies are showcased.

Fraunhofer Office India has coordinated a long-term strategic cooperation between Fraunhofer IPT and the State Govt. of Tamil Nadu to develop an innovation ecosystem with core focus on strengthening the industry-academia collaboration by setting up a CoE that will bridge the gap between the industry needs and academic output. The focus of this cooperation is on Advanced Manufacturing and Training. The partnership is with Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation (TIDCO) and Guidance Tamil Nadu, both which are administered by Department of Industries, Govt. of Tamil Nadu.

Both TIDCO and Guidance Tamil Nadu are engaged in enabling a thriving ecosystem to develop future-ready and industry-ready workforce and foster innovation in the State of Tamil Nadu, and to further strengthen this, they had organized a very high-level panel discussion on “Building Advanced Manufacturing Ecosystems for Sustainable Growth” at Tamil Nadu Promenade in Davos on 19 Jan 2023 alongside World Economic Forum’s Annual General Meeting. This session was hosted in partnership with PwC, and brought together a panel of global experts to elucidate upon integrating advanced manufacturing processes across the product life cycle for sustainable growth. Since Fraunhofer is a strategic partner to Govt. of Tamil Nadu, Fraunhofer was invited to participate in this session as one of the panellists. Fraunhofer Office India coordinated the participation of Prof. Günther Schuh, Division Director at Fraunhofer IPT and Member of the Board of Directors of the Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering (WZL) at RWTH Aachen University. The other eminent panellists included Mr. S. Krishnan, Additional Chief Secretary, Industries, Investment Promotion & Commerce Department, Govt. of Tamil Nadu, Ms. Pooja Kulkarni, MD & CEO Guidance Tamil Nadu, Mr. Karmesh Vaswani, Executive Vice-President & Global Head, Consumer Retail & Logistics, Infosys, Dr. Jan Goetz, CEO & Co-founder, IQM Quantum Computers and Mr. Sudarshan Venu, MD, TVS Motors Ltd. The panel discussion was moderated by Mr. Sanjeev Krishan, Chairman PwC India.  The panel discussed the topics like (i) Overcoming barriers to the adoption of advanced manufacturing across value chains (ii) Enabling the transition to advanced and sustainable manufacturing practices through innovation and R&D (iii) Impact of sustainable processes such as Net Zero and adherence to ESG standards on manufacturing (iv) Interventions required to spur the adoption of Industry 4.0 across manufacturing value chains and (v) Enabling the development of Advanced Manufacturing Hubs.

Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India, oriented the discussions between Fraunhofer and Govt. of Tamil Nadu in Davos, which brought out the competitive edge of Fraunhofer in successful implementation and result-oriented delivery of innovation ecosystems in Germany and other geographies. She also had a meeting with Mrs. Smriti Irani, Union Minister of Women and Child Development, Govt. of India at Davos. "The discussion in Davos with representatives from industry and politics of Tamil Nadu about the future of digital and sustainable industrial was very fruitful and vivid. A key commonality in our conversations was the shared vision of a more sustainable future. Due its significance both in Tamil Nadu and Germany, the mobility sector bears the potential to act as a lighthouse demonstrator for the necessary innovations towards a circular economy. With our learnings here at the RWTH Aachen Campus, I am convinced that these can help to accelerate Tamil Nadu’s Journey in transferring innovations from academia to industry. Based on the progressive mindset and strong ambitions that we share, I see a great potential for a long-term partnership across continents and cultures. The conference was very well-organized and it was a great pleasure to challenge the status-quo with this panel of distinguished masterminds. As it is also one of our ambitions to strengthen diversity in MINT jobs, I was deeply impressed to learn that leading companies in Tamil Nadu already today achieved a 50% ratio of female Engineering jobs!" said Prof. Schuh.

The Smarter E India / Intersolar India 2022 was held on 7-9 December 2022 at the Helipad Exhibition Centre, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India. The smarter E India brings together the renowned Intersolar India, ees India and Power2Drive India. Fraunhofer office India received invitation to participate within the German Pavilion at Intersolar India 2022. The ‘German Pavilion’- was organized by The Indo-German Chamber of Commerce (IGCC) in collaboration with the Indo-German Energy Forum (IGEF).

Fraunhofer Office India held a booth at the The Smarter E India / Intersolar India 2022 Exhibition (Expo) as a part the ‘German Pavilion’. Mr. Sanmati Naik coordinated and represented Fraunhofer at the booth, where Fraunhofer competencies in the areas of Energy sector - Renewables, Storage, E-Mobility and Hydrogen Tech were showcased in the form of posters, brochures, and video display. The Fraunhofer participation is well received at the Intersolar. Fraunhofer booth received around 150 + visitors for the 3 days of the Intersolar expo. The other exhibitors in the pavilion were Siemens Energy, Axitec Energy India, Germany Trade & Invest, Enapter h2e Power Systems Private Limited. Dr. Nicole Glanemann, Deputy Head, Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK), Government of Germany was present at the Intersolar event and interacted with Fraunhofer booth and other stake holders. During the event, Mr. Naik had several brief meetings with the potential clients, where he discussed business opportunities / possible cooperation with Fraunhofer in the areas of Energy sector.

ALUCAST, the 9th edition of International Exhibition & Conference on Aluminium Die-Casting was organized in Chennai from 01-03 Dec 2022. Fraunhofer was the Knowledge Partner to ALUCAST 2022. The exhibition brought together stakeholders of all scale across the aluminium industry to provide a global forum on matters of common concern and interest.  

As a Knowledge Partner, Fraunhofer had coordinated a high-level panel discussion, “Indo-European Technology Bridge - Cooperation in Sustainability” on 01 Dec 2022. The objective of this panel discussion was to showcase new technologies and domain knowledge of Fraunhofer IFAM to create a viable research and innovation ecosystem for sustainable growth and development of the Indian casting Industry. The panel witnessed participation of senior leaders from Casting and Allied Industry from India and Europe who discussed common challenges and solutions for supply bottlenecks in raw material and emphasized on creating an exchange platform between India and Europe for High-Pressure Die Casting (HPDC) Industry. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India delivered the Welcome Address and set the context of the discussion. Mr. Franz-Josef Wöstmann, Head of the Foundry Technology and Lightweight Construction Department at the Fraunhofer IFAM moderated the discussion. The other panellists were Mr. C. Boss, Executive Director, EUROGUSS, Dr. TVLN Rao, CTO, Sundaram Clayton Ltd., Dr. Alexander Marks, Director Cold Chamber Die-Casting Technology, Oskar Frech GmbH and Mr. Markus Maile, Area Sales Manager Wollin GmbH. The panel was very well received by the audience who represented the Casting and Allied Industry, Policy Makers and Bureaucrats from the Government, and select Research Institutes.

Fraunhofer had also set up a booth in the Sustainability Pavilion of the expo to showcase Fraunhofer IFAM’s competencies in Cast Coils in Aluminium High Pressure Die Casting. The booth witnessed a considerable number of visitors during the three days.

Following the expo, a visit to the foundry facilities of Sundaram Clayton Ltd. was also coordinated by Fraunhofer Office India for Mr. Wöstmann on 02 Dec 2022. Several concepts on the topic of lightweight materials were discussed for a potential cooperation. A meeting with Mrs. Michaela Küchler, German Consul General of Chennai was also organized to discuss cooperation in casting technologies between Indian and German research institutes and SMEs. 

Dr. Deepak Baindur, Project Manager, GIZ and Mr. Annoes Simon Louis, Finance Manager, GIZ visited the Fraunhofer Office India on 19 October 2022. They were warmly welcomed by Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India and Mr. Aditya Fuke, Manager, Smart Cities & IoT, Fraunhofer Office India.

Fraunhofer India Day was held on 7th October 2022 in a virtual format. The event was organised by Fraunhofer Office India. The main objective of Fraunhofer India Day 2022 was to provide an in-depth view of the Indian Market, the challenges, and the opportunities, as well as its strategy and support that Fraunhofer in India provides the institutes working in the Indian market, and deliberate on the partnerships with Industry, Government and Academia that would further help strengthen Fraunhofer's presence in India.

Fraunhofer has been active in India since 2008. Fraunhofer works with several leading companies in India and the Government on different areas such as Smart Manufacturing, Production Technologies, Renewable Energy, Emobility, Smart Cities, Artificial Intelligence, New Materials and Water Management.

Mr. Torsten Nyunke, Head International Department , Fraunhofer HQ gave the welcome address. After a brief introduction of all the participants , Dr. Jens Neugebauer, Head, International Representations and Senior Advisors, Fraunhofer HQ gave an insight into the role of Fraunhofer Representations worldwide and how Fraunhofer tries to enhance its research portfolio through representative offices and enables it to understand the market in those countries., Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India gave a brief overview of Fraunhofer in India. “India has been growing in the last few years. From being a country that was extremely closed to the world, today India’s world ranking as per GDP has moved from #10 to #5 on in just about 10 years, and we are right after US, China, Japan and Germany.. In terms of technology driven startups, India has reached the #3 in world rankings. The Global Innovation Index 2022 shows that India’s position has jumped to number 40 from 81 which is a huge improvement.” said Ms. Iyer.

Mr. Sanmati Naik, Sr. Manager- Energy (RE) spoke about the activities of Fraunhofer India in the Energy (RE) space. India has been very closely working with the Indian Government as well as the industry on various strategic models of cooperation and strategic partnership as a research and development technology partner. He also highlighted some of the major work that Fraunhofer is doing in India and active participation/cooperation in the various calls for proposals.

Mr. Aditya Fuke, Manager- Smart Cities and IoT highlighted Fraunhofer’s work in the smart city sector. Currently, Fraunhofer is on a long-term partnership with Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu with the focus on mobility and water and Kochi, Kerala with the focus on water and wastewater management, disaster management and inclusive housing. With the help of the Fraunhofer Institutes, Fraunhofer is also active in other areas such as robotics, battery technologies, digital agriculture, 5G networks, power electronics and embedded and cognitive systems.

After a brief experience sharing on Audio / Video Media activities in India by Mr Shardindoo Sadhu, Technical Consultant, Audio/Video Technologies, Fraunhofer experts from a few institutes shared their experiences on acquisition and implementation of projects with the Indian partners.

“Fraunhofer IGB has been active in India since 2017. India is one of the best countries to work with. We have received a lot of support from Fraunhofer Office India in our projects” - Dr. Marius Mohr, Head of Innovation Field Water Technologies and Resource Recovery, Fraunhofer IGB. “It wouldn’t be possible to get a foothold in the Indian Market without the help of Fraunhofer Office India. They are our path through cultural issues and a supporter and enabler”- Dr. Simon Schmidt, Head of Department Hygrothermics, Fraunhofer IBP

“We have been together at a lot of webinars, conferences, meetings with Industrial organizations and Indian representatives of International organizations”- Dr. Matthias Vetter, Head of Department Electrical Energy Storage, Fraunhofer ISE.

The second part of the event focussed on the Contract Management with Indian Companies & Legal Issues where the key aspects in contract management with Indian partners and the rules /provisions were explained by Ms. Alexandra Koehler, Legal Department, Fraunhofer HQ. The event received around 60 registrations and was very well received by the audience who engaged in a very lively discussion.

Fraunhofer Office India had organized a Tech Dialogue on “Circular economy: Turning old into new - A second life for vehicle components” on 08.09.2022. Dr. Marian Schlüter, Deputy Head of Department “Machine Vision”, Automation Technology Division from Fraunhofer IPK was the speaker in this session. The tech dialogue’s main focus was on introducing Fraunhofer IPK’s key competencies in AI-based machine vision technologies, Automated virtual reconstruction and Pattern recognition in digital worlds. This tech dialogue covered the topics like Circular economy of car parts, Problems in Sorting parts, AI for recognition of used parts, Integration in running processes and use of AI ecologically in terms of energy used compared to CO₂ savings resulting from better sorting. This session was very well received by the Indian Industry majorly working in Automation R&D, Energy, Machine Tools and Software.

Dr. Katja Lasch, Director, DWIH and Ms. Aadishree Jamkhedkar, Head of Programmes, DWIH visited the Fraunhofer Office India on 22 August 2022. They were warmly welcomed by Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India and Mr. Aditya Fuke, Manager, Smart Cities & IoT.

Fraunhofer Office India is working with DWIH to develop a study on SME Innovation and Technology Cooperation between India and Germany, with a focus on developing ideas and concepts to strengthen the SME collaboration in Technology between the two countries to create an appropriate framework for technology collaboration between the stakeholders with existing initiatives and those that could be leveraged for future collaborations. This meeting was organized to discuss the blueprint of this study.

Mr. Kaspar Meyer, the recently appointed Science Counsellor, German Embassy New Delhi visited the Fraunhofer Office in India along with Mr. Friedrich Birgelen, Deputy Consul General, German Consulate in Bangalore. “Being in Bangalore really helped better understand the ecosystem and the fields of research. It is a pleasure to be in India,” said Mr. Meyer. They were warmly greeted by Fraunhofer Office India team. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India gave a brief presentation on the profile of Fraunhofer and explained what Fraunhofer in India does.

Mr. Meyer was also given a tour of the experience theatre at Fraunhofer Office India where Fraunhofer competencies in different technologies are showcased.

The FICCI WISE Council whose primary focus is empowering women in STEM fields to reach their maximum potential, organized an event “Facing the unseen barriers: Addressing Challenges faced by Women in Science, Technology, Entrepreneurship and Mathematics (STEM)” on August 10, 2022, at the FICCI Federation House, New Delhi.

Most of them give up their careers halfway through as they are unable to cope with the work pressure, gender stereotyping and pressure from home. Women entrepreneurs on the other hand face another set of problems such as lack of funding, family ties where she must find a fine balance between home and workplaces, often not getting enough support and most of all due to a male dominant society which in turn creates a barrier and restricts women from moving forward be it in their careers or setting up a business.

The main aim of the event was to break these barriers and bring out the best practices to address the issues faced by women that would enable them to move ahead in their careers and for women entrepreneurs to scale up their businesses. It is an event where women leaders can share their journeys and experiences that will help other women in STEM fields to move ahead in their careers.

Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India and Chairperson, FICCI WISE council gave a brief background and introduced the council to the audience. Ms. Anandi Iyer stated that we need to ensure that all levels the representation and the participation of women goes up. “We should have a play book that provides a level-playing field for any founder including women. We must look at providing more equality-based opportunity, bringing women to where they belong there by making the world a much more equitable proposition and ensuring in the process that organizations and society gets a value out of it”. It was also announced that on the occasion of the 75 Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav, WISE Council will mentor and inspire 75,000 girl children to encourage them into STEM, in co-operation with DST, corporate players like Sterling, Emerson and Tech Mahindra and Academia like MBL University. 

Hon’ble Ms. Justice Prathiba M. Singh, Judge, Delhi High Court gave the inaugural address to the event. “It is not about women empowerment, but it is about putting the best systems in place to make sure that the systems are women friendly, flexible enough to allow women to use their educational qualifications and contribute to country’s progress. We talk about the brain-drain, but the hidden brain-drain is in India because we have not allowed women to come out and contribute to the GDP,” said Justice Prathiba Singh.

The highlight of the event was the launch of the WISE Council logo by Justice Prathiba M. Singh.

The inauguration was followed by presentations on Imparting Knowledge to Encourage Woman Entrepreneurship in Science, Innovation and Mathematics, Prof. (Dr.) Anirban Chakraborti, Dean, BML Munjal University, Vision and Strategy for Encouraging Woman Entrepreneurship Through Government Support by Dr Nisha Mendiratta, Adviser / Scientist "G" & Head, Women in Science & Engineering (WISE) - KIRAN Division & Head, Climate Change Programme (CCP) Division Department of Science & Technology (DST), Government of India and Digital Marketing For Woman Entrepreneurs by Ms. Rachita Gupta Abhrol, Head of Global Marketing: Cloud, Data & Analytics, AI, Cybersecurity, SaaS, Applications, Web3.0, Blockchain & Metaverse and Consulting services, Head Global Marketing: Digital Services, Tec Mahindra.

The event was generously sponsored by Brij Mohanlal Munjal University.

Mr. Achim Burkart, Consul General of Germany in Bangalore visited Fraunhofer Office India on 14^th July 2022. He was warmly welcomed the Fraunhofer Office India team. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India gave a brief presentation on the Fraunhofer profile and presented all the work that Fraunhofer has been doing in India for the past few years “Germany has very good relations in the economy sector and science sector in India which are interrelated. It is amazing to see various opportunities for the German companies in India. The expertise that Fraunhofer and other German companies bring is very much needed in the way of developing a bilateral trade and business relations in all kinds of players.” said Mr. Burkart.

The Consul General was also given a tour of the experience theatre at Fraunhofer Office India where Fraunhofer competencies in different technologies are showcased.

Dr. Matthias Catón, Director of Corporate Development, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management visited the Fraunhofer Office India on 12th July 2022. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India gave him a warm welcome and also presented Fraunhofer’s Profile and what Fraunhofer in India does. The discussions revolved around Fraunhofer partnering with the Indo German Centre with Technology inputs for white papers, supporting companies in technology acquisition and others visibility events for promoting Indo German Innovation cooperation.

The SME Technology and Cooperation Stakeholder dialogue was held in New Delhi on 23 June 2022. The Indo-German Stakeholder Workshop was jointly organized by DWIH New Delhi and Fraunhofer Office India simultaneously in Germany and India. While the Indian participants met in New Delhi, the German participants met in Berlin on the given date. Both groups were then digitally connected for a discussion together. This hybrid format facilitated an intensive discussion locally and simultaneously between India and Germany. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India moderated the discussion in New Delhi.

DWIH New Delhi is currently working with the Fraunhofer Office India on a project on International Technology Transfer for SMEs, with a focus on collaboration between SMEs and academia. At the end of the project, it aims to publish a blueprint with recommendations for a programme on activities to promote technology development and transfer between India and Germany. The workshop served to present the interim status of the Blueprint to important stakeholders and give them the opportunity to contribute their expertise.

Fraunhofer Office India and Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), Govt. of India jointly organized a tech dialogue on “Sustainable Building Materials – Way to Net Zero Emissions” on June 15, 2022. The session covered various topics such as “Geo-polymerization based Building Components” and “Waste-to-Wealth - Lightweight / Renewable Materials including Waste to Value Added Products” (TRL 5 & above) developed by Fraunhofer IBP and CSIR Labs, such as CSIR-CBRI, AMPRI, CRRI, SERC, and others. The session was jointly conducted by Dr. Simon Schmidt, Fraunhofer IBP, and Dr. Ashok Kumar, CSIR – CBRI. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India gave the welcome address on Indo-German Cooperation between CSIR and Fraunhofer followed by Dr. Rama Swami Bansal, Chief Scientist & Head ISTAD, CSIR, Govt. of India who introduced the tech dialogue series.

The tech dialogue is the first of the exclusive online Tech Dialogue Series under the MoU, which focuses on topics of Innovation and R&D in the areas of Sustainable Building Technologies, Battery Technologies, Advanced Production Technologies and Water Management Technologies. Innovation is the key to creating value for the business, and hence many organizations have been investing in innovation programs. Since employees have the best sense of the current business, employee-led innovation, when conducted well, has the potential to deliver high value to the business.

This tech dialogue saw 100 + participants and was very well received by the audience. The event ended with a very lively Q & A with Industry Interaction on industry specific problems under the thematic topic.

The India Global Innovations Connect (IGIC) began on June 2nd, 2022, was inaugurated by the Hon’ble Chief Minister of Karnataka Shri Basavaraj Bommai. In his inaugural speech, he said that “Technology is a part of life and innovations has been the order of development. All future technologies have a big space in Karnataka which will be a breeding ground to take off new technologies and so-called start-ups and the Government would go the extra mile to see that technology in Karnataka continues.” Karnataka is said to be one of the hotbeds of new innovations, technology, unicorns, and start-ups.

The IGIC event is the first of its kind that is being held on June 02-03 in the Conrad, Bengaluru. This conference will have around 22 sessions and more than 40 international speakers and well-known faces from the industry who will talk about various themes such as entrepreneurship, venture capitalists and innovation.

Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India, was part of the panel discussion, “Last Mile Connectivity: Converting research faster into business success stories.”  “In India we have fantastic fundamental research institutions and a vibrant entrepreneur ecosystem since generations. What is really missing is the lack of a robust and mature applied research ecosystem that caters to TRL 5 - 9. Once a proof of concept is there, how do you take it to the market? It requires strategic focus, prototyping, incubating, testing at industrial scale and fit- to- market. India really needs such intermediary institutions that accelerate research to the market in the shortest period of time, and foster innovation capital and productivity” said Ms. Anandi Iyer. The session spoke about the transitions from an idea into a successful company, from the perspectives of Israel. Israel with less than 9 million population has 40 unicorns. Ms. Karin Mayer Rubinstein, CEO & President, Israel Advance Technologies Industries, Israel was the Keynote speaker who presented the best practices that Israel has made so far and shared her perspectives on Israel and innovation. “Israel innovation is everywhere and in everything, a lot of technologies have come out of Israel.  Israel has been seen working with various startups, multinationals, incubators, academia and more,” said Ms. Rubinstein. The panel discussion touched on various topics such as how to develop programs and policies that promote collaboration between businesses and research organizations, fostering a more commercially oriented mindset among scientists and researchers and some of the lessons that could be drawn from successful countries who have translated innovative ideas into commercializable products or services.

The other notable speakers included, Mr. Anand Anandkumar, Co-Founder & CEO, Bugworks, India, Mr. Jagadeesh Gopalan, Senior Professor Dept. of Aerospace Engineering, Chairman, Centre for Excellence in Hypersonics, IIS, Bangalore, Co-Founder Ykrita Life Sciences, India, Mr. Manoj Gopalkrishnan, Founder & CEO, Algorithmic Biologics, India, and Mr. Srikumar Suyanarayan, Co- Founder, Chairman & CEO, Sea6Energy, India. The session was moderated by Mr. Woosuk Kenneth Choi, Editor, Future Planning Desk, The Chosun Ilbo Group, Director General, The Asian Leadership Conference, Republic of Korea.

Dr. Fritz Bickel, Director, Dr. Fritz India visited the Fraunhofer India Office along with his successor Mr. Arthur Becker. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India welcomed them and briefed them on Fraunhofer’s work in India. She also presented a short profile of Fraunhofer to the guests.

Dr. Fritz Bickel further discussed about production technology for solid state batteries and its future. It is currently being developed jointly by researchers at Fraunhofer IPA with the medium-sized companies Dr. Fritsch special machines GmbH and Dr Fritsch GmbH & Co KG. The research project has received funding of over one million euros by the state of Baden-Württemberg.

The aim of the Research into new mixing and sintering technologies for graded ceramic Solid-state electrolytes (EMSig) project is to build a demonstrator system in which solid-state batteries are built up layer by layer from only wafer-thin, homogeneous layers of powder and sintered, with the composition of the powder changing with each layer changed: At the transition between the electrode and the electrolyte, for example, more ceramic powder is gradually added – 25, 50, 75 and finally 100 percent. Although the project is still in its infant state, in two years, the entire production process should be mature enough to be can be used by the industry for large-scale battery production.

Fraunhofer Office India had organized a Fireside Chat on “SME Innovation and Technology Cooperation between India and Germany”, jointly with DWIH New Delhi on 26th April 2022. Dr. Rainer Frietsch, Head of the Competence Centre “Innovation and Knowledge Economy” from Fraunhofer ISI and Prof. Rishikesha T Krishnan, Director, IIM - Bangalore were the speakers who represented the German and the Indian side of the SME status and perspective respectively. The objective of the Fireside chat was to set the focus and attention on the structure of the SMEs in both countries, the imperative as well as challenges they face in forging a collaboration. The speakers shared the insights, experiences, and suggestions on how India and Germany can leverage the strengths of this industry segment and their entrepreneurial spirit which can impact economic growth in a very major way. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India moderated the discussion.

A delegation of experts from Fraunhofer IGB, IBP and IAO, University of Stuttgart and National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) visited Kochi on April 6th and 7th 2022 to conduct on-site assessment of the Government School in Elamakkara Ward, the area that has been selected to implement the pilot demonstrator that will include sustainable technologies in wastewater management, renewable energy infrastructure installation and development of climate smart buildings. Dr. Marius Mohr, Head of Innovation Field “Water Technologies and Resource Recovery” from Fraunhofer IGB led the delegation. The other members in the delegation included Ms. Sabine Giglmeier, Building Technology Expert from Fraunhofer IBP, Ms. Amruta Jayawant, Research Assistant from University of Stuttgart, Dr. Debjani Ghosh, Associate Professor and Ms. Anna Brittas, Research Assistant, both from NIUA.

Fraunhofer Office India and Siruthuli had jointly organized a meeting with the stakeholders, majorly from industry and CSR sponsors, to present the project and create an appropriate framework with industry participation for successful implementation of AQUA-Hub in Coimbatore. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India, set the context of the meeting, followed by technical presentations from Mr. Marc Beckett and Dr. Stefan Liehr. The objective of this meeting was to create a long-term cooperation between local industries in Coimbatore and German institutes and companies to identify and implement measures for overall sustainable water management in Coimbatore.

The meeting was very well received and also attracted a media attention from top houses.  A debriefing meeting with Mr. Raja Gopal Sunkara, Commissioner, Coimbatore City Municipal Corporation (CCMC) and CEO of Coimbatore Smart City Limited (CSCL) was organized on April 6th 2022. The Commissioner assured the project team of the complete support of para-statal agencies of CCMC towards successful implementation of AQUA-Hub in Coimbatore. The overall visit was coordinated by Mr. Aditya Fuke from Fraunhofer Office India.

The project “AQUA-Hub” aims to set up water innovation hubs to address challenges related to water and wastewater in the cities of Solapur (Maharashtra) and Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu), thereby making “Technologies made in Germany” accessible to India. Mr. Marc Beckett visited these cities from April 4th - 6th 2022 and met with important stakeholders from municipal administration to conduct city analysis for setting up a smart water monitoring system. In Coimbatore, Dr. Stefan Liehr from ISOE and Mr. Ashok Srinivasan from NIVUS Gmbh also accompanied Mr. Beckett during the visit. ISOE  nd NIVUS are the project partners in AQUA-Hub. Site visit in Coimbatore was organized by Coimbatore Smart City Limited. The project team visited and identified two lakes namely “Selvachintamani” and “Valankulam”, where smart water monitoring systems could be installed.

Fraunhofer Office India had coordinated the visit of Dr. Markus Wolperdinger, Director, Fraunhofer IGB to India on his interest to intensify the cooperation between Fraunhofer IGB and Indian companies. He visited New Delhi and Bangalore and was accompanied by Dr. Marius Mohr, Head of Innovation Field Water and Resource Recovery, Fraunhofer IGB. “I would like to express my sincere gratitude for the kind invitation and excellent organization by the Fraunhofer Office India, in particular I thank Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director of the Fraunhofer Office India, and her colleague, Mr. Aditya Fuke, Manager -Smart Cities & IoT. The informative and exciting meetings with the companies and organizations show the great potential that is still open for Fraunhofer IGB in India, especially in the field of sustainable circular economy, among others. I look forward with great enthusiasm to intensify our joint engagement in India.” said Dr. Wolperdinger.

The focus of his visit was to strengthen the cooperation between Fraunhofer IGB and India on the impact of technologies pertaining to circular economy and sustainability, which would drive future business growth for Fraunhofer IGB in India. With this objective, Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director and Mr. Aditya Fuke, Manager - Smart Cities & IoT from Fraunhofer Office India had coordinated meetings for him with topmost officials of IIT Jodhpur, L&T Construction Ltd., Ion Exchange, CII - ITC Centre of Excellence for Sustainability, Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung India, Hindustan Unilever Ltd. (HUL) and Bangalore International Airport Ltd. (BIAL). He was invited by the R&D facility of HUL at Bangalore to deliver a Townhall Lecture, which was attended by engineers and scientists from all the locations of HUL in India. Meetings with KfW India, German Embassy in New Delhi and German Consulate Bangalore were also organized.

Mr. Alexander Reck, Head of Digital & Transport, German Embassy, New Delhi and Ms. Heena Kalra, Advisor for Digital & Transport, German Embassy, New Delhi visited the Fraunhofer Office India along with Mr. Friedrich Birgelen, Deputy Consul General of the German Consulate in Bangalore.

Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India gave a short presentation on the Fraunhofer Profile in India. Mr. Sanmati Naik, Senior Manager, Energy and Mr. Rohit Kumar Rohilla, Manager, Production Technology also presented a short note on what Fraunhofer in India has been doing in the different sectors such as Energy, Aviation, Logistics, Electrification and Smart Mobility Concepts. Mr. Alexander Reck and Ms. Heena Kalra were also given a tour of the experience theatre at Fraunhofer Office India which showcases Fraunhofer competencies in different technology sectors.

According to the UNESCO report of 2021, more than 50% of women globally are graduates and master students in STEM. However, when it comes to the workforce, women are vastly outnumbered by men. Women are still under-represented in fields such as computing, digital information technology, engineering, mathematics, and physics. The sad reality is that most of these women dropout at crucial career points. It is not just due to skill inadequacy, but also a result of assigned stereotypical gender roles. Women are likely to face ‘dual role’ syndrome, wherein professional decisions are largely affected by their domestic responsibilities. 51% of women in tech fields feel burned out at work. They feel marginalized, stereotyped, and find a lack of opportunity when it comes to leadership roles. To mark Women’s Day, Women in Tech: Charging New Frontiers, Breaking Gender Stereotypes event was held on March 7, 2022 at the FICCI Federation House, New Delhi. The highlight of the event was the launch of the Women in Science and Entrepreneurship (WISE) council. The WISE Council together with FICCI Flo aims to empower women in Science & Technology as well as businesses to fearlessly aim high and achieve their best potential. The purpose of this endeavor is to break the gender bias and stereotyping among women in STEM by raising awareness, sharing the best practices and experiences of women leaders, and exchanging valuable knowledge that would help women all over the world aspire, achieve, and contribute to leadership positions in tech fields. 

The welcome address was given by Mr. Subhrakant Panda, Sr Vice President, FICCI and Managing Director, IMFA. Dr. Sangita Reddy, Past President, FICCI, Chair FICCI- FLO Empowering the Greater 50% and Joint MD, Apollo Hospitals Ltd in her opening address said, “When science has no gender, why should biases creep in? Let’s come together and break this narrative, break gender stereotype, and support women in tech. Its high time we realise that while the world needs STEM, STEM needs women and girls to come in.”

Smt. Smriti Irani, Minister of Women and Child Development, Govt. of India gave the keynote address for the event. “One of the greatest challenges we see for female scientific minds is their transition from technological educational institutions to positions of research. Science is not a man’s game, not a women’s game, it is everybody’s game,” added the minister. Prof K. Vijay Raghavan, Principal Scientific Adviser (PSA), Government of India gave the special address.

Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India and Chairperson, WISE Council introduced the WISE Council and shared its vision. “WISE Council will focus its activities on 5 levels she said. At the grassroot level of inspiring school and college girls to choose STEM as their chosen field, secondly at the level of training and  career advancement of women in the management levels to stay in the STEM field, thirdly to encourage women in senior management and research fields to take on leadership as well as Board positions, fourthly to sponsor and promote sponsorships as well as awards for outstanding women in STEM, and finally to create an international platform for exchange of experiences, best practices and mentorship. Following this the WISE Council was launched in the presence of the Hon’ble minister Smt. Smriti Irani. A pledge statement signed by over a hundred companies was also released urging all companies to stand against gender bias and stereotyping among women in STEM fields, and to educate and promote women STEM fields. Donate your laptop drive was also launched to help and encourage women to pursue STEM fields.

Special remarks were made by Ms. Montserrat Momán Pampillo, Deputy Head of Mission, Embassy of Spain in India. Ms. Inmaculada Riera, Director General, Spanish Chamber of Commerce, joined virtually and gave a very interesting international perspective on the Women in STEM. The concluding address was given by Amb Lakshmi Puri, Former ASG, UN, Deputy Executive Director, UN Women & Former Ambassador of India. The entire session was moderated by the Deputy Secretary General of FICCI, Ms. Jyoti Vij.

The event was followed by a power packed panel discussion by select representatives from Spain and Women leaders in STEM such as Dr. Janhavi Raut, Principal Research Scientist, Unilever Ltd, María Belén Mendizabal - Country Manager, LKS (Grupo Mondragón) and Founder and CMD of MBM Associates Planning & Sustaining, Ms. Priya Selveraj - General Manager, Country Head, Power Electronics Business in Siemens Games, Ms. Neeti Wahi, Group Chief Information & Digital Officer, Sterlite Power and Ms. Preeti Syal, Senior Specialist, NITI Aayog. The panel discussion was moderated by Mr. Jagdish Mitra, Chairman, S&T Council, FICCI. Although a lot of women enter engineering colleges, the biggest risk is the opportunity that lies is that making sure that their career progresses to senior level positions. There are no role models, mentorship, and support structure for women in STEM fields. During the panel discussion men and women in the senior roles were urged to take a stand to bring down gender bias. Companies needed to investigate their policies and provide flexible policies for women to help them have a good work life balance. Furthermore, women in senior roles could educate their male colleagues to support women employees in their teams. The gender gap cannot be bridged by only thinking what can be done for women, rather a lot needs to be done with the men to ensure they are active supporters for this cause. Mr. Nirankar Saxena, Deputy Secretary General, FICCI gave the concluding remarks of the panel discussion.

The 4^th webinar in the Science Curio Series, Fire-Side Chat: “Innovation and Applied Research made in Germany for the world” was held on November 9^th 2021. The series focused on the collaborations between Germany and India in the field of “Innovation and Applied Research''. The session was organized in partnership with Nuffic Neso India, Euraxess India, German Consulate Bangalore and Fraunhofer Office India. The aim of the series was to motivate young Indian researchers and foster collaborative opportunities between companies and education institutes in disciplines of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data analytics. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India and Dr. Samrat S. Kumar, Euraxess India were the panelists for the session. The event was moderated by Mr. Friedrich Birgelen, Deputy Consul General, German Consulate Bangalore. The event had a large participation with 500 registrations. The webinar received a very good response, with a lively participation during the Q&A session.

Mr. Friedrich Birgelen has been recently appointed as the New Deputy Consul General of the German Consulate in Bangalore. He had expressed his keen interest to visit Fraunhofer Office India to meet with the Fraunhofer Office India team and understand the research landscape in India. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India welcomed him and presented the activities of Fraunhofer in India and also briefed him on how Fraunhofer has supported the Indian companies in upgrading their innovation capabilities, which has set a benchmark for Germany’s R&D prowess in India. Fraunhofer is playing an active role in supporting and strengthening the aspect of applied research in India. Mr. Birgelen was accompanied by Mr. Karl Philipp Ehlerding, Former Deputy Consul General and Ms. Ambika Banotra, Adviser - Politics and Economics, from German Consulate in Bangalore. 

Fraunhofer Office India had organized a webinar on “Current Developments in Battery Technology - Highlights along the whole value chain” on June 30th 2021 conducted by Dr. Matthias Vetter, Head of Department - Electrical Energy Storage from Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, Freiburg, Germany. The webinar covered current scenario, application areas, research and development and Fraunhofer’s competencies in the entire value chain of battery technology starting from materials, cell production, components up to systems - processes including simulation, analysis, BMS, EMS, testing and certification and various technology interventions in the area. The webinar session was very well received by the Indian side with a good participation by 70+ attendees from 35+ organisations. Attendees appreciated R&D activities of Fraunhofer.

Fraunhofer Office India had organized a webinar on “Car Body – Forming (Sheet Metal), Manufacturing and Joining Technology” on June 28th 2021. Mr. Frank Schieck, Divisional Director, Sheet Metal Forming and Dr. Reinhard Mauermann, Head of the Institute, Head of the Forming Technology Department from Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tool and Forming Technology (IWU) were the speakers in this webinar session. The webinar covered topics like Press Hardening of Steel (PHS), Advanced High Strength Cold Forming Steel, Warm Forming of Aluminum, Hybrid Materials and Technologies, and Joining Technologies with examples from auto industry. The webinar received a very good participation from the Indian as well as German side and it was very well appreciated by Mr. Frank Schieck and Dr. Reinhard Mauermann.

DWIH had invited Prof. Dr. Martin Hofmann-Apitius, Head of Department “Bioinformatics”, Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing (SCAI) to deliver a science circle lecture on the theme “Making a difference in AI” on June 17th 2021 in a virtual format. The topic of his lecture was “Why should India and Germany partner up for AI?” The lecture dealt with the question of how the heterogeneity of the health systems in Germany and India could be used to create AI-based models for e.g. to validate personalized recommendations in oncology in completely different health ecosystems. 

DWIH had also invited Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India to chair the interactive session with Prof. Hofmann-Apitius that immediately followed his lecture. This session outlined how a strategic data collaboration between India and Germany could generate values ​​in the fields of agriculture, technology and mobility beyond the health sector. The session was very well received by the researchers, industry representatives and data scientists from both India and Germany.

National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA), Govt. of India had partnered with Kerala Institute of Local Administration (KILA), Govt. of Kerala and organized the Urban Thinkers Campus on the theme “Climate Action” on June 4th and 5th 2021. The Urban Thinkers Campus (UTC) is conceived as an open space for critical exchange between urban researchers, professionals, and decision-makers who believe that urbanization is an opportunity and can lead to positive urban transformations. Dr. Marius Mohr, Head of Innovation Field Water Technologies and Resource Recovery, Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology (IGB) was invited as a speaker to introduce the Kochi Smart City Innovation Lab, as a part of the Morgenstadt Global Smart Cities Initiative. Fraunhofer IGB is involved in the fields of water supply, wastewater treatment and flood protection and Dr. Mohr heads the City Lab in Kochi. 

Fraunhofer Office India had organized a webinar on “Technologies and Systems for Smart Power and Mobility“ on May 28th 2021. Dr. Steffen Kurth, Head of Department “Multi Device Integration” and Dr. Alexander Otto, Deputy Head of Department “Micro Materials Center” from Fraunhofer Institute for Electronic Nano Systems (ENAS) were the speakers in this webinar session. The webinar covered topics like Sensor technology for monitoring of equipment in the field of distribution of electricity, Radio based multi-sensor systems for high voltage overhead power lines, Reliability assessment of high power electronic components, Use of new materials such as SiC for power semiconductors to name a few.

The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) - India had invited Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India to moderate the leadership panel discussion on “Confluence of Digital Transformation and Industry 4.0” on May 21st 2021. Prof. Sunil Jha, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Delhi, Mr. Prateep Misra, Head of Technology & Product, TATA Consultancy Services, Mr. Gautam Dutta, Director, Siemens Digital Industries Softwar, Mr. Sachin Kulkarni, Head Automotive & Practice Head Digital Transformation, Tech Mahindra and Sebastiano Toffaletii, Secretary General of the European Digital SME Alliance, were other eminent speakers on the panel.

The panel discussed how Indian MSMEs can leverage emerging technologies like Data lakes, Platforms for supporting horizontal and vertical integration, Cloud Computing, AI/ML, IoT, AR/VR and cyber security etc. so that they become globally competitive and sustain over a long run. The session was very well received by the participants, who represented manufacturing ecosystem of automotive sector, plant and factory heads, technology experts, engineers, government and academia.

Morgenstadt Global Smart City Initiative Stakeholder & Solution Workshop for the city of Kochi was organized by Fraunhofer, University of Stuttgart, National Institute of Urban Affairs and Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, in support with Centre for Heritage, Environment and Development (C-HED) and Kochi Municipal Corporation (KMC). The workshop was held on April 21st 2021, and due to the critical situation created by the global COVID-19 pandemic, the workshop had to be held virtually.

The workshop was outlined to present the City Profile of Kochi and to discuss the proposed project ideas in order to develop a pilot project in Elamakkara ward in Kochi. After many months of analysis and evaluation in the Kochi City Lab, the sustainability profile of the city was officially presented to the Mayor and the important local stakeholders of Kochi. Mr. M. Anilkumar, Hon’ble Mayor of Kochi, initiated the proceedings with a welcome address. Afterwards, Mr. Petr Suska, Head of the Team Urban Governance Innovation (Fraunhofer IAO) gave a brief introduction to the MGI project as well as the process of the City Lab in Kochi. This was followed by a special address by Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director of the Fraunhofer Office India on the IndoGerman cooperation in Smart Cities and Fraunhofer’s significant contributions and initiatives in smart cities in India.

The session continued with the presentation of the City Profile results by the Fraunhofer experts. Firstly, Dr. Marius Mohr, Head of the City Lab Kochi (Fraunhofer IGB), presented the results in the water sector. The results for the energy sector were presented by Mr. Gerhard Stryi-Hipp, Head of the Group Smart Cities (Fraunhofer ISE), and Ms. Sabine Giglmeier, Business Development Manager and MGI sector expert (Fraunhofer IBP) presented the results in the housing and built environment sector. The second session focussed on project development, and was opened by Dr. Rajan Chedambath, Director of C-HED illustrating the activities in Kochi related to the proposed pilot project.

This workshop was facilitated by Fraunhofer Office India

Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India, Dr. Marius Mohr, Head of Department of Environmental Biotechnology and Bioprocess Engineering, Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology (IGB) and Mr. Aditya Fuke, Manager - Smart Cities & IoT, Fraunhofer Office India had a web-meeting with Mr. M. Anilkumar, Hon’ble Mayor, Kochi Municipal Corporation on April 19th 2021 to introduce the project “Kochi Smart City Innovation Lab” and to discuss the developments in it.

Fraunhofer Office India had organized a webinar on “Energy Harvesting technology to power wireless sensors in production environment“ on April 15^th 2021. Dr. Peter Spies, Group Manager “Integrated Energy Supplies”, Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits (IIS) was the speaker in the webinar session. The webinar covered topics like generic architecture of wireless sensors with energy harvesting, overview of different energy harvesting technologies and performance and application examples. The webinar received a very good participation from the Indian as well as the German side and was very well appreciated.

Fraunhofer Office India had organized a webinar on “Industrial Polymers and Plastic” on April 15^th 2021. The webinar was attended by industrial representatives from plastic, polymer and tyre manufacturing sector. Dr. Robert Brüll, Group Manager Material Analysis and Dr. Ingo Alig, Group leader Morphology and Dynamics from Fraunhofer Institute for Structural Durability and System Reliability (LBF) gave a presentation on Polymer Technology, Analysis Methods, Detection, Chromatography and Physical Characterization of Polymers and Plastic. The webinar received a very good participation from the Indian as well as the German side and was very well appreciated.

Fraunhofer Office India had organized a webinar on “Fraunhofer Blockchain Lab” on March 25^th 2021. Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Prinz, Vice Chair and Deputy Director of Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (FIT) was the speaker in this webinar session. The webinar covered topics like Introduction to blockchain concepts, classification of different blockchain technologies and identification of blockchain applications and their benefits. The webinar received a very good participation from the Indian side and was very well appreciated.

The Indo-German Forum: Cities and Climate was organized by DWIH New Delhi from March 16th-17th 2021 in virtual format. The forum addressed the multifaceted topic of urbanisation and climate-change and brought together scientists, decision-makers, and professionals from India and Germany to present research projects across disciplines and analysis on the relationship of cities and climate.

Fraunhofer Office India had coordinated the participation of Fraunhofer IAO and IMW in this forum. Dr. Eva Ottendoerfer, Head of the Morgenstadt Network, Fraunhofer IAO was invited as a keynote speaker. She delivered a presentation on the “Morgenstadt Initiative - A Systemic Approach to Urban Transformation”. Mr. Urban Kaiser, Head of Innovation Acceptance Unit, Fraunhofer IMW was invited as a speaker in the session on “Citizen involvement in policy and science” in this forum. Additionally, Fraunhofer IAO had also held a booth and showcased some successful use case examples of its smart city projects coordinated across the globe.

28th CIRP Conference on Life Cycle Engineering was jointly organized by TU Braunschweig and BITS Pilani in virtual format from March 10th - 12th 2021.The objective of this conference was to engage and empower all participants to take the necessary actions required to develop technologies that foster sustainability worldwide and make “business as unusual” the new usual. The conference covered all life cycle phases and paradigms ranging from digitaliztion to water-energy nexus.

Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India was invited as a keynote speaker in this conference. She delivered a presentation on “The Changing Paradigm in the Innovation Ecosystems in India” , which was very well received by the researchers, industry representatives and environmentalists from both India and Germany.

The first virtual meeting of the Expert Group “Digital Agriculture India - Germany” was organized jointly by Fraunhofer, German Agribusiness Alliance and Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industries (FICCI), on February 18th 2021. The experts from both the sides discussed the topics of immediate importance that would uplift the Indian agriculture scenario by promoting applied research in development of innovative German technologies in the smart agricultural landscape. This meeting brought together the experts from Industry and Research from both the nations. Topics such as Intelligent Agri Ecosystem, Image recognition and Image processing, data platform for farmers, Precision agriculture, Smart development and IoT for Agritech and food analysis detection, were some of the very important out of the many topics that were deliberated upon, and further shortlisted for development of proposals. Dr. Ralf Kalmar, Head of Business Development from Fraunhofer IESE delivered a presentation on the project “Cognitive Agriculture - COGNAC”. Fraunhofer office India had also coordinated the participation of Prof P. Anandan, CEO, Wadhwani Institute for Artificial Intelligence, who delivered a presentation on “AI technologies for Agriculture” that are being developed at the Wadhwani Institute. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India coordinated this meeting and moderated the discussions.

Mr. Volker Lennart Plän visited Fraunhofer Office India on February 11th 2021 to discuss opportunities of collaboration in Water Innovation Hub - a recently developed concept by Fraunhofer IGB and Fraunhofer Office India. He was accompanied by Mr. Sandeep Dubey, Regional Head of HSS in Bangalore. 

Mr. Stefan Halusa has been recently appointed as the new Director General of IGCC. During his visit to Bangalore, he along with Mr. Sumit Sharma, Regional Director, IGCC - South India, had visited Fraunhofer Office India on February 11th 2021 to understand the activities of Fraunhofer in India, and deliberate on how Fraunhofer and IGCC can work together towards creating awareness for a larger stakeholder interaction between India and Germany in Research and Development and Innovation. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India received him and lead the discussions during his visit. Fraunhofer Office India team - Mr. Sanmati Naik, Sr. Manager - Energy (RE), Mr. Aditya Fuke, Manager - Smart Cities & IoT, Mr. Edwin Raj, Manager - Finance & Admin and Ms. Aishwarya, Executive Assistant, all participated in this meeting. 

Wipro is one of the largest IT companies in India spanning its business across IT services, consulting and system integration. It has offices in 62 countries including Germany. Fraunhofer Office India was already in process of discussing potential cooperation with Wipro Ltd. in the areas of Smart Manufacturing, Smart Energy, Smart Buildings, Smart Cities, Smart Mobility and Data Security. The CTO’s office of Wipro has shown keen interest to take the dialogue with Fraunhofer further in the most demanding topic that spans all the industrial sectors “Industrial Automation and Robotics”. To this effect, Fraunhofer Office India had coordinated a workshop between Fraunhofer IPA and Wipro Robotics Practice (Wipro Ltd.) on January 21st 2021 to discuss and explore an opportunity for collaborative research in Industrial Automation and Robotics. Several topics in this area were presented by Fraunhofer IPA, and topics like Roadmap for Demo Sprint on Micro-fulfillment and 3D Bin Picking are selected by Wipro for further elaboration based on the customer demands. Commercial models were also discussed and Fraunhofer IPA is expected to present an offer on these topics. This workshop was conducted in a virtual format. 

TSDSI is an autonomous, membership based, standards development organization (SDO) for Telecom/ICT products and services in India. It comprises of the Indian telecom operators and manufacturers, Academia and R&D organizations. It is administered by Dept. of Telecommunication, Govt. of India. The primary objectives of TSDSI are developing, promoting and standardizing India-specific Telecom/ICT requirements and solutions and taking Indian requirements to global standards. As an Associate member, Fraunhofer IIS can participate in all technical activities of TSDSI and make proposals for new technical activities on behalf of their organization. The main objective of Fraunhofer IIS would be to create an enabling environment for a standards oriented approach to product development and adoption. The key activity for Fraunhofer IIS lined up for 2021 is preparation of TSDSI roadmap 2.0, which will include:  Development of Rural Broadband Architecture,  CSI enhancement for 5G  Developing Smart IoT Data Platforms and Cloud - Interoperability  Mobile Data Protection and Privacy, Contact Tracing and Proximity Detection Fraunhofer Office India had coordinated the entire membership process for Fraunhofer IIS. 

Ms. Anandi Iyer has been invited by Dept. of Science and Technology (DST), Govt. of India to become a member in the panel on ‘Heavy EV Charging Standard’ under ETD51 Sectional Committee of Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), Govt. of India. This panel is responsible for coordinating inter-ministerial dialogue between Dept. of Science and Technology and Dept. of Heavy Industries to develop EV Charging Standards and formulate recommendations for Govt. of India. This committee focuses its activities on the Indian Use Cases, to help the wide deployment of low cost EV Charging Infrastructure and development of technology platform for electric mobility in India. In January 2021, this panel has conducted several meetings on topics like Plugin AC&DC Charging, Automated (Pantograph) Charging, Battery Swapping, Deployment Configuration & Renewables Integration and DC Charging Standards. The final recommendations of this panel to Govt. of India are expected in April 2022. 

The Indo - German Research Day was organized on December 3rd 2020 by German Centre for Research and Innovation (DWIH) New Delhi. Germany and India are important partners for research cooperation and have made heavy investments for further strengthening the bi-lateral cooperation with many initiatives and schemes. This event showcased the research landscape of Germany and presented opportunities available for research, funding lines for individuals and projects for joint research facilitated by Indian and German agencies. Ms. Anandi Iyer was invited as a speaker in the panel discussion on “Research cooperation at research and technology organizations in the Indo-German context”. The other speakers were Mrs. Poonam Sehgal Suri, Max Planck Gesellschaft (MPG), Dr. Rama Swami Bansal, Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), Dr. Almuth Wietholtz, Leibniz Association and Ms. Eva Portius, Forschungszentrum Juelich, and moderated by Ms. Aadishree Jamkhedkar from DWIH. The panellists discussed the role of research institutes and funding bodies from India and Germany, and shared their experiences and good practice examples from areas of research cooperation. The panel discussion was very well received by the audience who were majorly researchers, science managers, university representatives and important stakeholders from India and Germany. Fraunhofer Office India also held a virtual booth at this event showcasing the activities and sectors of focus for Fraunhofer in India. Mr. Aditya Fuke, Manager - Smart Cities & IoT, Mr. Sanmati Naik, Sr. Manager, Energy - RE and Mr. Rohit Rohilla, Manager - Production Technology represented Fraunhofer Office India at the booth during this event. 

The Global R&D Summit is an annual flagship event of FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry) organized in partnership with the DST (Department of Science & Technology, Govt. of India). The summit focussed on building resilient economies through technology and innovation by fostering Industry & Science collaboration in the New World Order. The Summit was held virtually from November 25th – 27th 2020. Fraunhofer was invited to be the Knowledge Partner to this summit. Ms. Anandi Iyer was invited to be the chair of the session on “Innovation Clusters Session: The Savant Strategists”, which focussed on discussion around innovation delivery model that works both locally and globally in the context of global pandemic. The other speakers on the panel were Mr. Javier Lopez Casarin - President, Council of Knowledge and Innovation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mexico, Mr. Nishith Acharya - CEO, Equal Innovation & Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress, Mr. Rene Van Berkel - UNIDO Representative, Dr. Dietmar Hueglin, Head, BASF Innovation Campus and Prof. Rishikesha Krishnan, Director and Professor of Strategy, Indian Institute of Management - Bangalore. The session was very well received by the audience of renowned global experts, senior policymakers, scientists, corporate thought leaders and start-ups. As a Knowledge Partner, Fraunhofer had conducted a Knowledge Paper on “Changing Paradigms: Indian Innovation Ecosystem”, authored by Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India and co-authored by Prof. Rishikesha Krishna, Director, IIMBangalore. The paper was released in presence of Prof. Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary, DST and Mr. Dilip Chenoy, Secretary General, FICCI along with other eminent industry leaders during this summit. The objective of this paper is to compare select international research and innovation ecosystems, outline key priorities and provide recommendations to strengthen the Indian Innovation Ecosystem. Successful case studies of an innovation ecosystem in water in India and setting up a network of applied R&D institutes in Brazil, both coordinated by Fraunhofer, are also a part of this study. The paper was very well received by all the FICCI members who deliberated on how higher synergies and collaboration between industry and science can result in long-term socio-economic development in developing nations.

AquaHub focuses on setting up of Water Innovation Hubs and Smart Water Monitoring systems to promote Indo-German cooperation. The project is coordinated by Fraunhofer IGB. The other partners of this project are Umwelttechnik Baden Württemberg (UTBW), Institute for Socio-Ecological Research (ISOE), Let’s Bridge IT, Nivus GmbH, Ribeka GmbH and trAIDe GmbH. The first kick-off workshop of this project was conducted on November 23rd 2020, where the partners discussed the vision of the Water Innovation Hub for India, identifying potential Indian partner for implementation, the structure of the advisory board and also drafted the concept of Smart Water Quality Monitoring System. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India participated in this workshop and presented the present status of water sector in India and the impacts of COVID-19.

The German Agribusiness Alliance and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) had organized a virtual international conference on October 8th 2020, focusing on “AI & Digital Applications in Agriculture” and invited Ms. Anandi Iyer to be a speaker in the panel discussion on “Future of Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture”. The conference was organized in cooperation with German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Indian Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare and NITI Aayog, Govt. of India. The other panellists were Mr. Munish Soni, Head - Business Strategy, Bayer CropSscience Ltd., Dr. Aruna Rachakonda, Marketing Director South Asia, Corteva Agriscience, Dr. Parvathy Chandrasekhar, Commercial Manager India, xarvioTM Digital Farming Solutions and Dr. Puran Mal, Senior Agronomy Specialist xarvioTM SCOUTING, BASF Digital Farming GmbH and Dr. Anna Kicherer and Dr. Katja Herzog, Julius Kühn Institute (JKI), Federal Research Centre for Cultivated Plants, Institute for Grapevine Breeding. The panel discussion was moderated by Ms. Julia Harnal, Chairperson, German Agribusiness Alliance. The conference received a huge participation from IT service technology providers, agro-industries and government officials from both sides of geography. 

The German Day Digitales was organized by IGCC to promote and strengthen economic and cultural ties between the India and Germany. It was a virtual event inaugurated by H.E. Walter J. Lindner, Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to India on October 3rd 2020. Fraunhofer Office India was one of the key partners to this event. Together with IGCC, Fraunhofer Office India had organized a high-level panel discussion on “Industry 4.0 – The fourth industrial revolution - Opportunities and Challenges” on October 5th 2020. The high-level panel consisted of Mr. Sunil Mathur, CEO and Managing Director, Siemens Ltd., Mr. Soumitra Bhattacharya, Managing Director, Bosch Group India, Mr. Clas Neumann, SVP & Global Head. SAP Labs Network and Mr. Abhay Firodia, Chairman, Force Motors Limited. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office moderated this panel discussion. The panel discussed the various nuances of Industry 4.0, the steps India needs to embrace for its faster adoption and the use of technologies like AI, IoT, AR, VR to augment its workforce. The panel discussion received a huge virtual participation from the top officials of governments and industries from both India and Germany. Further on October 7th 2020, German Centre for Research and Innovation (DWIH) had organized a special session and invited Ms. Anandi Iyer to be one of the panellists in this panel discussion on "Opportunities for Collaboration between Industry and Research Institutes in India”. The other panellists were Mr. Yogesh Zope, Chief Digital Officer, Kalyani Group & Sr. VP at Bharat Forge Ltd., Dr. A. Ajayaghosh, Director, CSIR – National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology (NIIST), Dr. P.V. Lalitha, Indo-German Science and Technology Centre (IGSTC) and Dr. R. Sunder, Research Director, BISS - Indian Institute of Science (IISc). Dr. Katja Lasch, Director, DWIH moderated this panel discussion. The panel discussed how companies in India can leverage the expertise and facilities of research institutes and how such a cooperation in research can lead to innovation and development of more models of successful contractual research.

Fraunhofer Office India had received an invitation to speak at the 16th edition of CII Innovation Summit on October 16th 2020, focussing on “Resilience & Resurgence: Innovating for Society 5.0”. Fraunhofer Office India had coordinated the participation of Prof. Dr. Boris Otto, Managing Director, Fraunhofer ISST in this summit. He was regarded as the keynote speaker by CII for the session on “Innovation in Manufacturing”. Prof. Otto delivered a presentation on “Data Sharing in Industrial Ecosystems” with a prime focus on technology as a driver for innovation and Industry. His presentation was very well received by the audience, who are the members of CII representing manufacturing ecosystem, technology experts, engineers, government and academia. 

Wipro Ltd., one of the largest IT Giants of India has expressed its interest to enter into a long-term strategic partnership with Fraunhofer in the areas of Smart Manufacturing / Industry 4.0, Renewable Energy, Mobility Concepts, Aviation Logistics, Smart Cities and Data Security. A workshop was organized with Wipro on July 10th 2020 at Fraunhofer Office India to discuss the modalities and to finalize the concept of cooperation, which will be presented to the respective boards of both the organizations. Mr. Anshuman Mukherjee, Partner and Head of Domain & Consulting Travel, Hospitality & Public Sector Business and Mr. Nisanth Ayyagari, Senior Consultant from Wipro attended this workshop. From Fraunhofer Office India, Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director and Mr. Aditya Fuke, Manager - Smart Cities & IoT coordinated this workshop.

Indo-German Business Forum had organised an online event series on the topic “Innovation: A smart investment in challenging times” on July 9th 2020, and invited Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India to be the guest speaker in this session. She spoke on the significance of collaborative technology partnerships between India and Germany to drive affordable innovation for the Indian geography. The event was very well received by the audience who represented manufacturing ecosystem - technology experts, engineers, government and academia. 

Ms. Anandi Iyer represents Fraunhofer in Confederation of Indian Industry CII’s National Committee on Solar Energy and National Committee on Smart Cities and Urban Development. She was invited for a special interactive session by CII with Mr. Hardeep Singh Puri, Minister of State for Civil Aviation, Housing and Urban Affairs and Commerce & Industry, on June 5th 2020. This interactive session is a part of a series of leadership engagements with the country’s top leadership over a virtual platform coordinated by CII. 

The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) - India had organized a webinar on “Future of Industry 4.0” on June 5th 2020, and invited Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India as a speaker on the panel, “Adopt Industry 4.0 or risk being overtaken”. The panel discussed the immediate financial impact on manufacturers due to COVID-19 crisis, the steps to be taken to shorten the recovery phase and use of technologies like AI, IoT, AR, VR to augment workforce post crisis. Ms. Iyer’s expertise and insights on Industry 4.0 to rework the roadmap for manufacturing in India was very well received by the participants, who represented manufacturing ecosystem of automotive, plant and factory heads, technology experts, engineers, government and academia. 

Fraunhofer Office India had coordinated the visit of Dr. Markus Wolperdinger, Director, Fraunhofer IGB to India on his interest to intensify the cooperation between Fraunhofer IGB and Indian companies. He visited Pune, Mumbai and New Delhi and was accompanied by Dr. Marius Mohr, Head of Innovation Field Water and Resource Recovery, Fraunhofer IGB. Fraunhofer Office India had coordinated a speaker slot for Dr. Wolperdinger in “International Business Summit” organized by Mahratta Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture (MCCIA) in Pune on March 3rd 2020. This summit had brought together dignitaries, senior government officials, experts, analysts, business leaders from India and abroad to deliberate on the impact of technology, policies, research, innovation and sustainability, which would drive future business growth around the world. Dr. Wolperdinger delivered a presentation on “Innovation Led Manufacturing for Sustainable Global Business” in the session on “Innovation led Global Business Prospects, FTAs and Risk Management” in this summit. His presentation was very well received by the audience.

Invest India - the National Investment Promotion and Facilitation Agency of Govt. of India and German Embassy in India had organized an Indo-German Start-up Collaboration Roundtable on February 28th 2020 in New Delhi. The roundtable was chaired by Mr. Christian Herte, Member of the German Parliament. The aim of the roundtable was to bring together key stakeholders to discuss ideas to further bridge the IndoGerman start up ecosystems and enhance mutual cooperation. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India was invited to deliver special remarks in the context of the Indo-German start-up ecosystem. After the roundtable, she also had a meeting with Mr. Rahul Nayyar, Vice-President AGNIi, Invest India.

The committee on Economic Affairs & Energy from German Parliament led by Mr. Klaus Ernst, (DIE LINKE), MdB - a left-wing German politician visited Bangalore on February 24th 2020 to explore the opportunity to have an Interactive session over various important topics like Start-up concept in Bangalore, latest trends and technologies in the IT Industry, Indo-German Initiatives and cooperation. In this regard, Mr. Karl Ehlerding, Acting Consul General, German Consulate Bangalore had organized an Interactive session and invited Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India to present an overview on the Indo-German initiatives and potential collaboration in the field of Artificial Intelligence. Her presentation was very well received by the committee members, which is responsible for all aspects of the transformation of Germany’s energy system, the associated issues in the field of climate protection and the topic of energy conservation. 

Dr. Katja Lasch has been newly appointed as the Director of German House for Innovation and Research (DWIH). She along with her associate had visited Fraunhofer Office India to meet with Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India for an introductory meeting to discuss the engagement between Fraunhofer and DWIH and the upcoming activities of DWIH in India. Fraunhofer is also one of the supporters of DWIH in India

Mahratta Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture (MCCIA) had organized a “Large Scale Industry 4.0 Summit” on February 4th 2020 in Pune. The main focus of this summit was to discuss the policy level initiatives from the relevant Ministries of India and abroad, and sensitizing the manufacturing industry about Industry 4.0 and steps leading towards it. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India was invited to present Fraunhofer’s profile in Industry 4.0 in the international session on “Scope for Collaborative Opportunities” in this summit. Her presentation was very well received by the audience, who represented large, medium and even small scale companies from India and abroad. A High Level Delegation from Karlsruhe and Baden Württemburg in Germany led by Ms. Theresa Schopper, State Minister of the State Baden Württemburg also attended this summit

Fraunhofer Office India participated at the ‘IMTEX Forming 2020’, South East Asia’s largest metal forming machine exhibition. It was a 6-day event that kick-started on January 23rd - 28th 2020. Fraunhofer Office India, showcased the capabilities of Fraunhofer IWU in Light Weighting of Automobile Components, Forming Technology, Forging Technology and Additive Manufacturing.

Dr. Andreas Sterzing was invited by IMTMA as a guest speaker to give presentation on forming technology and the advancement made in the area of forming technology at International Seminar on Forming Technology 2020, on 22 January. Over 250 delegates from 112 companies, representing a wide cross section of the metal working industry participated in the seminar. The presentation was focused to the forming technology and lightweight approach to the various components of automotive sector, shipping industry, and Aerospace. 

A delegation of experts from Fraunhofer, Frankfurt School of Finance, University of Stuttgart and National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) visited Kochi from January 13th - 22nd 2020 to conduct on-site assessment of the city under the cooperation between Fraunhofer and Cochin Smart Mission Ltd. (CSML) for the project “Kochi Smart City Innovation Lab”. Dr. Marius Mohr, Head of Group Bioprocess Engineering and Circular Economy, Fraunhofer IGB led the delegation. He is also the leader of this project. This was a very fundamental activity in the project, in which the experts interviewed the key stakeholders in Kochi in the following sectors of focus water, energy and building to draw an analysis of the city profile and define the critical areas of intervention in against climate change. The on-site assessment concluded with a “Smart City Project Development Workshop” on Jan 22nd 2020, where the results of the assessment were presented and the measures that CSML should embrace against climate change were discussed. 

Maratha Chamber of Commerce, Industries & Agriculture (MCCIA), Goethe Institute and Consulate General of Federal Republic of Germany in Mumbai had organized a conference on “Culture Fit” - German and Indian SMEs ‘ on November 29th 2019 in Pune, and invited Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India as a speaker to present the best practices of successful IndoGerman cooperation in India. She delivered a presentation on “Examples of Best Practices” of successful Indo-German cooperation in India. The main focus of the presentation was on building mutual trust and confidence between India and Germany to strengthen the scientific and industrial ties between two countries.

As a part of Global Innovation Alliances (GIA), the German Consulate General had participated in Bengaluru Tech Summit on November 19th 2019, together with Fraunhofer India and members of the BIGSUN network and conducted a session on Artificial Intelligence. During this summit Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India, spoke on ''How Artificial Intelligence is of huge importance to all of us and how it is going to be profound for our everyday life. Will it displace humans? No it won't. Artificial Intelligence is an assimilation of human intelligence onto the machine. The German government has a strategy paper just like India. In Germany, they want to focus on mobility, agriculture, production technologies, and healthcare."

This year Travelling exhibition “Germany’s Energiewende“ to India was organized in Bangalore and Kochi. This was a public exhibition on Germany’s transition to clean an sustainable energy sources. The exhibition opened on November 18th 2019 in Bangalore with a panel discussion on 'Energiewende in India - Status quo and the future'. The panel comprised of the following speakers - Mr. Martin Rohlmann, Cultural Officer of the German Consulate Bangalore, Prof. Tejali Kanitkar, National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Mrs. Palak Agarwal, CoFounder & COO, Batti Ghar Foundation and Mr. Amir Bazaz, Senior Consultant, Indian Institute of Human Settlements (IIHS). The German Consulate General in Bangalore had invited Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer office India to moderate this panel discussion. 

Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) - Telangana Chapter had organized an education summit in Hyderabad on November 15th 2019, and invited Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India to speak in the session on “Education-Research-Skills for Economic Growth”. Ms. Anandi Iyer delivered a presentation on “Converting Research into Products”. Her presentation was very well received by the audience, most of whom were from academia and industry focussing on workplace of tomorrow, which calls for a redesign of the higher education courses to enable students to develop new types of skills. 

Germany is amongst India's most important partners both bilaterally and in the global context. India and Germany have a strategic partnership since 2001, which has been further strengthened with the Intergovernmental Consultations (IGC) at the level of Heads of Governments allowing for a comprehensive review of cooperation and identification of fresh areas of engagement. H.E. Mrs. Angela Merkel, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany led the highest German Parliamentary Delegation to New Delhi on November 1st and 2nd 2019 for 5th IGC with Hon’ble Prime Minister of India Shri. Narendra Modi and his cabinet. 17 MoUs were signed during the 5th IGC. MoU between Fraunhofer and Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Govt. of India to promote, establish and expand Scientific and Technological Research Cooperation between India and Germany was amongst the 17 signed MoUs. 

Fraunhofer was a prominent part of the events and activities around the visit. Mrs. Anandi Iyer was present in New Delhi on the invitation of the German Embassy and the Indian Government, and participated in the official events around the visit. This included the Indo German Energy Forum where she was one of the dignitaries who inaugurated the business event ahead of the Forum. She also met with the Chancellor Delegation, and had detailed discussions with Mrs. Anja Karliczek, Federal Minister for Education and Research,Mrs Julia Kloeckner, Federal Minister for Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection as well as Mr. Christian Hirte State Secretary for Economics and Energy. Fraunhofer signed a MoU with the Council for Education and Scientific Research on the subject of partnership in Frontier Technologies, with focus areas being Water, Building Technologies, Battery Technologies and Advanced Production Technologies. Fraunhofer was also the Innovation Partner to the 63rdAGM of the Indo German Chamber of Commerce, where the Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel was the Chief Guest. 

The Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany- Dr. Angela Merkel inaugurated and attended 63rd Annual General Meeting of the Indo-German Chamber of Commerce (IGCC).

Fraunhofer was the “Innovation Partner” to the 63rd Annual General Meeting of the Indo-German Chamber of Commerce. Around 12 Indo-German companies and institutions displayed diverse products and services in the exhibition. Fraunhofer office India also coordinated a stand, featuring and showcasing the competencies in Artificial Intelligence, Industry 4.0, Smart city and Renewable energy through poster presentation. The stand was visited by industrial delegates, policy makers and individuals to see Fraunhofer competencies and how Fraunhofer can assist them as a technology partner.

Energy And Environment Foundation with the support of Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, Ministry of Jal Shakti, Government of India and NITI Aayog, Government of India have organised the 10th World Renewable Energy Technology Congress & Expo-2019 in New Delhi and invited Dr. Matthias Vetter, Head of Department Electrical Energy, Fraunhofer ISE as a speaker.

German Ambassador to India H.E. Mr. Walter J. Lindner is on a mission to understand the research landscape in India, and had expressed his keen interest to visit Fraunhofer Office India, understand its activities and interact with some of its important Indian clients. With this objective, Fraunhofer Office India had organized a roundtable and invited some of its very important clients and partners on July 23rd 2019, where they shared their thoughts and views on their cooperation with Fraunhofer. 

“Dr Torben Seemann, Managing Director, Fraunhofer Project Centre on Light weighting, Wolfsburg, speaking at the Light Weighting Conference by ACMA on April 30th 2019”, the conference was attended by Indian Automotive fraternity.

As one of the supporters of DWIH (German House for Innovation and Research), Fraunhofer was invited to speak at DWIH’s Annual Symposium 2019 focusing on Future of Work, held on March 19th and 20th 2019 in New Delhi. Dr. Moritz Haemmerle he delivered a presentation on ‘The Future Work Lab’ in the session on ‘Artificial Intelligence and New Working Environment’.

Mr. Aditya Fuke, Manager – Smart Cities & IoT represented Fraunhofer Office India in the Indo German Summit on Green Buildings and Sustainable Energy organized by RSET in Kochi on February 19th 2019, and he delivered a presentation on ‘Smart & Sustainable Cities: Morgenstadt Approach’ in the session on ‘What makes a City Smart?’

Ms. Anandi Iyer attended the 63rd Founders’ Day Lecture of the Indo-German Chamber of Commerce and the lecture was given by Ms Svenja Schulze, German Minister for Environment, Nuclear Conservation and Nuclear Safety.

Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India had coordinated a visit of a very high-level delegation of senior scientists from CSIR led by Dr. Shekhar Chintamani Mande, Director General, CSIR to Fraunhofer Institutes in Germany. During the visit of Prof. Frank Treppe, Managing Director Political and International Affairs & Associate Board Member, Fraunhofer Gesellschaft to India in January 2019, a meeting was organized with CSIR to identify potential collaborative opportunities. As a next step in this engagement, the CSIR delegation visited Fraunhofer IGB, IPA and IBP to identify specific research topics of mutual interest in additive manufacturing, coatings, image processing, lightweight construction technologies, functional materials, membranes, energy and water conservation and energy efficient buildings for developing collaborative R&D proposals.

Ms. Anandi Iyer represented Fraunhofer in the Seminar on Digital Transformation in Germany organized by the Indo-German Chamber of Commerce (IGCC) in Bangalore. During the seminar she also met with Prof. Dr. Andreas Pinkwart, State Minister of Economic Affairs, Innovation, Digitalization and Energy of North Rhine-Westphalia to discuss the activities of Fraunhofer in Digitalization.

IMTEX is a flagship event for the Indian metal cutting industry organized by Indian Machine Tool Manufacturers’ Association (IMTMA). It is South and South East Asia's apex exhibition showcasing the latest trends as well as technological refinements from India and other global players. The mega event attracts visitors from a wide spectrum of manufacturing and ancillary industries including key decision and policy makers as well as industry captains who are keen to source latest technologies and manufacturing solutions for their product lines.

For the last 6 years, Fraunhofer has been showcasing its capabilities in Lightweight technologies in Automotive components, forming technology and additive manufacturing along with select exhibits at IMTEX, and every year, Fraunhofer has received a constructive reciprocation for its capabilities from the organizers IMTMA. This year Fraunhofer was the knowledge partner to IMTMA for Industry 4.0 pavilion at IMTEX 2019. Under this partnership, Fraunhofer had organized a conference on ‘Factory of the Future’ on January 25th 2019 at IMTEX 2019. Fraunhofer was also offered a large exhibition space to showcase its Factory of the Future model. Fraunhofer institutes IWU and IPT participated and showcased their competencies along with select exhibits in light-weight materials, additive manufacturing, industrial process automation, human-machine interaction, autonomous systems, digital twins etc.

Prof. Frank Treppe, Managing Director Political and International Affairs & Associate Board Member, Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, Dr. Eckart Bierduempel, Head - Multinational Networking, Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, Dr. Andreas Sterzing, Division Director - Bulk Met-al Forming, Fraunhofer IWU, Mr. Peter Blau, Division Director - Machining and Removal, Fraunhofer IWU and Dr. Kristian Arntz, Head of Department Non-conventional manufacturing processes and technology integration, Fraunhofer IPT were the visiting Fraunhofer delegates for IMTEX 2019. Fraunhofer Office India also coordinated the visit of Ms. Renate Schimkoreit, Minister & Head Economics and Global Affairs, German Embassy to the conference on Factory of the Future.

Fraunhofer Office India and Rotary International had jointly to organized a Forum on Social Innovation, Technology and Enterprise with an objective of combining humanitarian efforts with innovation, which will deliberate the impacts Social Innovation has on society and organization, and its need in India. This event was organized in the evening on December 6th 2018 in Hotel Taj MG Road, Bangalore. Three Fraunhofer technical presentations followed by a panel discussion on Impact of Social Innovation both curated by Fraunhofer were the highlights of this forum. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India presented the Fraunhofer innovation Ecosystem. Dr. Thomas Schlegl, Head of Department, Energy System Analysis, Fraunhofer ISE presented on Energy: The Green Gold focusing on sustainable technologies in solar rooftops, solar pumps, AgroPV etc. Dr. Simon Schmidt, Head of Climate Culture Building, Fraunhofer IBP presented a visionary approach in developing sustainable technologies based on climate and socially compatible situations, as well as local solutions for the construction sector. Dr. Eckart Bierduempel, Head of Multinational Networking, Fraunhofer Gesellschaft and Vice President of World Association of Industrial and Technological Research Organizations (WAITRO) was one of the panelists in this forum.

Fraunhofer Office India has completed its 10 years in India in 2018. On this milestone achievement, Fraunhofer Office India had organized a high-level panel discussion in the evening of December 5th 2018 in Hotel Shangri-La, Bangalore on ‘Innovation - the Fulcrum of a Global Industry’ with marquee leaders from the industry and government namely Mr. Thomas Fuhrmann, Managing Director and CEO, TUV Rheinland India Pvt. Ltd., Dr. Makarand Sr. Vice President - Innovations, Reliance Industries Ltd., Mr. Anantha Sayana, Vice President & Head - Digital, Larsen & Toubro Ltd., Ms. Saloni Malhotra, Vice President - Innovations, Invest India, Govt. of India and Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India. The panel discussion was moderated by Prof. Dr. V. Sumantran, Chair-man, Celeris Technologies Pvt. Ltd. The panel discussed the innovation ecosystems across leading nations, India scenario challenges and opportunities, trends and way forward to scale up the Indian innovation ecosystem, with focus on skill development, scaling up Indian Manufacturing, digitalization and strengthening industry-academia link in India. The panel discussion was attended by a very select audience of industry captains and senior government officials, who are close business associates of Fraunhofer in India. This was followed by an exclusive networking dinner hosted by Fraunhofer Office India.  

The SME Technology and Cooperation Stakeholder dialogue was held in New Delhi on 23 June 2022. The Indo-German Stakeholder Workshop was jointly organized by DWIH New Delhi and Fraunhofer Office India simultaneously in Germany and India. While the Indian participants met in New Delhi, the German participants met in Berlin on the given date. Both groups were then digitally connected for a discussion together. This hybrid format facilitated an intensive discussion locally and simultaneously between India and Germany. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India moderated the discussion in New Delhi.

DWIH New Delhi is currently working with the Fraunhofer Office India on a project on International Technology Transfer for SMEs, with a focus on collaboration between SMEs and academia. At the end of the project, it aims to publish a blueprint with recommendations for a programme on activities to promote technology development and transfer between India and Germany. The workshop served to present the interim status of the Blueprint to important stakeholders and give them the opportunity to contribute their expertise.

Fraunhofer Office India and Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), Govt. of India jointly organized a tech dialogue on “Sustainable Building Materials – Way to Net Zero Emissions” on June 15, 2022. The session covered various topics such as “Geo-polymerization based Building Components” and “Waste-to-Wealth - Lightweight / Renewable Materials including Waste to Value Added Products” (TRL 5 & above) developed by Fraunhofer IBP and CSIR Labs, such as CSIR-CBRI, AMPRI, CRRI, SERC, and others. The session was jointly conducted by Dr. Simon Schmidt, Fraunhofer IBP, and Dr. Ashok Kumar, CSIR – CBRI. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India gave the welcome address on Indo-German Cooperation between CSIR and Fraunhofer followed by Dr. Rama Swami Bansal, Chief Scientist & Head ISTAD, CSIR, Govt. of India who introduced the tech dialogue series.

The tech dialogue is the first of the exclusive online Tech Dialogue Series under the MoU, which focuses on topics of Innovation and R&D in the areas of Sustainable Building Technologies, Battery Technologies, Advanced Production Technologies and Water Management Technologies. Innovation is the key to creating value for the business, and hence many organizations have been investing in innovation programs. Since employees have the best sense of the current business, employee-led innovation, when conducted well, has the potential to deliver high value to the business.

This tech dialogue saw 100 + participants and was very well received by the audience. The event ended with a very lively Q & A with Industry Interaction on industry specific problems under the thematic topic.

The India Global Innovations Connect (IGIC) began on June 2nd, 2022, was inaugurated by the Hon’ble Chief Minister of Karnataka Shri Basavaraj Bommai. In his inaugural speech, he said that “Technology is a part of life and innovations has been the order of development. All future technologies have a big space in Karnataka which will be a breeding ground to take off new technologies and so-called start-ups and the Government would go the extra mile to see that technology in Karnataka continues.” Karnataka is said to be one of the hotbeds of new innovations, technology, unicorns, and start-ups.

The IGIC event is the first of its kind that is being held on June 02-03 in the Conrad, Bengaluru. This conference will have around 22 sessions and more than 40 international speakers and well-known faces from the industry who will talk about various themes such as entrepreneurship, venture capitalists and innovation.

Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India, was part of the panel discussion, “Last Mile Connectivity: Converting research faster into business success stories.”  “In India we have fantastic fundamental research institutions and a vibrant entrepreneur ecosystem since generations. What is really missing is the lack of a robust and mature applied research ecosystem that caters to TRL 5 - 9. Once a proof of concept is there, how do you take it to the market? It requires strategic focus, prototyping, incubating, testing at industrial scale and fit- to- market. India really needs such intermediary institutions that accelerate research to the market in the shortest period of time, and foster innovation capital and productivity” said Ms. Anandi Iyer. The session spoke about the transitions from an idea into a successful company, from the perspectives of Israel. Israel with less than 9 million population has 40 unicorns. Ms. Karin Mayer Rubinstein, CEO & President, Israel Advance Technologies Industries, Israel was the Keynote speaker who presented the best practices that Israel has made so far and shared her perspectives on Israel and innovation. “Israel innovation is everywhere and in everything, a lot of technologies have come out of Israel.  Israel has been seen working with various startups, multinationals, incubators, academia and more,” said Ms. Rubinstein. The panel discussion touched on various topics such as how to develop programs and policies that promote collaboration between businesses and research organizations, fostering a more commercially oriented mindset among scientists and researchers and some of the lessons that could be drawn from successful countries who have translated innovative ideas into commercializable products or services.

The other notable speakers included, Mr. Anand Anandkumar, Co-Founder & CEO, Bugworks, India, Mr. Jagadeesh Gopalan, Senior Professor Dept. of Aerospace Engineering, Chairman, Centre for Excellence in Hypersonics, IIS, Bangalore, Co-Founder Ykrita Life Sciences, India, Mr. Manoj Gopalkrishnan, Founder & CEO, Algorithmic Biologics, India, and Mr. Srikumar Suyanarayan, Co- Founder, Chairman & CEO, Sea6Energy, India. The session was moderated by Mr. Woosuk Kenneth Choi, Editor, Future Planning Desk, The Chosun Ilbo Group, Director General, The Asian Leadership Conference, Republic of Korea.

Dr. Fritz Bickel, Director, Dr. Fritz India visited the Fraunhofer India Office along with his successor Mr. Arthur Becker. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India welcomed them and briefed them on Fraunhofer’s work in India. She also presented a short profile of Fraunhofer to the guests.

Dr. Fritz Bickel further discussed about production technology for solid state batteries and its future. It is currently being developed jointly by researchers at Fraunhofer IPA with the medium-sized companies Dr. Fritsch special machines GmbH and Dr Fritsch GmbH & Co KG. The research project has received funding of over one million euros by the state of Baden-Württemberg.

The aim of the Research into new mixing and sintering technologies for graded ceramic Solid-state electrolytes (EMSig) project is to build a demonstrator system in which solid-state batteries are built up layer by layer from only wafer-thin, homogeneous layers of powder and sintered, with the composition of the powder changing with each layer changed: At the transition between the electrode and the electrolyte, for example, more ceramic powder is gradually added – 25, 50, 75 and finally 100 percent. Although the project is still in its infant state, in two years, the entire production process should be mature enough to be can be used by the industry for large-scale battery production.

Fraunhofer Office India had organized a Fireside Chat on “SME Innovation and Technology Cooperation between India and Germany”, jointly with DWIH New Delhi on 26th April 2022. Dr. Rainer Frietsch, Head of the Competence Centre “Innovation and Knowledge Economy” from Fraunhofer ISI and Prof. Rishikesha T Krishnan, Director, IIM - Bangalore were the speakers who represented the German and the Indian side of the SME status and perspective respectively. The objective of the Fireside chat was to set the focus and attention on the structure of the SMEs in both countries, the imperative as well as challenges they face in forging a collaboration. The speakers shared the insights, experiences, and suggestions on how India and Germany can leverage the strengths of this industry segment and their entrepreneurial spirit which can impact economic growth in a very major way. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India moderated the discussion.

A delegation of experts from Fraunhofer IGB, IBP and IAO, University of Stuttgart and National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) visited Kochi on April 6th and 7th 2022 to conduct on-site assessment of the Government School in Elamakkara Ward, the area that has been selected to implement the pilot demonstrator that will include sustainable technologies in wastewater management, renewable energy infrastructure installation and development of climate smart buildings. Dr. Marius Mohr, Head of Innovation Field “Water Technologies and Resource Recovery” from Fraunhofer IGB led the delegation. The other members in the delegation included Ms. Sabine Giglmeier, Building Technology Expert from Fraunhofer IBP, Ms. Amruta Jayawant, Research Assistant from University of Stuttgart, Dr. Debjani Ghosh, Associate Professor and Ms. Anna Brittas, Research Assistant, both from NIUA.

Fraunhofer Office India and Siruthuli had jointly organized a meeting with the stakeholders, majorly from industry and CSR sponsors, to present the project and create an appropriate framework with industry participation for successful implementation of AQUA-Hub in Coimbatore. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India, set the context of the meeting, followed by technical presentations from Mr. Marc Beckett and Dr. Stefan Liehr. The objective of this meeting was to create a long-term cooperation between local industries in Coimbatore and German institutes and companies to identify and implement measures for overall sustainable water management in Coimbatore.

The meeting was very well received and also attracted a media attention from top houses.  A debriefing meeting with Mr. Raja Gopal Sunkara, Commissioner, Coimbatore City Municipal Corporation (CCMC) and CEO of Coimbatore Smart City Limited (CSCL) was organized on April 6th 2022. The Commissioner assured the project team of the complete support of para-statal agencies of CCMC towards successful implementation of AQUA-Hub in Coimbatore. The overall visit was coordinated by Mr. Aditya Fuke from Fraunhofer Office India.

The project “AQUA-Hub” aims to set up water innovation hubs to address challenges related to water and wastewater in the cities of Solapur (Maharashtra) and Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu), thereby making “Technologies made in Germany” accessible to India. Mr. Marc Beckett visited these cities from April 4th - 6th 2022 and met with important stakeholders from municipal administration to conduct city analysis for setting up a smart water monitoring system. In Coimbatore, Dr. Stefan Liehr from ISOE and Mr. Ashok Srinivasan from NIVUS Gmbh also accompanied Mr. Beckett during the visit. ISOE  nd NIVUS are the project partners in AQUA-Hub. Site visit in Coimbatore was organized by Coimbatore Smart City Limited. The project team visited and identified two lakes namely “Selvachintamani” and “Valankulam”, where smart water monitoring systems could be installed.

Fraunhofer Office India had coordinated the visit of Dr. Markus Wolperdinger, Director, Fraunhofer IGB to India on his interest to intensify the cooperation between Fraunhofer IGB and Indian companies. He visited New Delhi and Bangalore and was accompanied by Dr. Marius Mohr, Head of Innovation Field Water and Resource Recovery, Fraunhofer IGB. “I would like to express my sincere gratitude for the kind invitation and excellent organization by the Fraunhofer Office India, in particular I thank Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director of the Fraunhofer Office India, and her colleague, Mr. Aditya Fuke, Manager -Smart Cities & IoT. The informative and exciting meetings with the companies and organizations show the great potential that is still open for Fraunhofer IGB in India, especially in the field of sustainable circular economy, among others. I look forward with great enthusiasm to intensify our joint engagement in India.” said Dr. Wolperdinger.

The focus of his visit was to strengthen the cooperation between Fraunhofer IGB and India on the impact of technologies pertaining to circular economy and sustainability, which would drive future business growth for Fraunhofer IGB in India. With this objective, Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director and Mr. Aditya Fuke, Manager - Smart Cities & IoT from Fraunhofer Office India had coordinated meetings for him with topmost officials of IIT Jodhpur, L&T Construction Ltd., Ion Exchange, CII - ITC Centre of Excellence for Sustainability, Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung India, Hindustan Unilever Ltd. (HUL) and Bangalore International Airport Ltd. (BIAL). He was invited by the R&D facility of HUL at Bangalore to deliver a Townhall Lecture, which was attended by engineers and scientists from all the locations of HUL in India. Meetings with KfW India, German Embassy in New Delhi and German Consulate Bangalore were also organized.

Mr. Alexander Reck, Head of Digital & Transport, German Embassy, New Delhi and Ms. Heena Kalra, Advisor for Digital & Transport, German Embassy, New Delhi visited the Fraunhofer Office India along with Mr. Friedrich Birgelen, Deputy Consul General of the German Consulate in Bangalore.

Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India gave a short presentation on the Fraunhofer Profile in India. Mr. Sanmati Naik, Senior Manager, Energy and Mr. Rohit Kumar Rohilla, Manager, Production Technology also presented a short note on what Fraunhofer in India has been doing in the different sectors such as Energy, Aviation, Logistics, Electrification and Smart Mobility Concepts. Mr. Alexander Reck and Ms. Heena Kalra were also given a tour of the experience theatre at Fraunhofer Office India which showcases Fraunhofer competencies in different technology sectors.

According to the UNESCO report of 2021, more than 50% of women globally are graduates and master students in STEM. However, when it comes to the workforce, women are vastly outnumbered by men. Women are still under-represented in fields such as computing, digital information technology, engineering, mathematics, and physics. The sad reality is that most of these women dropout at crucial career points. It is not just due to skill inadequacy, but also a result of assigned stereotypical gender roles. Women are likely to face ‘dual role’ syndrome, wherein professional decisions are largely affected by their domestic responsibilities. 51% of women in tech fields feel burned out at work. They feel marginalized, stereotyped, and find a lack of opportunity when it comes to leadership roles. To mark Women’s Day, Women in Tech: Charging New Frontiers, Breaking Gender Stereotypes event was held on March 7, 2022 at the FICCI Federation House, New Delhi. The highlight of the event was the launch of the Women in Science and Entrepreneurship (WISE) council. The WISE Council together with FICCI Flo aims to empower women in Science & Technology as well as businesses to fearlessly aim high and achieve their best potential. The purpose of this endeavor is to break the gender bias and stereotyping among women in STEM by raising awareness, sharing the best practices and experiences of women leaders, and exchanging valuable knowledge that would help women all over the world aspire, achieve, and contribute to leadership positions in tech fields. 

The welcome address was given by Mr. Subhrakant Panda, Sr Vice President, FICCI and Managing Director, IMFA. Dr. Sangita Reddy, Past President, FICCI, Chair FICCI- FLO Empowering the Greater 50% and Joint MD, Apollo Hospitals Ltd in her opening address said, “When science has no gender, why should biases creep in? Let’s come together and break this narrative, break gender stereotype, and support women in tech. Its high time we realise that while the world needs STEM, STEM needs women and girls to come in.”

Smt. Smriti Irani, Minister of Women and Child Development, Govt. of India gave the keynote address for the event. “One of the greatest challenges we see for female scientific minds is their transition from technological educational institutions to positions of research. Science is not a man’s game, not a women’s game, it is everybody’s game,” added the minister. Prof K. Vijay Raghavan, Principal Scientific Adviser (PSA), Government of India gave the special address.

Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India and Chairperson, WISE Council introduced the WISE Council and shared its vision. “WISE Council will focus its activities on 5 levels she said. At the grassroot level of inspiring school and college girls to choose STEM as their chosen field, secondly at the level of training and  career advancement of women in the management levels to stay in the STEM field, thirdly to encourage women in senior management and research fields to take on leadership as well as Board positions, fourthly to sponsor and promote sponsorships as well as awards for outstanding women in STEM, and finally to create an international platform for exchange of experiences, best practices and mentorship. Following this the WISE Council was launched in the presence of the Hon’ble minister Smt. Smriti Irani. A pledge statement signed by over a hundred companies was also released urging all companies to stand against gender bias and stereotyping among women in STEM fields, and to educate and promote women STEM fields. Donate your laptop drive was also launched to help and encourage women to pursue STEM fields.

Special remarks were made by Ms. Montserrat Momán Pampillo, Deputy Head of Mission, Embassy of Spain in India. Ms. Inmaculada Riera, Director General, Spanish Chamber of Commerce, joined virtually and gave a very interesting international perspective on the Women in STEM. The concluding address was given by Amb Lakshmi Puri, Former ASG, UN, Deputy Executive Director, UN Women & Former Ambassador of India. The entire session was moderated by the Deputy Secretary General of FICCI, Ms. Jyoti Vij.

The event was followed by a power packed panel discussion by select representatives from Spain and Women leaders in STEM such as Dr. Janhavi Raut, Principal Research Scientist, Unilever Ltd, María Belén Mendizabal - Country Manager, LKS (Grupo Mondragón) and Founder and CMD of MBM Associates Planning & Sustaining, Ms. Priya Selveraj - General Manager, Country Head, Power Electronics Business in Siemens Games, Ms. Neeti Wahi, Group Chief Information & Digital Officer, Sterlite Power and Ms. Preeti Syal, Senior Specialist, NITI Aayog. The panel discussion was moderated by Mr. Jagdish Mitra, Chairman, S&T Council, FICCI. Although a lot of women enter engineering colleges, the biggest risk is the opportunity that lies is that making sure that their career progresses to senior level positions. There are no role models, mentorship, and support structure for women in STEM fields. During the panel discussion men and women in the senior roles were urged to take a stand to bring down gender bias. Companies needed to investigate their policies and provide flexible policies for women to help them have a good work life balance. Furthermore, women in senior roles could educate their male colleagues to support women employees in their teams. The gender gap cannot be bridged by only thinking what can be done for women, rather a lot needs to be done with the men to ensure they are active supporters for this cause. Mr. Nirankar Saxena, Deputy Secretary General, FICCI gave the concluding remarks of the panel discussion.

The 4^th webinar in the Science Curio Series, Fire-Side Chat: “Innovation and Applied Research made in Germany for the world” was held on November 9^th 2021. The series focused on the collaborations between Germany and India in the field of “Innovation and Applied Research''. The session was organized in partnership with Nuffic Neso India, Euraxess India, German Consulate Bangalore and Fraunhofer Office India. The aim of the series was to motivate young Indian researchers and foster collaborative opportunities between companies and education institutes in disciplines of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data analytics. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India and Dr. Samrat S. Kumar, Euraxess India were the panelists for the session. The event was moderated by Mr. Friedrich Birgelen, Deputy Consul General, German Consulate Bangalore. The event had a large participation with 500 registrations. The webinar received a very good response, with a lively participation during the Q&A session.

Mr. Friedrich Birgelen has been recently appointed as the New Deputy Consul General of the German Consulate in Bangalore. He had expressed his keen interest to visit Fraunhofer Office India to meet with the Fraunhofer Office India team and understand the research landscape in India. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India welcomed him and presented the activities of Fraunhofer in India and also briefed him on how Fraunhofer has supported the Indian companies in upgrading their innovation capabilities, which has set a benchmark for Germany’s R&D prowess in India. Fraunhofer is playing an active role in supporting and strengthening the aspect of applied research in India. Mr. Birgelen was accompanied by Mr. Karl Philipp Ehlerding, Former Deputy Consul General and Ms. Ambika Banotra, Adviser - Politics and Economics, from German Consulate in Bangalore. 

Fraunhofer Office India had organized a webinar on “Current Developments in Battery Technology - Highlights along the whole value chain” on June 30th 2021 conducted by Dr. Matthias Vetter, Head of Department - Electrical Energy Storage from Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, Freiburg, Germany. The webinar covered current scenario, application areas, research and development and Fraunhofer’s competencies in the entire value chain of battery technology starting from materials, cell production, components up to systems - processes including simulation, analysis, BMS, EMS, testing and certification and various technology interventions in the area. The webinar session was very well received by the Indian side with a good participation by 70+ attendees from 35+ organisations. Attendees appreciated R&D activities of Fraunhofer.

Fraunhofer Office India had organized a webinar on “Car Body – Forming (Sheet Metal), Manufacturing and Joining Technology” on June 28th 2021. Mr. Frank Schieck, Divisional Director, Sheet Metal Forming and Dr. Reinhard Mauermann, Head of the Institute, Head of the Forming Technology Department from Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tool and Forming Technology (IWU) were the speakers in this webinar session. The webinar covered topics like Press Hardening of Steel (PHS), Advanced High Strength Cold Forming Steel, Warm Forming of Aluminum, Hybrid Materials and Technologies, and Joining Technologies with examples from auto industry. The webinar received a very good participation from the Indian as well as German side and it was very well appreciated by Mr. Frank Schieck and Dr. Reinhard Mauermann.

DWIH had invited Prof. Dr. Martin Hofmann-Apitius, Head of Department “Bioinformatics”, Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing (SCAI) to deliver a science circle lecture on the theme “Making a difference in AI” on June 17th 2021 in a virtual format. The topic of his lecture was “Why should India and Germany partner up for AI?” The lecture dealt with the question of how the heterogeneity of the health systems in Germany and India could be used to create AI-based models for e.g. to validate personalized recommendations in oncology in completely different health ecosystems. 

DWIH had also invited Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India to chair the interactive session with Prof. Hofmann-Apitius that immediately followed his lecture. This session outlined how a strategic data collaboration between India and Germany could generate values ​​in the fields of agriculture, technology and mobility beyond the health sector. The session was very well received by the researchers, industry representatives and data scientists from both India and Germany.

National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA), Govt. of India had partnered with Kerala Institute of Local Administration (KILA), Govt. of Kerala and organized the Urban Thinkers Campus on the theme “Climate Action” on June 4th and 5th 2021. The Urban Thinkers Campus (UTC) is conceived as an open space for critical exchange between urban researchers, professionals, and decision-makers who believe that urbanization is an opportunity and can lead to positive urban transformations. Dr. Marius Mohr, Head of Innovation Field Water Technologies and Resource Recovery, Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology (IGB) was invited as a speaker to introduce the Kochi Smart City Innovation Lab, as a part of the Morgenstadt Global Smart Cities Initiative. Fraunhofer IGB is involved in the fields of water supply, wastewater treatment and flood protection and Dr. Mohr heads the City Lab in Kochi. 

Fraunhofer Office India had organized a webinar on “Technologies and Systems for Smart Power and Mobility“ on May 28th 2021. Dr. Steffen Kurth, Head of Department “Multi Device Integration” and Dr. Alexander Otto, Deputy Head of Department “Micro Materials Center” from Fraunhofer Institute for Electronic Nano Systems (ENAS) were the speakers in this webinar session. The webinar covered topics like Sensor technology for monitoring of equipment in the field of distribution of electricity, Radio based multi-sensor systems for high voltage overhead power lines, Reliability assessment of high power electronic components, Use of new materials such as SiC for power semiconductors to name a few.

The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) - India had invited Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India to moderate the leadership panel discussion on “Confluence of Digital Transformation and Industry 4.0” on May 21st 2021. Prof. Sunil Jha, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Delhi, Mr. Prateep Misra, Head of Technology & Product, TATA Consultancy Services, Mr. Gautam Dutta, Director, Siemens Digital Industries Softwar, Mr. Sachin Kulkarni, Head Automotive & Practice Head Digital Transformation, Tech Mahindra and Sebastiano Toffaletii, Secretary General of the European Digital SME Alliance, were other eminent speakers on the panel.

The panel discussed how Indian MSMEs can leverage emerging technologies like Data lakes, Platforms for supporting horizontal and vertical integration, Cloud Computing, AI/ML, IoT, AR/VR and cyber security etc. so that they become globally competitive and sustain over a long run. The session was very well received by the participants, who represented manufacturing ecosystem of automotive sector, plant and factory heads, technology experts, engineers, government and academia.

Morgenstadt Global Smart City Initiative Stakeholder & Solution Workshop for the city of Kochi was organized by Fraunhofer, University of Stuttgart, National Institute of Urban Affairs and Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, in support with Centre for Heritage, Environment and Development (C-HED) and Kochi Municipal Corporation (KMC). The workshop was held on April 21st 2021, and due to the critical situation created by the global COVID-19 pandemic, the workshop had to be held virtually.

The workshop was outlined to present the City Profile of Kochi and to discuss the proposed project ideas in order to develop a pilot project in Elamakkara ward in Kochi. After many months of analysis and evaluation in the Kochi City Lab, the sustainability profile of the city was officially presented to the Mayor and the important local stakeholders of Kochi. Mr. M. Anilkumar, Hon’ble Mayor of Kochi, initiated the proceedings with a welcome address. Afterwards, Mr. Petr Suska, Head of the Team Urban Governance Innovation (Fraunhofer IAO) gave a brief introduction to the MGI project as well as the process of the City Lab in Kochi. This was followed by a special address by Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director of the Fraunhofer Office India on the IndoGerman cooperation in Smart Cities and Fraunhofer’s significant contributions and initiatives in smart cities in India.

The session continued with the presentation of the City Profile results by the Fraunhofer experts. Firstly, Dr. Marius Mohr, Head of the City Lab Kochi (Fraunhofer IGB), presented the results in the water sector. The results for the energy sector were presented by Mr. Gerhard Stryi-Hipp, Head of the Group Smart Cities (Fraunhofer ISE), and Ms. Sabine Giglmeier, Business Development Manager and MGI sector expert (Fraunhofer IBP) presented the results in the housing and built environment sector. The second session focussed on project development, and was opened by Dr. Rajan Chedambath, Director of C-HED illustrating the activities in Kochi related to the proposed pilot project.

This workshop was facilitated by Fraunhofer Office India

Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India, Dr. Marius Mohr, Head of Department of Environmental Biotechnology and Bioprocess Engineering, Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology (IGB) and Mr. Aditya Fuke, Manager - Smart Cities & IoT, Fraunhofer Office India had a web-meeting with Mr. M. Anilkumar, Hon’ble Mayor, Kochi Municipal Corporation on April 19th 2021 to introduce the project “Kochi Smart City Innovation Lab” and to discuss the developments in it.

Fraunhofer Office India had organized a webinar on “Energy Harvesting technology to power wireless sensors in production environment“ on April 15^th 2021. Dr. Peter Spies, Group Manager “Integrated Energy Supplies”, Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits (IIS) was the speaker in the webinar session. The webinar covered topics like generic architecture of wireless sensors with energy harvesting, overview of different energy harvesting technologies and performance and application examples. The webinar received a very good participation from the Indian as well as the German side and was very well appreciated.

Fraunhofer Office India had organized a webinar on “Industrial Polymers and Plastic” on April 15^th 2021. The webinar was attended by industrial representatives from plastic, polymer and tyre manufacturing sector. Dr. Robert Brüll, Group Manager Material Analysis and Dr. Ingo Alig, Group leader Morphology and Dynamics from Fraunhofer Institute for Structural Durability and System Reliability (LBF) gave a presentation on Polymer Technology, Analysis Methods, Detection, Chromatography and Physical Characterization of Polymers and Plastic. The webinar received a very good participation from the Indian as well as the German side and was very well appreciated.

Fraunhofer Office India had organized a webinar on “Fraunhofer Blockchain Lab” on March 25^th 2021. Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Prinz, Vice Chair and Deputy Director of Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (FIT) was the speaker in this webinar session. The webinar covered topics like Introduction to blockchain concepts, classification of different blockchain technologies and identification of blockchain applications and their benefits. The webinar received a very good participation from the Indian side and was very well appreciated.

The Indo-German Forum: Cities and Climate was organized by DWIH New Delhi from March 16th-17th 2021 in virtual format. The forum addressed the multifaceted topic of urbanisation and climate-change and brought together scientists, decision-makers, and professionals from India and Germany to present research projects across disciplines and analysis on the relationship of cities and climate.

Fraunhofer Office India had coordinated the participation of Fraunhofer IAO and IMW in this forum. Dr. Eva Ottendoerfer, Head of the Morgenstadt Network, Fraunhofer IAO was invited as a keynote speaker. She delivered a presentation on the “Morgenstadt Initiative - A Systemic Approach to Urban Transformation”. Mr. Urban Kaiser, Head of Innovation Acceptance Unit, Fraunhofer IMW was invited as a speaker in the session on “Citizen involvement in policy and science” in this forum. Additionally, Fraunhofer IAO had also held a booth and showcased some successful use case examples of its smart city projects coordinated across the globe.

28th CIRP Conference on Life Cycle Engineering was jointly organized by TU Braunschweig and BITS Pilani in virtual format from March 10th - 12th 2021.The objective of this conference was to engage and empower all participants to take the necessary actions required to develop technologies that foster sustainability worldwide and make “business as unusual” the new usual. The conference covered all life cycle phases and paradigms ranging from digitaliztion to water-energy nexus.

Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India was invited as a keynote speaker in this conference. She delivered a presentation on “The Changing Paradigm in the Innovation Ecosystems in India” , which was very well received by the researchers, industry representatives and environmentalists from both India and Germany.

The first virtual meeting of the Expert Group “Digital Agriculture India - Germany” was organized jointly by Fraunhofer, German Agribusiness Alliance and Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industries (FICCI), on February 18th 2021. The experts from both the sides discussed the topics of immediate importance that would uplift the Indian agriculture scenario by promoting applied research in development of innovative German technologies in the smart agricultural landscape. This meeting brought together the experts from Industry and Research from both the nations. Topics such as Intelligent Agri Ecosystem, Image recognition and Image processing, data platform for farmers, Precision agriculture, Smart development and IoT for Agritech and food analysis detection, were some of the very important out of the many topics that were deliberated upon, and further shortlisted for development of proposals. Dr. Ralf Kalmar, Head of Business Development from Fraunhofer IESE delivered a presentation on the project “Cognitive Agriculture - COGNAC”. Fraunhofer office India had also coordinated the participation of Prof P. Anandan, CEO, Wadhwani Institute for Artificial Intelligence, who delivered a presentation on “AI technologies for Agriculture” that are being developed at the Wadhwani Institute. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India coordinated this meeting and moderated the discussions.

Mr. Volker Lennart Plän visited Fraunhofer Office India on February 11th 2021 to discuss opportunities of collaboration in Water Innovation Hub - a recently developed concept by Fraunhofer IGB and Fraunhofer Office India. He was accompanied by Mr. Sandeep Dubey, Regional Head of HSS in Bangalore. 

Mr. Stefan Halusa has been recently appointed as the new Director General of IGCC. During his visit to Bangalore, he along with Mr. Sumit Sharma, Regional Director, IGCC - South India, had visited Fraunhofer Office India on February 11th 2021 to understand the activities of Fraunhofer in India, and deliberate on how Fraunhofer and IGCC can work together towards creating awareness for a larger stakeholder interaction between India and Germany in Research and Development and Innovation. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India received him and lead the discussions during his visit. Fraunhofer Office India team - Mr. Sanmati Naik, Sr. Manager - Energy (RE), Mr. Aditya Fuke, Manager - Smart Cities & IoT, Mr. Edwin Raj, Manager - Finance & Admin and Ms. Aishwarya, Executive Assistant, all participated in this meeting. 

Wipro is one of the largest IT companies in India spanning its business across IT services, consulting and system integration. It has offices in 62 countries including Germany. Fraunhofer Office India was already in process of discussing potential cooperation with Wipro Ltd. in the areas of Smart Manufacturing, Smart Energy, Smart Buildings, Smart Cities, Smart Mobility and Data Security. The CTO’s office of Wipro has shown keen interest to take the dialogue with Fraunhofer further in the most demanding topic that spans all the industrial sectors “Industrial Automation and Robotics”. To this effect, Fraunhofer Office India had coordinated a workshop between Fraunhofer IPA and Wipro Robotics Practice (Wipro Ltd.) on January 21st 2021 to discuss and explore an opportunity for collaborative research in Industrial Automation and Robotics. Several topics in this area were presented by Fraunhofer IPA, and topics like Roadmap for Demo Sprint on Micro-fulfillment and 3D Bin Picking are selected by Wipro for further elaboration based on the customer demands. Commercial models were also discussed and Fraunhofer IPA is expected to present an offer on these topics. This workshop was conducted in a virtual format. 

TSDSI is an autonomous, membership based, standards development organization (SDO) for Telecom/ICT products and services in India. It comprises of the Indian telecom operators and manufacturers, Academia and R&D organizations. It is administered by Dept. of Telecommunication, Govt. of India. The primary objectives of TSDSI are developing, promoting and standardizing India-specific Telecom/ICT requirements and solutions and taking Indian requirements to global standards. As an Associate member, Fraunhofer IIS can participate in all technical activities of TSDSI and make proposals for new technical activities on behalf of their organization. The main objective of Fraunhofer IIS would be to create an enabling environment for a standards oriented approach to product development and adoption. The key activity for Fraunhofer IIS lined up for 2021 is preparation of TSDSI roadmap 2.0, which will include:  Development of Rural Broadband Architecture,  CSI enhancement for 5G  Developing Smart IoT Data Platforms and Cloud - Interoperability  Mobile Data Protection and Privacy, Contact Tracing and Proximity Detection Fraunhofer Office India had coordinated the entire membership process for Fraunhofer IIS. 

Ms. Anandi Iyer has been invited by Dept. of Science and Technology (DST), Govt. of India to become a member in the panel on ‘Heavy EV Charging Standard’ under ETD51 Sectional Committee of Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), Govt. of India. This panel is responsible for coordinating inter-ministerial dialogue between Dept. of Science and Technology and Dept. of Heavy Industries to develop EV Charging Standards and formulate recommendations for Govt. of India. This committee focuses its activities on the Indian Use Cases, to help the wide deployment of low cost EV Charging Infrastructure and development of technology platform for electric mobility in India. In January 2021, this panel has conducted several meetings on topics like Plugin AC&DC Charging, Automated (Pantograph) Charging, Battery Swapping, Deployment Configuration & Renewables Integration and DC Charging Standards. The final recommendations of this panel to Govt. of India are expected in April 2022. 

The Indo - German Research Day was organized on December 3rd 2020 by German Centre for Research and Innovation (DWIH) New Delhi. Germany and India are important partners for research cooperation and have made heavy investments for further strengthening the bi-lateral cooperation with many initiatives and schemes. This event showcased the research landscape of Germany and presented opportunities available for research, funding lines for individuals and projects for joint research facilitated by Indian and German agencies. Ms. Anandi Iyer was invited as a speaker in the panel discussion on “Research cooperation at research and technology organizations in the Indo-German context”. The other speakers were Mrs. Poonam Sehgal Suri, Max Planck Gesellschaft (MPG), Dr. Rama Swami Bansal, Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), Dr. Almuth Wietholtz, Leibniz Association and Ms. Eva Portius, Forschungszentrum Juelich, and moderated by Ms. Aadishree Jamkhedkar from DWIH. The panellists discussed the role of research institutes and funding bodies from India and Germany, and shared their experiences and good practice examples from areas of research cooperation. The panel discussion was very well received by the audience who were majorly researchers, science managers, university representatives and important stakeholders from India and Germany. Fraunhofer Office India also held a virtual booth at this event showcasing the activities and sectors of focus for Fraunhofer in India. Mr. Aditya Fuke, Manager - Smart Cities & IoT, Mr. Sanmati Naik, Sr. Manager, Energy - RE and Mr. Rohit Rohilla, Manager - Production Technology represented Fraunhofer Office India at the booth during this event. 

The Global R&D Summit is an annual flagship event of FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry) organized in partnership with the DST (Department of Science & Technology, Govt. of India). The summit focussed on building resilient economies through technology and innovation by fostering Industry & Science collaboration in the New World Order. The Summit was held virtually from November 25th – 27th 2020. Fraunhofer was invited to be the Knowledge Partner to this summit. Ms. Anandi Iyer was invited to be the chair of the session on “Innovation Clusters Session: The Savant Strategists”, which focussed on discussion around innovation delivery model that works both locally and globally in the context of global pandemic. The other speakers on the panel were Mr. Javier Lopez Casarin - President, Council of Knowledge and Innovation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mexico, Mr. Nishith Acharya - CEO, Equal Innovation & Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress, Mr. Rene Van Berkel - UNIDO Representative, Dr. Dietmar Hueglin, Head, BASF Innovation Campus and Prof. Rishikesha Krishnan, Director and Professor of Strategy, Indian Institute of Management - Bangalore. The session was very well received by the audience of renowned global experts, senior policymakers, scientists, corporate thought leaders and start-ups. As a Knowledge Partner, Fraunhofer had conducted a Knowledge Paper on “Changing Paradigms: Indian Innovation Ecosystem”, authored by Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India and co-authored by Prof. Rishikesha Krishna, Director, IIMBangalore. The paper was released in presence of Prof. Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary, DST and Mr. Dilip Chenoy, Secretary General, FICCI along with other eminent industry leaders during this summit. The objective of this paper is to compare select international research and innovation ecosystems, outline key priorities and provide recommendations to strengthen the Indian Innovation Ecosystem. Successful case studies of an innovation ecosystem in water in India and setting up a network of applied R&D institutes in Brazil, both coordinated by Fraunhofer, are also a part of this study. The paper was very well received by all the FICCI members who deliberated on how higher synergies and collaboration between industry and science can result in long-term socio-economic development in developing nations.

AquaHub focuses on setting up of Water Innovation Hubs and Smart Water Monitoring systems to promote Indo-German cooperation. The project is coordinated by Fraunhofer IGB. The other partners of this project are Umwelttechnik Baden Württemberg (UTBW), Institute for Socio-Ecological Research (ISOE), Let’s Bridge IT, Nivus GmbH, Ribeka GmbH and trAIDe GmbH. The first kick-off workshop of this project was conducted on November 23rd 2020, where the partners discussed the vision of the Water Innovation Hub for India, identifying potential Indian partner for implementation, the structure of the advisory board and also drafted the concept of Smart Water Quality Monitoring System. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India participated in this workshop and presented the present status of water sector in India and the impacts of COVID-19.

The German Agribusiness Alliance and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) had organized a virtual international conference on October 8th 2020, focusing on “AI & Digital Applications in Agriculture” and invited Ms. Anandi Iyer to be a speaker in the panel discussion on “Future of Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture”. The conference was organized in cooperation with German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Indian Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare and NITI Aayog, Govt. of India. The other panellists were Mr. Munish Soni, Head - Business Strategy, Bayer CropSscience Ltd., Dr. Aruna Rachakonda, Marketing Director South Asia, Corteva Agriscience, Dr. Parvathy Chandrasekhar, Commercial Manager India, xarvioTM Digital Farming Solutions and Dr. Puran Mal, Senior Agronomy Specialist xarvioTM SCOUTING, BASF Digital Farming GmbH and Dr. Anna Kicherer and Dr. Katja Herzog, Julius Kühn Institute (JKI), Federal Research Centre for Cultivated Plants, Institute for Grapevine Breeding. The panel discussion was moderated by Ms. Julia Harnal, Chairperson, German Agribusiness Alliance. The conference received a huge participation from IT service technology providers, agro-industries and government officials from both sides of geography. 

The German Day Digitales was organized by IGCC to promote and strengthen economic and cultural ties between the India and Germany. It was a virtual event inaugurated by H.E. Walter J. Lindner, Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to India on October 3rd 2020. Fraunhofer Office India was one of the key partners to this event. Together with IGCC, Fraunhofer Office India had organized a high-level panel discussion on “Industry 4.0 – The fourth industrial revolution - Opportunities and Challenges” on October 5th 2020. The high-level panel consisted of Mr. Sunil Mathur, CEO and Managing Director, Siemens Ltd., Mr. Soumitra Bhattacharya, Managing Director, Bosch Group India, Mr. Clas Neumann, SVP & Global Head. SAP Labs Network and Mr. Abhay Firodia, Chairman, Force Motors Limited. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office moderated this panel discussion. The panel discussed the various nuances of Industry 4.0, the steps India needs to embrace for its faster adoption and the use of technologies like AI, IoT, AR, VR to augment its workforce. The panel discussion received a huge virtual participation from the top officials of governments and industries from both India and Germany. Further on October 7th 2020, German Centre for Research and Innovation (DWIH) had organized a special session and invited Ms. Anandi Iyer to be one of the panellists in this panel discussion on "Opportunities for Collaboration between Industry and Research Institutes in India”. The other panellists were Mr. Yogesh Zope, Chief Digital Officer, Kalyani Group & Sr. VP at Bharat Forge Ltd., Dr. A. Ajayaghosh, Director, CSIR – National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology (NIIST), Dr. P.V. Lalitha, Indo-German Science and Technology Centre (IGSTC) and Dr. R. Sunder, Research Director, BISS - Indian Institute of Science (IISc). Dr. Katja Lasch, Director, DWIH moderated this panel discussion. The panel discussed how companies in India can leverage the expertise and facilities of research institutes and how such a cooperation in research can lead to innovation and development of more models of successful contractual research.

Fraunhofer Office India had received an invitation to speak at the 16th edition of CII Innovation Summit on October 16th 2020, focussing on “Resilience & Resurgence: Innovating for Society 5.0”. Fraunhofer Office India had coordinated the participation of Prof. Dr. Boris Otto, Managing Director, Fraunhofer ISST in this summit. He was regarded as the keynote speaker by CII for the session on “Innovation in Manufacturing”. Prof. Otto delivered a presentation on “Data Sharing in Industrial Ecosystems” with a prime focus on technology as a driver for innovation and Industry. His presentation was very well received by the audience, who are the members of CII representing manufacturing ecosystem, technology experts, engineers, government and academia. 

Wipro Ltd., one of the largest IT Giants of India has expressed its interest to enter into a long-term strategic partnership with Fraunhofer in the areas of Smart Manufacturing / Industry 4.0, Renewable Energy, Mobility Concepts, Aviation Logistics, Smart Cities and Data Security. A workshop was organized with Wipro on July 10th 2020 at Fraunhofer Office India to discuss the modalities and to finalize the concept of cooperation, which will be presented to the respective boards of both the organizations. Mr. Anshuman Mukherjee, Partner and Head of Domain & Consulting Travel, Hospitality & Public Sector Business and Mr. Nisanth Ayyagari, Senior Consultant from Wipro attended this workshop. From Fraunhofer Office India, Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director and Mr. Aditya Fuke, Manager - Smart Cities & IoT coordinated this workshop.

Indo-German Business Forum had organised an online event series on the topic “Innovation: A smart investment in challenging times” on July 9th 2020, and invited Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India to be the guest speaker in this session. She spoke on the significance of collaborative technology partnerships between India and Germany to drive affordable innovation for the Indian geography. The event was very well received by the audience who represented manufacturing ecosystem - technology experts, engineers, government and academia. 

Ms. Anandi Iyer represents Fraunhofer in Confederation of Indian Industry CII’s National Committee on Solar Energy and National Committee on Smart Cities and Urban Development. She was invited for a special interactive session by CII with Mr. Hardeep Singh Puri, Minister of State for Civil Aviation, Housing and Urban Affairs and Commerce & Industry, on June 5th 2020. This interactive session is a part of a series of leadership engagements with the country’s top leadership over a virtual platform coordinated by CII. 

The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) - India had organized a webinar on “Future of Industry 4.0” on June 5th 2020, and invited Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India as a speaker on the panel, “Adopt Industry 4.0 or risk being overtaken”. The panel discussed the immediate financial impact on manufacturers due to COVID-19 crisis, the steps to be taken to shorten the recovery phase and use of technologies like AI, IoT, AR, VR to augment workforce post crisis. Ms. Iyer’s expertise and insights on Industry 4.0 to rework the roadmap for manufacturing in India was very well received by the participants, who represented manufacturing ecosystem of automotive, plant and factory heads, technology experts, engineers, government and academia. 

Fraunhofer Office India had coordinated the visit of Dr. Markus Wolperdinger, Director, Fraunhofer IGB to India on his interest to intensify the cooperation between Fraunhofer IGB and Indian companies. He visited Pune, Mumbai and New Delhi and was accompanied by Dr. Marius Mohr, Head of Innovation Field Water and Resource Recovery, Fraunhofer IGB. Fraunhofer Office India had coordinated a speaker slot for Dr. Wolperdinger in “International Business Summit” organized by Mahratta Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture (MCCIA) in Pune on March 3rd 2020. This summit had brought together dignitaries, senior government officials, experts, analysts, business leaders from India and abroad to deliberate on the impact of technology, policies, research, innovation and sustainability, which would drive future business growth around the world. Dr. Wolperdinger delivered a presentation on “Innovation Led Manufacturing for Sustainable Global Business” in the session on “Innovation led Global Business Prospects, FTAs and Risk Management” in this summit. His presentation was very well received by the audience.

Invest India - the National Investment Promotion and Facilitation Agency of Govt. of India and German Embassy in India had organized an Indo-German Start-up Collaboration Roundtable on February 28th 2020 in New Delhi. The roundtable was chaired by Mr. Christian Herte, Member of the German Parliament. The aim of the roundtable was to bring together key stakeholders to discuss ideas to further bridge the IndoGerman start up ecosystems and enhance mutual cooperation. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India was invited to deliver special remarks in the context of the Indo-German start-up ecosystem. After the roundtable, she also had a meeting with Mr. Rahul Nayyar, Vice-President AGNIi, Invest India.

The committee on Economic Affairs & Energy from German Parliament led by Mr. Klaus Ernst, (DIE LINKE), MdB - a left-wing German politician visited Bangalore on February 24th 2020 to explore the opportunity to have an Interactive session over various important topics like Start-up concept in Bangalore, latest trends and technologies in the IT Industry, Indo-German Initiatives and cooperation. In this regard, Mr. Karl Ehlerding, Acting Consul General, German Consulate Bangalore had organized an Interactive session and invited Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India to present an overview on the Indo-German initiatives and potential collaboration in the field of Artificial Intelligence. Her presentation was very well received by the committee members, which is responsible for all aspects of the transformation of Germany’s energy system, the associated issues in the field of climate protection and the topic of energy conservation. 

Dr. Katja Lasch has been newly appointed as the Director of German House for Innovation and Research (DWIH). She along with her associate had visited Fraunhofer Office India to meet with Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India for an introductory meeting to discuss the engagement between Fraunhofer and DWIH and the upcoming activities of DWIH in India. Fraunhofer is also one of the supporters of DWIH in India

Mahratta Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture (MCCIA) had organized a “Large Scale Industry 4.0 Summit” on February 4th 2020 in Pune. The main focus of this summit was to discuss the policy level initiatives from the relevant Ministries of India and abroad, and sensitizing the manufacturing industry about Industry 4.0 and steps leading towards it. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India was invited to present Fraunhofer’s profile in Industry 4.0 in the international session on “Scope for Collaborative Opportunities” in this summit. Her presentation was very well received by the audience, who represented large, medium and even small scale companies from India and abroad. A High Level Delegation from Karlsruhe and Baden Württemburg in Germany led by Ms. Theresa Schopper, State Minister of the State Baden Württemburg also attended this summit

Fraunhofer Office India participated at the ‘IMTEX Forming 2020’, South East Asia’s largest metal forming machine exhibition. It was a 6-day event that kick-started on January 23rd - 28th 2020. Fraunhofer Office India, showcased the capabilities of Fraunhofer IWU in Light Weighting of Automobile Components, Forming Technology, Forging Technology and Additive Manufacturing.

Dr. Andreas Sterzing was invited by IMTMA as a guest speaker to give presentation on forming technology and the advancement made in the area of forming technology at International Seminar on Forming Technology 2020, on 22 January. Over 250 delegates from 112 companies, representing a wide cross section of the metal working industry participated in the seminar. The presentation was focused to the forming technology and lightweight approach to the various components of automotive sector, shipping industry, and Aerospace. 

A delegation of experts from Fraunhofer, Frankfurt School of Finance, University of Stuttgart and National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) visited Kochi from January 13th - 22nd 2020 to conduct on-site assessment of the city under the cooperation between Fraunhofer and Cochin Smart Mission Ltd. (CSML) for the project “Kochi Smart City Innovation Lab”. Dr. Marius Mohr, Head of Group Bioprocess Engineering and Circular Economy, Fraunhofer IGB led the delegation. He is also the leader of this project. This was a very fundamental activity in the project, in which the experts interviewed the key stakeholders in Kochi in the following sectors of focus water, energy and building to draw an analysis of the city profile and define the critical areas of intervention in against climate change. The on-site assessment concluded with a “Smart City Project Development Workshop” on Jan 22nd 2020, where the results of the assessment were presented and the measures that CSML should embrace against climate change were discussed. 

Maratha Chamber of Commerce, Industries & Agriculture (MCCIA), Goethe Institute and Consulate General of Federal Republic of Germany in Mumbai had organized a conference on “Culture Fit” - German and Indian SMEs ‘ on November 29th 2019 in Pune, and invited Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India as a speaker to present the best practices of successful IndoGerman cooperation in India. She delivered a presentation on “Examples of Best Practices” of successful Indo-German cooperation in India. The main focus of the presentation was on building mutual trust and confidence between India and Germany to strengthen the scientific and industrial ties between two countries.

As a part of Global Innovation Alliances (GIA), the German Consulate General had participated in Bengaluru Tech Summit on November 19th 2019, together with Fraunhofer India and members of the BIGSUN network and conducted a session on Artificial Intelligence. During this summit Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India, spoke on ''How Artificial Intelligence is of huge importance to all of us and how it is going to be profound for our everyday life. Will it displace humans? No it won't. Artificial Intelligence is an assimilation of human intelligence onto the machine. The German government has a strategy paper just like India. In Germany, they want to focus on mobility, agriculture, production technologies, and healthcare."

This year Travelling exhibition “Germany’s Energiewende“ to India was organized in Bangalore and Kochi. This was a public exhibition on Germany’s transition to clean an sustainable energy sources. The exhibition opened on November 18th 2019 in Bangalore with a panel discussion on 'Energiewende in India - Status quo and the future'. The panel comprised of the following speakers - Mr. Martin Rohlmann, Cultural Officer of the German Consulate Bangalore, Prof. Tejali Kanitkar, National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Mrs. Palak Agarwal, CoFounder & COO, Batti Ghar Foundation and Mr. Amir Bazaz, Senior Consultant, Indian Institute of Human Settlements (IIHS). The German Consulate General in Bangalore had invited Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer office India to moderate this panel discussion. 

Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) - Telangana Chapter had organized an education summit in Hyderabad on November 15th 2019, and invited Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India to speak in the session on “Education-Research-Skills for Economic Growth”. Ms. Anandi Iyer delivered a presentation on “Converting Research into Products”. Her presentation was very well received by the audience, most of whom were from academia and industry focussing on workplace of tomorrow, which calls for a redesign of the higher education courses to enable students to develop new types of skills. 

Germany is amongst India's most important partners both bilaterally and in the global context. India and Germany have a strategic partnership since 2001, which has been further strengthened with the Intergovernmental Consultations (IGC) at the level of Heads of Governments allowing for a comprehensive review of cooperation and identification of fresh areas of engagement. H.E. Mrs. Angela Merkel, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany led the highest German Parliamentary Delegation to New Delhi on November 1st and 2nd 2019 for 5th IGC with Hon’ble Prime Minister of India Shri. Narendra Modi and his cabinet. 17 MoUs were signed during the 5th IGC. MoU between Fraunhofer and Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Govt. of India to promote, establish and expand Scientific and Technological Research Cooperation between India and Germany was amongst the 17 signed MoUs. 

Fraunhofer was a prominent part of the events and activities around the visit. Mrs. Anandi Iyer was present in New Delhi on the invitation of the German Embassy and the Indian Government, and participated in the official events around the visit. This included the Indo German Energy Forum where she was one of the dignitaries who inaugurated the business event ahead of the Forum. She also met with the Chancellor Delegation, and had detailed discussions with Mrs. Anja Karliczek, Federal Minister for Education and Research,Mrs Julia Kloeckner, Federal Minister for Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection as well as Mr. Christian Hirte State Secretary for Economics and Energy. Fraunhofer signed a MoU with the Council for Education and Scientific Research on the subject of partnership in Frontier Technologies, with focus areas being Water, Building Technologies, Battery Technologies and Advanced Production Technologies. Fraunhofer was also the Innovation Partner to the 63rdAGM of the Indo German Chamber of Commerce, where the Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel was the Chief Guest. 

The Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany- Dr. Angela Merkel inaugurated and attended 63rd Annual General Meeting of the Indo-German Chamber of Commerce (IGCC).

Fraunhofer was the “Innovation Partner” to the 63rd Annual General Meeting of the Indo-German Chamber of Commerce. Around 12 Indo-German companies and institutions displayed diverse products and services in the exhibition. Fraunhofer office India also coordinated a stand, featuring and showcasing the competencies in Artificial Intelligence, Industry 4.0, Smart city and Renewable energy through poster presentation. The stand was visited by industrial delegates, policy makers and individuals to see Fraunhofer competencies and how Fraunhofer can assist them as a technology partner.

Energy And Environment Foundation with the support of Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, Ministry of Jal Shakti, Government of India and NITI Aayog, Government of India have organised the 10th World Renewable Energy Technology Congress & Expo-2019 in New Delhi and invited Dr. Matthias Vetter, Head of Department Electrical Energy, Fraunhofer ISE as a speaker.

German Ambassador to India H.E. Mr. Walter J. Lindner is on a mission to understand the research landscape in India, and had expressed his keen interest to visit Fraunhofer Office India, understand its activities and interact with some of its important Indian clients. With this objective, Fraunhofer Office India had organized a roundtable and invited some of its very important clients and partners on July 23rd 2019, where they shared their thoughts and views on their cooperation with Fraunhofer. 

“Dr Torben Seemann, Managing Director, Fraunhofer Project Centre on Light weighting, Wolfsburg, speaking at the Light Weighting Conference by ACMA on April 30th 2019”, the conference was attended by Indian Automotive fraternity.

As one of the supporters of DWIH (German House for Innovation and Research), Fraunhofer was invited to speak at DWIH’s Annual Symposium 2019 focusing on Future of Work, held on March 19th and 20th 2019 in New Delhi. Dr. Moritz Haemmerle he delivered a presentation on ‘The Future Work Lab’ in the session on ‘Artificial Intelligence and New Working Environment’.

Mr. Aditya Fuke, Manager – Smart Cities & IoT represented Fraunhofer Office India in the Indo German Summit on Green Buildings and Sustainable Energy organized by RSET in Kochi on February 19th 2019, and he delivered a presentation on ‘Smart & Sustainable Cities: Morgenstadt Approach’ in the session on ‘What makes a City Smart?’

Ms. Anandi Iyer attended the 63rd Founders’ Day Lecture of the Indo-German Chamber of Commerce and the lecture was given by Ms Svenja Schulze, German Minister for Environment, Nuclear Conservation and Nuclear Safety.

Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India had coordinated a visit of a very high-level delegation of senior scientists from CSIR led by Dr. Shekhar Chintamani Mande, Director General, CSIR to Fraunhofer Institutes in Germany. During the visit of Prof. Frank Treppe, Managing Director Political and International Affairs & Associate Board Member, Fraunhofer Gesellschaft to India in January 2019, a meeting was organized with CSIR to identify potential collaborative opportunities. As a next step in this engagement, the CSIR delegation visited Fraunhofer IGB, IPA and IBP to identify specific research topics of mutual interest in additive manufacturing, coatings, image processing, lightweight construction technologies, functional materials, membranes, energy and water conservation and energy efficient buildings for developing collaborative R&D proposals.

Ms. Anandi Iyer represented Fraunhofer in the Seminar on Digital Transformation in Germany organized by the Indo-German Chamber of Commerce (IGCC) in Bangalore. During the seminar she also met with Prof. Dr. Andreas Pinkwart, State Minister of Economic Affairs, Innovation, Digitalization and Energy of North Rhine-Westphalia to discuss the activities of Fraunhofer in Digitalization.

IMTEX is a flagship event for the Indian metal cutting industry organized by Indian Machine Tool Manufacturers’ Association (IMTMA). It is South and South East Asia's apex exhibition showcasing the latest trends as well as technological refinements from India and other global players. The mega event attracts visitors from a wide spectrum of manufacturing and ancillary industries including key decision and policy makers as well as industry captains who are keen to source latest technologies and manufacturing solutions for their product lines.

For the last 6 years, Fraunhofer has been showcasing its capabilities in Lightweight technologies in Automotive components, forming technology and additive manufacturing along with select exhibits at IMTEX, and every year, Fraunhofer has received a constructive reciprocation for its capabilities from the organizers IMTMA. This year Fraunhofer was the knowledge partner to IMTMA for Industry 4.0 pavilion at IMTEX 2019. Under this partnership, Fraunhofer had organized a conference on ‘Factory of the Future’ on January 25th 2019 at IMTEX 2019. Fraunhofer was also offered a large exhibition space to showcase its Factory of the Future model. Fraunhofer institutes IWU and IPT participated and showcased their competencies along with select exhibits in light-weight materials, additive manufacturing, industrial process automation, human-machine interaction, autonomous systems, digital twins etc.

Prof. Frank Treppe, Managing Director Political and International Affairs & Associate Board Member, Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, Dr. Eckart Bierduempel, Head - Multinational Networking, Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, Dr. Andreas Sterzing, Division Director - Bulk Met-al Forming, Fraunhofer IWU, Mr. Peter Blau, Division Director - Machining and Removal, Fraunhofer IWU and Dr. Kristian Arntz, Head of Department Non-conventional manufacturing processes and technology integration, Fraunhofer IPT were the visiting Fraunhofer delegates for IMTEX 2019. Fraunhofer Office India also coordinated the visit of Ms. Renate Schimkoreit, Minister & Head Economics and Global Affairs, German Embassy to the conference on Factory of the Future.

Fraunhofer Office India and Rotary International had jointly to organized a Forum on Social Innovation, Technology and Enterprise with an objective of combining humanitarian efforts with innovation, which will deliberate the impacts Social Innovation has on society and organization, and its need in India. This event was organized in the evening on December 6th 2018 in Hotel Taj MG Road, Bangalore. Three Fraunhofer technical presentations followed by a panel discussion on Impact of Social Innovation both curated by Fraunhofer were the highlights of this forum. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India presented the Fraunhofer innovation Ecosystem. Dr. Thomas Schlegl, Head of Department, Energy System Analysis, Fraunhofer ISE presented on Energy: The Green Gold focusing on sustainable technologies in solar rooftops, solar pumps, AgroPV etc. Dr. Simon Schmidt, Head of Climate Culture Building, Fraunhofer IBP presented a visionary approach in developing sustainable technologies based on climate and socially compatible situations, as well as local solutions for the construction sector. Dr. Eckart Bierduempel, Head of Multinational Networking, Fraunhofer Gesellschaft and Vice President of World Association of Industrial and Technological Research Organizations (WAITRO) was one of the panelists in this forum.

Fraunhofer Office India has completed its 10 years in India in 2018. On this milestone achievement, Fraunhofer Office India had organized a high-level panel discussion in the evening of December 5th 2018 in Hotel Shangri-La, Bangalore on ‘Innovation - the Fulcrum of a Global Industry’ with marquee leaders from the industry and government namely Mr. Thomas Fuhrmann, Managing Director and CEO, TUV Rheinland India Pvt. Ltd., Dr. Makarand Sr. Vice President - Innovations, Reliance Industries Ltd., Mr. Anantha Sayana, Vice President & Head - Digital, Larsen & Toubro Ltd., Ms. Saloni Malhotra, Vice President - Innovations, Invest India, Govt. of India and Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India. The panel discussion was moderated by Prof. Dr. V. Sumantran, Chair-man, Celeris Technologies Pvt. Ltd. The panel discussed the innovation ecosystems across leading nations, India scenario challenges and opportunities, trends and way forward to scale up the Indian innovation ecosystem, with focus on skill development, scaling up Indian Manufacturing, digitalization and strengthening industry-academia link in India. The panel discussion was attended by a very select audience of industry captains and senior government officials, who are close business associates of Fraunhofer in India. This was followed by an exclusive networking dinner hosted by Fraunhofer Office India.  

Fraunhofer Office India and Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), Govt. of India jointly organized a tech dialogue on “Sustainable Building Materials – Way to Net Zero Emissions” on June 15, 2022. The session covered various topics such as “Geo-polymerization based Building Components” and “Waste-to-Wealth - Lightweight / Renewable Materials including Waste to Value Added Products” (TRL 5 & above) developed by Fraunhofer IBP and CSIR Labs, such as CSIR-CBRI, AMPRI, CRRI, SERC, and others. The session was jointly conducted by Dr. Simon Schmidt, Fraunhofer IBP, and Dr. Ashok Kumar, CSIR – CBRI. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India gave the welcome address on Indo-German Cooperation between CSIR and Fraunhofer followed by Dr. Rama Swami Bansal, Chief Scientist & Head ISTAD, CSIR, Govt. of India who introduced the tech dialogue series.

The tech dialogue is the first of the exclusive online Tech Dialogue Series under the MoU, which focuses on topics of Innovation and R&D in the areas of Sustainable Building Technologies, Battery Technologies, Advanced Production Technologies and Water Management Technologies. Innovation is the key to creating value for the business, and hence many organizations have been investing in innovation programs. Since employees have the best sense of the current business, employee-led innovation, when conducted well, has the potential to deliver high value to the business.

This tech dialogue saw 100 + participants and was very well received by the audience. The event ended with a very lively Q & A with Industry Interaction on industry specific problems under the thematic topic.

The India Global Innovations Connect (IGIC) began on June 2nd, 2022, was inaugurated by the Hon’ble Chief Minister of Karnataka Shri Basavaraj Bommai. In his inaugural speech, he said that “Technology is a part of life and innovations has been the order of development. All future technologies have a big space in Karnataka which will be a breeding ground to take off new technologies and so-called start-ups and the Government would go the extra mile to see that technology in Karnataka continues.” Karnataka is said to be one of the hotbeds of new innovations, technology, unicorns, and start-ups.

The IGIC event is the first of its kind that is being held on June 02-03 in the Conrad, Bengaluru. This conference will have around 22 sessions and more than 40 international speakers and well-known faces from the industry who will talk about various themes such as entrepreneurship, venture capitalists and innovation.

Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India, was part of the panel discussion, “Last Mile Connectivity: Converting research faster into business success stories.”  “In India we have fantastic fundamental research institutions and a vibrant entrepreneur ecosystem since generations. What is really missing is the lack of a robust and mature applied research ecosystem that caters to TRL 5 - 9. Once a proof of concept is there, how do you take it to the market? It requires strategic focus, prototyping, incubating, testing at industrial scale and fit- to- market. India really needs such intermediary institutions that accelerate research to the market in the shortest period of time, and foster innovation capital and productivity” said Ms. Anandi Iyer. The session spoke about the transitions from an idea into a successful company, from the perspectives of Israel. Israel with less than 9 million population has 40 unicorns. Ms. Karin Mayer Rubinstein, CEO & President, Israel Advance Technologies Industries, Israel was the Keynote speaker who presented the best practices that Israel has made so far and shared her perspectives on Israel and innovation. “Israel innovation is everywhere and in everything, a lot of technologies have come out of Israel.  Israel has been seen working with various startups, multinationals, incubators, academia and more,” said Ms. Rubinstein. The panel discussion touched on various topics such as how to develop programs and policies that promote collaboration between businesses and research organizations, fostering a more commercially oriented mindset among scientists and researchers and some of the lessons that could be drawn from successful countries who have translated innovative ideas into commercializable products or services.

The other notable speakers included, Mr. Anand Anandkumar, Co-Founder & CEO, Bugworks, India, Mr. Jagadeesh Gopalan, Senior Professor Dept. of Aerospace Engineering, Chairman, Centre for Excellence in Hypersonics, IIS, Bangalore, Co-Founder Ykrita Life Sciences, India, Mr. Manoj Gopalkrishnan, Founder & CEO, Algorithmic Biologics, India, and Mr. Srikumar Suyanarayan, Co- Founder, Chairman & CEO, Sea6Energy, India. The session was moderated by Mr. Woosuk Kenneth Choi, Editor, Future Planning Desk, The Chosun Ilbo Group, Director General, The Asian Leadership Conference, Republic of Korea.

Dr. Fritz Bickel, Director, Dr. Fritz India visited the Fraunhofer India Office along with his successor Mr. Arthur Becker. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India welcomed them and briefed them on Fraunhofer’s work in India. She also presented a short profile of Fraunhofer to the guests.

Dr. Fritz Bickel further discussed about production technology for solid state batteries and its future. It is currently being developed jointly by researchers at Fraunhofer IPA with the medium-sized companies Dr. Fritsch special machines GmbH and Dr Fritsch GmbH & Co KG. The research project has received funding of over one million euros by the state of Baden-Württemberg.

The aim of the Research into new mixing and sintering technologies for graded ceramic Solid-state electrolytes (EMSig) project is to build a demonstrator system in which solid-state batteries are built up layer by layer from only wafer-thin, homogeneous layers of powder and sintered, with the composition of the powder changing with each layer changed: At the transition between the electrode and the electrolyte, for example, more ceramic powder is gradually added – 25, 50, 75 and finally 100 percent. Although the project is still in its infant state, in two years, the entire production process should be mature enough to be can be used by the industry for large-scale battery production.

Fraunhofer Office India had organized a Fireside Chat on “SME Innovation and Technology Cooperation between India and Germany”, jointly with DWIH New Delhi on 26th April 2022. Dr. Rainer Frietsch, Head of the Competence Centre “Innovation and Knowledge Economy” from Fraunhofer ISI and Prof. Rishikesha T Krishnan, Director, IIM - Bangalore were the speakers who represented the German and the Indian side of the SME status and perspective respectively. The objective of the Fireside chat was to set the focus and attention on the structure of the SMEs in both countries, the imperative as well as challenges they face in forging a collaboration. The speakers shared the insights, experiences, and suggestions on how India and Germany can leverage the strengths of this industry segment and their entrepreneurial spirit which can impact economic growth in a very major way. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India moderated the discussion.

A delegation of experts from Fraunhofer IGB, IBP and IAO, University of Stuttgart and National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) visited Kochi on April 6th and 7th 2022 to conduct on-site assessment of the Government School in Elamakkara Ward, the area that has been selected to implement the pilot demonstrator that will include sustainable technologies in wastewater management, renewable energy infrastructure installation and development of climate smart buildings. Dr. Marius Mohr, Head of Innovation Field “Water Technologies and Resource Recovery” from Fraunhofer IGB led the delegation. The other members in the delegation included Ms. Sabine Giglmeier, Building Technology Expert from Fraunhofer IBP, Ms. Amruta Jayawant, Research Assistant from University of Stuttgart, Dr. Debjani Ghosh, Associate Professor and Ms. Anna Brittas, Research Assistant, both from NIUA.

Fraunhofer Office India and Siruthuli had jointly organized a meeting with the stakeholders, majorly from industry and CSR sponsors, to present the project and create an appropriate framework with industry participation for successful implementation of AQUA-Hub in Coimbatore. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India, set the context of the meeting, followed by technical presentations from Mr. Marc Beckett and Dr. Stefan Liehr. The objective of this meeting was to create a long-term cooperation between local industries in Coimbatore and German institutes and companies to identify and implement measures for overall sustainable water management in Coimbatore.

The meeting was very well received and also attracted a media attention from top houses.  A debriefing meeting with Mr. Raja Gopal Sunkara, Commissioner, Coimbatore City Municipal Corporation (CCMC) and CEO of Coimbatore Smart City Limited (CSCL) was organized on April 6th 2022. The Commissioner assured the project team of the complete support of para-statal agencies of CCMC towards successful implementation of AQUA-Hub in Coimbatore. The overall visit was coordinated by Mr. Aditya Fuke from Fraunhofer Office India.

The project “AQUA-Hub” aims to set up water innovation hubs to address challenges related to water and wastewater in the cities of Solapur (Maharashtra) and Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu), thereby making “Technologies made in Germany” accessible to India. Mr. Marc Beckett visited these cities from April 4th - 6th 2022 and met with important stakeholders from municipal administration to conduct city analysis for setting up a smart water monitoring system. In Coimbatore, Dr. Stefan Liehr from ISOE and Mr. Ashok Srinivasan from NIVUS Gmbh also accompanied Mr. Beckett during the visit. ISOE  nd NIVUS are the project partners in AQUA-Hub. Site visit in Coimbatore was organized by Coimbatore Smart City Limited. The project team visited and identified two lakes namely “Selvachintamani” and “Valankulam”, where smart water monitoring systems could be installed.

Fraunhofer Office India had coordinated the visit of Dr. Markus Wolperdinger, Director, Fraunhofer IGB to India on his interest to intensify the cooperation between Fraunhofer IGB and Indian companies. He visited New Delhi and Bangalore and was accompanied by Dr. Marius Mohr, Head of Innovation Field Water and Resource Recovery, Fraunhofer IGB. “I would like to express my sincere gratitude for the kind invitation and excellent organization by the Fraunhofer Office India, in particular I thank Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director of the Fraunhofer Office India, and her colleague, Mr. Aditya Fuke, Manager -Smart Cities & IoT. The informative and exciting meetings with the companies and organizations show the great potential that is still open for Fraunhofer IGB in India, especially in the field of sustainable circular economy, among others. I look forward with great enthusiasm to intensify our joint engagement in India.” said Dr. Wolperdinger.

The focus of his visit was to strengthen the cooperation between Fraunhofer IGB and India on the impact of technologies pertaining to circular economy and sustainability, which would drive future business growth for Fraunhofer IGB in India. With this objective, Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director and Mr. Aditya Fuke, Manager - Smart Cities & IoT from Fraunhofer Office India had coordinated meetings for him with topmost officials of IIT Jodhpur, L&T Construction Ltd., Ion Exchange, CII - ITC Centre of Excellence for Sustainability, Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung India, Hindustan Unilever Ltd. (HUL) and Bangalore International Airport Ltd. (BIAL). He was invited by the R&D facility of HUL at Bangalore to deliver a Townhall Lecture, which was attended by engineers and scientists from all the locations of HUL in India. Meetings with KfW India, German Embassy in New Delhi and German Consulate Bangalore were also organized.

Mr. Alexander Reck, Head of Digital & Transport, German Embassy, New Delhi and Ms. Heena Kalra, Advisor for Digital & Transport, German Embassy, New Delhi visited the Fraunhofer Office India along with Mr. Friedrich Birgelen, Deputy Consul General of the German Consulate in Bangalore.

Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India gave a short presentation on the Fraunhofer Profile in India. Mr. Sanmati Naik, Senior Manager, Energy and Mr. Rohit Kumar Rohilla, Manager, Production Technology also presented a short note on what Fraunhofer in India has been doing in the different sectors such as Energy, Aviation, Logistics, Electrification and Smart Mobility Concepts. Mr. Alexander Reck and Ms. Heena Kalra were also given a tour of the experience theatre at Fraunhofer Office India which showcases Fraunhofer competencies in different technology sectors.

According to the UNESCO report of 2021, more than 50% of women globally are graduates and master students in STEM. However, when it comes to the workforce, women are vastly outnumbered by men. Women are still under-represented in fields such as computing, digital information technology, engineering, mathematics, and physics. The sad reality is that most of these women dropout at crucial career points. It is not just due to skill inadequacy, but also a result of assigned stereotypical gender roles. Women are likely to face ‘dual role’ syndrome, wherein professional decisions are largely affected by their domestic responsibilities. 51% of women in tech fields feel burned out at work. They feel marginalized, stereotyped, and find a lack of opportunity when it comes to leadership roles. To mark Women’s Day, Women in Tech: Charging New Frontiers, Breaking Gender Stereotypes event was held on March 7, 2022 at the FICCI Federation House, New Delhi. The highlight of the event was the launch of the Women in Science and Entrepreneurship (WISE) council. The WISE Council together with FICCI Flo aims to empower women in Science & Technology as well as businesses to fearlessly aim high and achieve their best potential. The purpose of this endeavor is to break the gender bias and stereotyping among women in STEM by raising awareness, sharing the best practices and experiences of women leaders, and exchanging valuable knowledge that would help women all over the world aspire, achieve, and contribute to leadership positions in tech fields. 

The welcome address was given by Mr. Subhrakant Panda, Sr Vice President, FICCI and Managing Director, IMFA. Dr. Sangita Reddy, Past President, FICCI, Chair FICCI- FLO Empowering the Greater 50% and Joint MD, Apollo Hospitals Ltd in her opening address said, “When science has no gender, why should biases creep in? Let’s come together and break this narrative, break gender stereotype, and support women in tech. Its high time we realise that while the world needs STEM, STEM needs women and girls to come in.”

Smt. Smriti Irani, Minister of Women and Child Development, Govt. of India gave the keynote address for the event. “One of the greatest challenges we see for female scientific minds is their transition from technological educational institutions to positions of research. Science is not a man’s game, not a women’s game, it is everybody’s game,” added the minister. Prof K. Vijay Raghavan, Principal Scientific Adviser (PSA), Government of India gave the special address.

Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India and Chairperson, WISE Council introduced the WISE Council and shared its vision. “WISE Council will focus its activities on 5 levels she said. At the grassroot level of inspiring school and college girls to choose STEM as their chosen field, secondly at the level of training and  career advancement of women in the management levels to stay in the STEM field, thirdly to encourage women in senior management and research fields to take on leadership as well as Board positions, fourthly to sponsor and promote sponsorships as well as awards for outstanding women in STEM, and finally to create an international platform for exchange of experiences, best practices and mentorship. Following this the WISE Council was launched in the presence of the Hon’ble minister Smt. Smriti Irani. A pledge statement signed by over a hundred companies was also released urging all companies to stand against gender bias and stereotyping among women in STEM fields, and to educate and promote women STEM fields. Donate your laptop drive was also launched to help and encourage women to pursue STEM fields.

Special remarks were made by Ms. Montserrat Momán Pampillo, Deputy Head of Mission, Embassy of Spain in India. Ms. Inmaculada Riera, Director General, Spanish Chamber of Commerce, joined virtually and gave a very interesting international perspective on the Women in STEM. The concluding address was given by Amb Lakshmi Puri, Former ASG, UN, Deputy Executive Director, UN Women & Former Ambassador of India. The entire session was moderated by the Deputy Secretary General of FICCI, Ms. Jyoti Vij.

The event was followed by a power packed panel discussion by select representatives from Spain and Women leaders in STEM such as Dr. Janhavi Raut, Principal Research Scientist, Unilever Ltd, María Belén Mendizabal - Country Manager, LKS (Grupo Mondragón) and Founder and CMD of MBM Associates Planning & Sustaining, Ms. Priya Selveraj - General Manager, Country Head, Power Electronics Business in Siemens Games, Ms. Neeti Wahi, Group Chief Information & Digital Officer, Sterlite Power and Ms. Preeti Syal, Senior Specialist, NITI Aayog. The panel discussion was moderated by Mr. Jagdish Mitra, Chairman, S&T Council, FICCI. Although a lot of women enter engineering colleges, the biggest risk is the opportunity that lies is that making sure that their career progresses to senior level positions. There are no role models, mentorship, and support structure for women in STEM fields. During the panel discussion men and women in the senior roles were urged to take a stand to bring down gender bias. Companies needed to investigate their policies and provide flexible policies for women to help them have a good work life balance. Furthermore, women in senior roles could educate their male colleagues to support women employees in their teams. The gender gap cannot be bridged by only thinking what can be done for women, rather a lot needs to be done with the men to ensure they are active supporters for this cause. Mr. Nirankar Saxena, Deputy Secretary General, FICCI gave the concluding remarks of the panel discussion.

The 4^th webinar in the Science Curio Series, Fire-Side Chat: “Innovation and Applied Research made in Germany for the world” was held on November 9^th 2021. The series focused on the collaborations between Germany and India in the field of “Innovation and Applied Research''. The session was organized in partnership with Nuffic Neso India, Euraxess India, German Consulate Bangalore and Fraunhofer Office India. The aim of the series was to motivate young Indian researchers and foster collaborative opportunities between companies and education institutes in disciplines of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data analytics. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India and Dr. Samrat S. Kumar, Euraxess India were the panelists for the session. The event was moderated by Mr. Friedrich Birgelen, Deputy Consul General, German Consulate Bangalore. The event had a large participation with 500 registrations. The webinar received a very good response, with a lively participation during the Q&A session.

Mr. Friedrich Birgelen has been recently appointed as the New Deputy Consul General of the German Consulate in Bangalore. He had expressed his keen interest to visit Fraunhofer Office India to meet with the Fraunhofer Office India team and understand the research landscape in India. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India welcomed him and presented the activities of Fraunhofer in India and also briefed him on how Fraunhofer has supported the Indian companies in upgrading their innovation capabilities, which has set a benchmark for Germany’s R&D prowess in India. Fraunhofer is playing an active role in supporting and strengthening the aspect of applied research in India. Mr. Birgelen was accompanied by Mr. Karl Philipp Ehlerding, Former Deputy Consul General and Ms. Ambika Banotra, Adviser - Politics and Economics, from German Consulate in Bangalore. 

Fraunhofer Office India had organized a webinar on “Current Developments in Battery Technology - Highlights along the whole value chain” on June 30th 2021 conducted by Dr. Matthias Vetter, Head of Department - Electrical Energy Storage from Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, Freiburg, Germany. The webinar covered current scenario, application areas, research and development and Fraunhofer’s competencies in the entire value chain of battery technology starting from materials, cell production, components up to systems - processes including simulation, analysis, BMS, EMS, testing and certification and various technology interventions in the area. The webinar session was very well received by the Indian side with a good participation by 70+ attendees from 35+ organisations. Attendees appreciated R&D activities of Fraunhofer.

Fraunhofer Office India had organized a webinar on “Car Body – Forming (Sheet Metal), Manufacturing and Joining Technology” on June 28th 2021. Mr. Frank Schieck, Divisional Director, Sheet Metal Forming and Dr. Reinhard Mauermann, Head of the Institute, Head of the Forming Technology Department from Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tool and Forming Technology (IWU) were the speakers in this webinar session. The webinar covered topics like Press Hardening of Steel (PHS), Advanced High Strength Cold Forming Steel, Warm Forming of Aluminum, Hybrid Materials and Technologies, and Joining Technologies with examples from auto industry. The webinar received a very good participation from the Indian as well as German side and it was very well appreciated by Mr. Frank Schieck and Dr. Reinhard Mauermann.

DWIH had invited Prof. Dr. Martin Hofmann-Apitius, Head of Department “Bioinformatics”, Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing (SCAI) to deliver a science circle lecture on the theme “Making a difference in AI” on June 17th 2021 in a virtual format. The topic of his lecture was “Why should India and Germany partner up for AI?” The lecture dealt with the question of how the heterogeneity of the health systems in Germany and India could be used to create AI-based models for e.g. to validate personalized recommendations in oncology in completely different health ecosystems. 

DWIH had also invited Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India to chair the interactive session with Prof. Hofmann-Apitius that immediately followed his lecture. This session outlined how a strategic data collaboration between India and Germany could generate values ​​in the fields of agriculture, technology and mobility beyond the health sector. The session was very well received by the researchers, industry representatives and data scientists from both India and Germany.

National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA), Govt. of India had partnered with Kerala Institute of Local Administration (KILA), Govt. of Kerala and organized the Urban Thinkers Campus on the theme “Climate Action” on June 4th and 5th 2021. The Urban Thinkers Campus (UTC) is conceived as an open space for critical exchange between urban researchers, professionals, and decision-makers who believe that urbanization is an opportunity and can lead to positive urban transformations. Dr. Marius Mohr, Head of Innovation Field Water Technologies and Resource Recovery, Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology (IGB) was invited as a speaker to introduce the Kochi Smart City Innovation Lab, as a part of the Morgenstadt Global Smart Cities Initiative. Fraunhofer IGB is involved in the fields of water supply, wastewater treatment and flood protection and Dr. Mohr heads the City Lab in Kochi. 

Fraunhofer Office India had organized a webinar on “Technologies and Systems for Smart Power and Mobility“ on May 28th 2021. Dr. Steffen Kurth, Head of Department “Multi Device Integration” and Dr. Alexander Otto, Deputy Head of Department “Micro Materials Center” from Fraunhofer Institute for Electronic Nano Systems (ENAS) were the speakers in this webinar session. The webinar covered topics like Sensor technology for monitoring of equipment in the field of distribution of electricity, Radio based multi-sensor systems for high voltage overhead power lines, Reliability assessment of high power electronic components, Use of new materials such as SiC for power semiconductors to name a few.

The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) - India had invited Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India to moderate the leadership panel discussion on “Confluence of Digital Transformation and Industry 4.0” on May 21st 2021. Prof. Sunil Jha, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Delhi, Mr. Prateep Misra, Head of Technology & Product, TATA Consultancy Services, Mr. Gautam Dutta, Director, Siemens Digital Industries Softwar, Mr. Sachin Kulkarni, Head Automotive & Practice Head Digital Transformation, Tech Mahindra and Sebastiano Toffaletii, Secretary General of the European Digital SME Alliance, were other eminent speakers on the panel.

The panel discussed how Indian MSMEs can leverage emerging technologies like Data lakes, Platforms for supporting horizontal and vertical integration, Cloud Computing, AI/ML, IoT, AR/VR and cyber security etc. so that they become globally competitive and sustain over a long run. The session was very well received by the participants, who represented manufacturing ecosystem of automotive sector, plant and factory heads, technology experts, engineers, government and academia.

Morgenstadt Global Smart City Initiative Stakeholder & Solution Workshop for the city of Kochi was organized by Fraunhofer, University of Stuttgart, National Institute of Urban Affairs and Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, in support with Centre for Heritage, Environment and Development (C-HED) and Kochi Municipal Corporation (KMC). The workshop was held on April 21st 2021, and due to the critical situation created by the global COVID-19 pandemic, the workshop had to be held virtually.

The workshop was outlined to present the City Profile of Kochi and to discuss the proposed project ideas in order to develop a pilot project in Elamakkara ward in Kochi. After many months of analysis and evaluation in the Kochi City Lab, the sustainability profile of the city was officially presented to the Mayor and the important local stakeholders of Kochi. Mr. M. Anilkumar, Hon’ble Mayor of Kochi, initiated the proceedings with a welcome address. Afterwards, Mr. Petr Suska, Head of the Team Urban Governance Innovation (Fraunhofer IAO) gave a brief introduction to the MGI project as well as the process of the City Lab in Kochi. This was followed by a special address by Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director of the Fraunhofer Office India on the IndoGerman cooperation in Smart Cities and Fraunhofer’s significant contributions and initiatives in smart cities in India.

The session continued with the presentation of the City Profile results by the Fraunhofer experts. Firstly, Dr. Marius Mohr, Head of the City Lab Kochi (Fraunhofer IGB), presented the results in the water sector. The results for the energy sector were presented by Mr. Gerhard Stryi-Hipp, Head of the Group Smart Cities (Fraunhofer ISE), and Ms. Sabine Giglmeier, Business Development Manager and MGI sector expert (Fraunhofer IBP) presented the results in the housing and built environment sector. The second session focussed on project development, and was opened by Dr. Rajan Chedambath, Director of C-HED illustrating the activities in Kochi related to the proposed pilot project.

This workshop was facilitated by Fraunhofer Office India

Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India, Dr. Marius Mohr, Head of Department of Environmental Biotechnology and Bioprocess Engineering, Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology (IGB) and Mr. Aditya Fuke, Manager - Smart Cities & IoT, Fraunhofer Office India had a web-meeting with Mr. M. Anilkumar, Hon’ble Mayor, Kochi Municipal Corporation on April 19th 2021 to introduce the project “Kochi Smart City Innovation Lab” and to discuss the developments in it.

Fraunhofer Office India had organized a webinar on “Energy Harvesting technology to power wireless sensors in production environment“ on April 15^th 2021. Dr. Peter Spies, Group Manager “Integrated Energy Supplies”, Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits (IIS) was the speaker in the webinar session. The webinar covered topics like generic architecture of wireless sensors with energy harvesting, overview of different energy harvesting technologies and performance and application examples. The webinar received a very good participation from the Indian as well as the German side and was very well appreciated.

Fraunhofer Office India had organized a webinar on “Industrial Polymers and Plastic” on April 15^th 2021. The webinar was attended by industrial representatives from plastic, polymer and tyre manufacturing sector. Dr. Robert Brüll, Group Manager Material Analysis and Dr. Ingo Alig, Group leader Morphology and Dynamics from Fraunhofer Institute for Structural Durability and System Reliability (LBF) gave a presentation on Polymer Technology, Analysis Methods, Detection, Chromatography and Physical Characterization of Polymers and Plastic. The webinar received a very good participation from the Indian as well as the German side and was very well appreciated.

Fraunhofer Office India had organized a webinar on “Fraunhofer Blockchain Lab” on March 25^th 2021. Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Prinz, Vice Chair and Deputy Director of Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (FIT) was the speaker in this webinar session. The webinar covered topics like Introduction to blockchain concepts, classification of different blockchain technologies and identification of blockchain applications and their benefits. The webinar received a very good participation from the Indian side and was very well appreciated.

The Indo-German Forum: Cities and Climate was organized by DWIH New Delhi from March 16th-17th 2021 in virtual format. The forum addressed the multifaceted topic of urbanisation and climate-change and brought together scientists, decision-makers, and professionals from India and Germany to present research projects across disciplines and analysis on the relationship of cities and climate.

Fraunhofer Office India had coordinated the participation of Fraunhofer IAO and IMW in this forum. Dr. Eva Ottendoerfer, Head of the Morgenstadt Network, Fraunhofer IAO was invited as a keynote speaker. She delivered a presentation on the “Morgenstadt Initiative - A Systemic Approach to Urban Transformation”. Mr. Urban Kaiser, Head of Innovation Acceptance Unit, Fraunhofer IMW was invited as a speaker in the session on “Citizen involvement in policy and science” in this forum. Additionally, Fraunhofer IAO had also held a booth and showcased some successful use case examples of its smart city projects coordinated across the globe.

28th CIRP Conference on Life Cycle Engineering was jointly organized by TU Braunschweig and BITS Pilani in virtual format from March 10th - 12th 2021.The objective of this conference was to engage and empower all participants to take the necessary actions required to develop technologies that foster sustainability worldwide and make “business as unusual” the new usual. The conference covered all life cycle phases and paradigms ranging from digitaliztion to water-energy nexus.

Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India was invited as a keynote speaker in this conference. She delivered a presentation on “The Changing Paradigm in the Innovation Ecosystems in India” , which was very well received by the researchers, industry representatives and environmentalists from both India and Germany.

The first virtual meeting of the Expert Group “Digital Agriculture India - Germany” was organized jointly by Fraunhofer, German Agribusiness Alliance and Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industries (FICCI), on February 18th 2021. The experts from both the sides discussed the topics of immediate importance that would uplift the Indian agriculture scenario by promoting applied research in development of innovative German technologies in the smart agricultural landscape. This meeting brought together the experts from Industry and Research from both the nations. Topics such as Intelligent Agri Ecosystem, Image recognition and Image processing, data platform for farmers, Precision agriculture, Smart development and IoT for Agritech and food analysis detection, were some of the very important out of the many topics that were deliberated upon, and further shortlisted for development of proposals. Dr. Ralf Kalmar, Head of Business Development from Fraunhofer IESE delivered a presentation on the project “Cognitive Agriculture - COGNAC”. Fraunhofer office India had also coordinated the participation of Prof P. Anandan, CEO, Wadhwani Institute for Artificial Intelligence, who delivered a presentation on “AI technologies for Agriculture” that are being developed at the Wadhwani Institute. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India coordinated this meeting and moderated the discussions.

Mr. Volker Lennart Plän visited Fraunhofer Office India on February 11th 2021 to discuss opportunities of collaboration in Water Innovation Hub - a recently developed concept by Fraunhofer IGB and Fraunhofer Office India. He was accompanied by Mr. Sandeep Dubey, Regional Head of HSS in Bangalore. 

Mr. Stefan Halusa has been recently appointed as the new Director General of IGCC. During his visit to Bangalore, he along with Mr. Sumit Sharma, Regional Director, IGCC - South India, had visited Fraunhofer Office India on February 11th 2021 to understand the activities of Fraunhofer in India, and deliberate on how Fraunhofer and IGCC can work together towards creating awareness for a larger stakeholder interaction between India and Germany in Research and Development and Innovation. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India received him and lead the discussions during his visit. Fraunhofer Office India team - Mr. Sanmati Naik, Sr. Manager - Energy (RE), Mr. Aditya Fuke, Manager - Smart Cities & IoT, Mr. Edwin Raj, Manager - Finance & Admin and Ms. Aishwarya, Executive Assistant, all participated in this meeting. 

Wipro is one of the largest IT companies in India spanning its business across IT services, consulting and system integration. It has offices in 62 countries including Germany. Fraunhofer Office India was already in process of discussing potential cooperation with Wipro Ltd. in the areas of Smart Manufacturing, Smart Energy, Smart Buildings, Smart Cities, Smart Mobility and Data Security. The CTO’s office of Wipro has shown keen interest to take the dialogue with Fraunhofer further in the most demanding topic that spans all the industrial sectors “Industrial Automation and Robotics”. To this effect, Fraunhofer Office India had coordinated a workshop between Fraunhofer IPA and Wipro Robotics Practice (Wipro Ltd.) on January 21st 2021 to discuss and explore an opportunity for collaborative research in Industrial Automation and Robotics. Several topics in this area were presented by Fraunhofer IPA, and topics like Roadmap for Demo Sprint on Micro-fulfillment and 3D Bin Picking are selected by Wipro for further elaboration based on the customer demands. Commercial models were also discussed and Fraunhofer IPA is expected to present an offer on these topics. This workshop was conducted in a virtual format. 

TSDSI is an autonomous, membership based, standards development organization (SDO) for Telecom/ICT products and services in India. It comprises of the Indian telecom operators and manufacturers, Academia and R&D organizations. It is administered by Dept. of Telecommunication, Govt. of India. The primary objectives of TSDSI are developing, promoting and standardizing India-specific Telecom/ICT requirements and solutions and taking Indian requirements to global standards. As an Associate member, Fraunhofer IIS can participate in all technical activities of TSDSI and make proposals for new technical activities on behalf of their organization. The main objective of Fraunhofer IIS would be to create an enabling environment for a standards oriented approach to product development and adoption. The key activity for Fraunhofer IIS lined up for 2021 is preparation of TSDSI roadmap 2.0, which will include:  Development of Rural Broadband Architecture,  CSI enhancement for 5G  Developing Smart IoT Data Platforms and Cloud - Interoperability  Mobile Data Protection and Privacy, Contact Tracing and Proximity Detection Fraunhofer Office India had coordinated the entire membership process for Fraunhofer IIS. 

Ms. Anandi Iyer has been invited by Dept. of Science and Technology (DST), Govt. of India to become a member in the panel on ‘Heavy EV Charging Standard’ under ETD51 Sectional Committee of Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), Govt. of India. This panel is responsible for coordinating inter-ministerial dialogue between Dept. of Science and Technology and Dept. of Heavy Industries to develop EV Charging Standards and formulate recommendations for Govt. of India. This committee focuses its activities on the Indian Use Cases, to help the wide deployment of low cost EV Charging Infrastructure and development of technology platform for electric mobility in India. In January 2021, this panel has conducted several meetings on topics like Plugin AC&DC Charging, Automated (Pantograph) Charging, Battery Swapping, Deployment Configuration & Renewables Integration and DC Charging Standards. The final recommendations of this panel to Govt. of India are expected in April 2022. 

The Indo - German Research Day was organized on December 3rd 2020 by German Centre for Research and Innovation (DWIH) New Delhi. Germany and India are important partners for research cooperation and have made heavy investments for further strengthening the bi-lateral cooperation with many initiatives and schemes. This event showcased the research landscape of Germany and presented opportunities available for research, funding lines for individuals and projects for joint research facilitated by Indian and German agencies. Ms. Anandi Iyer was invited as a speaker in the panel discussion on “Research cooperation at research and technology organizations in the Indo-German context”. The other speakers were Mrs. Poonam Sehgal Suri, Max Planck Gesellschaft (MPG), Dr. Rama Swami Bansal, Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), Dr. Almuth Wietholtz, Leibniz Association and Ms. Eva Portius, Forschungszentrum Juelich, and moderated by Ms. Aadishree Jamkhedkar from DWIH. The panellists discussed the role of research institutes and funding bodies from India and Germany, and shared their experiences and good practice examples from areas of research cooperation. The panel discussion was very well received by the audience who were majorly researchers, science managers, university representatives and important stakeholders from India and Germany. Fraunhofer Office India also held a virtual booth at this event showcasing the activities and sectors of focus for Fraunhofer in India. Mr. Aditya Fuke, Manager - Smart Cities & IoT, Mr. Sanmati Naik, Sr. Manager, Energy - RE and Mr. Rohit Rohilla, Manager - Production Technology represented Fraunhofer Office India at the booth during this event. 

The Global R&D Summit is an annual flagship event of FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry) organized in partnership with the DST (Department of Science & Technology, Govt. of India). The summit focussed on building resilient economies through technology and innovation by fostering Industry & Science collaboration in the New World Order. The Summit was held virtually from November 25th – 27th 2020. Fraunhofer was invited to be the Knowledge Partner to this summit. Ms. Anandi Iyer was invited to be the chair of the session on “Innovation Clusters Session: The Savant Strategists”, which focussed on discussion around innovation delivery model that works both locally and globally in the context of global pandemic. The other speakers on the panel were Mr. Javier Lopez Casarin - President, Council of Knowledge and Innovation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mexico, Mr. Nishith Acharya - CEO, Equal Innovation & Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress, Mr. Rene Van Berkel - UNIDO Representative, Dr. Dietmar Hueglin, Head, BASF Innovation Campus and Prof. Rishikesha Krishnan, Director and Professor of Strategy, Indian Institute of Management - Bangalore. The session was very well received by the audience of renowned global experts, senior policymakers, scientists, corporate thought leaders and start-ups. As a Knowledge Partner, Fraunhofer had conducted a Knowledge Paper on “Changing Paradigms: Indian Innovation Ecosystem”, authored by Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India and co-authored by Prof. Rishikesha Krishna, Director, IIMBangalore. The paper was released in presence of Prof. Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary, DST and Mr. Dilip Chenoy, Secretary General, FICCI along with other eminent industry leaders during this summit. The objective of this paper is to compare select international research and innovation ecosystems, outline key priorities and provide recommendations to strengthen the Indian Innovation Ecosystem. Successful case studies of an innovation ecosystem in water in India and setting up a network of applied R&D institutes in Brazil, both coordinated by Fraunhofer, are also a part of this study. The paper was very well received by all the FICCI members who deliberated on how higher synergies and collaboration between industry and science can result in long-term socio-economic development in developing nations.

AquaHub focuses on setting up of Water Innovation Hubs and Smart Water Monitoring systems to promote Indo-German cooperation. The project is coordinated by Fraunhofer IGB. The other partners of this project are Umwelttechnik Baden Württemberg (UTBW), Institute for Socio-Ecological Research (ISOE), Let’s Bridge IT, Nivus GmbH, Ribeka GmbH and trAIDe GmbH. The first kick-off workshop of this project was conducted on November 23rd 2020, where the partners discussed the vision of the Water Innovation Hub for India, identifying potential Indian partner for implementation, the structure of the advisory board and also drafted the concept of Smart Water Quality Monitoring System. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India participated in this workshop and presented the present status of water sector in India and the impacts of COVID-19.

The German Agribusiness Alliance and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) had organized a virtual international conference on October 8th 2020, focusing on “AI & Digital Applications in Agriculture” and invited Ms. Anandi Iyer to be a speaker in the panel discussion on “Future of Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture”. The conference was organized in cooperation with German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Indian Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare and NITI Aayog, Govt. of India. The other panellists were Mr. Munish Soni, Head - Business Strategy, Bayer CropSscience Ltd., Dr. Aruna Rachakonda, Marketing Director South Asia, Corteva Agriscience, Dr. Parvathy Chandrasekhar, Commercial Manager India, xarvioTM Digital Farming Solutions and Dr. Puran Mal, Senior Agronomy Specialist xarvioTM SCOUTING, BASF Digital Farming GmbH and Dr. Anna Kicherer and Dr. Katja Herzog, Julius Kühn Institute (JKI), Federal Research Centre for Cultivated Plants, Institute for Grapevine Breeding. The panel discussion was moderated by Ms. Julia Harnal, Chairperson, German Agribusiness Alliance. The conference received a huge participation from IT service technology providers, agro-industries and government officials from both sides of geography. 

The German Day Digitales was organized by IGCC to promote and strengthen economic and cultural ties between the India and Germany. It was a virtual event inaugurated by H.E. Walter J. Lindner, Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to India on October 3rd 2020. Fraunhofer Office India was one of the key partners to this event. Together with IGCC, Fraunhofer Office India had organized a high-level panel discussion on “Industry 4.0 – The fourth industrial revolution - Opportunities and Challenges” on October 5th 2020. The high-level panel consisted of Mr. Sunil Mathur, CEO and Managing Director, Siemens Ltd., Mr. Soumitra Bhattacharya, Managing Director, Bosch Group India, Mr. Clas Neumann, SVP & Global Head. SAP Labs Network and Mr. Abhay Firodia, Chairman, Force Motors Limited. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office moderated this panel discussion. The panel discussed the various nuances of Industry 4.0, the steps India needs to embrace for its faster adoption and the use of technologies like AI, IoT, AR, VR to augment its workforce. The panel discussion received a huge virtual participation from the top officials of governments and industries from both India and Germany. Further on October 7th 2020, German Centre for Research and Innovation (DWIH) had organized a special session and invited Ms. Anandi Iyer to be one of the panellists in this panel discussion on "Opportunities for Collaboration between Industry and Research Institutes in India”. The other panellists were Mr. Yogesh Zope, Chief Digital Officer, Kalyani Group & Sr. VP at Bharat Forge Ltd., Dr. A. Ajayaghosh, Director, CSIR – National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology (NIIST), Dr. P.V. Lalitha, Indo-German Science and Technology Centre (IGSTC) and Dr. R. Sunder, Research Director, BISS - Indian Institute of Science (IISc). Dr. Katja Lasch, Director, DWIH moderated this panel discussion. The panel discussed how companies in India can leverage the expertise and facilities of research institutes and how such a cooperation in research can lead to innovation and development of more models of successful contractual research.

Fraunhofer Office India had received an invitation to speak at the 16th edition of CII Innovation Summit on October 16th 2020, focussing on “Resilience & Resurgence: Innovating for Society 5.0”. Fraunhofer Office India had coordinated the participation of Prof. Dr. Boris Otto, Managing Director, Fraunhofer ISST in this summit. He was regarded as the keynote speaker by CII for the session on “Innovation in Manufacturing”. Prof. Otto delivered a presentation on “Data Sharing in Industrial Ecosystems” with a prime focus on technology as a driver for innovation and Industry. His presentation was very well received by the audience, who are the members of CII representing manufacturing ecosystem, technology experts, engineers, government and academia. 

Wipro Ltd., one of the largest IT Giants of India has expressed its interest to enter into a long-term strategic partnership with Fraunhofer in the areas of Smart Manufacturing / Industry 4.0, Renewable Energy, Mobility Concepts, Aviation Logistics, Smart Cities and Data Security. A workshop was organized with Wipro on July 10th 2020 at Fraunhofer Office India to discuss the modalities and to finalize the concept of cooperation, which will be presented to the respective boards of both the organizations. Mr. Anshuman Mukherjee, Partner and Head of Domain & Consulting Travel, Hospitality & Public Sector Business and Mr. Nisanth Ayyagari, Senior Consultant from Wipro attended this workshop. From Fraunhofer Office India, Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director and Mr. Aditya Fuke, Manager - Smart Cities & IoT coordinated this workshop.

Indo-German Business Forum had organised an online event series on the topic “Innovation: A smart investment in challenging times” on July 9th 2020, and invited Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India to be the guest speaker in this session. She spoke on the significance of collaborative technology partnerships between India and Germany to drive affordable innovation for the Indian geography. The event was very well received by the audience who represented manufacturing ecosystem - technology experts, engineers, government and academia. 

Ms. Anandi Iyer represents Fraunhofer in Confederation of Indian Industry CII’s National Committee on Solar Energy and National Committee on Smart Cities and Urban Development. She was invited for a special interactive session by CII with Mr. Hardeep Singh Puri, Minister of State for Civil Aviation, Housing and Urban Affairs and Commerce & Industry, on June 5th 2020. This interactive session is a part of a series of leadership engagements with the country’s top leadership over a virtual platform coordinated by CII. 

The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) - India had organized a webinar on “Future of Industry 4.0” on June 5th 2020, and invited Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India as a speaker on the panel, “Adopt Industry 4.0 or risk being overtaken”. The panel discussed the immediate financial impact on manufacturers due to COVID-19 crisis, the steps to be taken to shorten the recovery phase and use of technologies like AI, IoT, AR, VR to augment workforce post crisis. Ms. Iyer’s expertise and insights on Industry 4.0 to rework the roadmap for manufacturing in India was very well received by the participants, who represented manufacturing ecosystem of automotive, plant and factory heads, technology experts, engineers, government and academia. 

Fraunhofer Office India had coordinated the visit of Dr. Markus Wolperdinger, Director, Fraunhofer IGB to India on his interest to intensify the cooperation between Fraunhofer IGB and Indian companies. He visited Pune, Mumbai and New Delhi and was accompanied by Dr. Marius Mohr, Head of Innovation Field Water and Resource Recovery, Fraunhofer IGB. Fraunhofer Office India had coordinated a speaker slot for Dr. Wolperdinger in “International Business Summit” organized by Mahratta Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture (MCCIA) in Pune on March 3rd 2020. This summit had brought together dignitaries, senior government officials, experts, analysts, business leaders from India and abroad to deliberate on the impact of technology, policies, research, innovation and sustainability, which would drive future business growth around the world. Dr. Wolperdinger delivered a presentation on “Innovation Led Manufacturing for Sustainable Global Business” in the session on “Innovation led Global Business Prospects, FTAs and Risk Management” in this summit. His presentation was very well received by the audience.

Invest India - the National Investment Promotion and Facilitation Agency of Govt. of India and German Embassy in India had organized an Indo-German Start-up Collaboration Roundtable on February 28th 2020 in New Delhi. The roundtable was chaired by Mr. Christian Herte, Member of the German Parliament. The aim of the roundtable was to bring together key stakeholders to discuss ideas to further bridge the IndoGerman start up ecosystems and enhance mutual cooperation. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India was invited to deliver special remarks in the context of the Indo-German start-up ecosystem. After the roundtable, she also had a meeting with Mr. Rahul Nayyar, Vice-President AGNIi, Invest India.

The committee on Economic Affairs & Energy from German Parliament led by Mr. Klaus Ernst, (DIE LINKE), MdB - a left-wing German politician visited Bangalore on February 24th 2020 to explore the opportunity to have an Interactive session over various important topics like Start-up concept in Bangalore, latest trends and technologies in the IT Industry, Indo-German Initiatives and cooperation. In this regard, Mr. Karl Ehlerding, Acting Consul General, German Consulate Bangalore had organized an Interactive session and invited Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India to present an overview on the Indo-German initiatives and potential collaboration in the field of Artificial Intelligence. Her presentation was very well received by the committee members, which is responsible for all aspects of the transformation of Germany’s energy system, the associated issues in the field of climate protection and the topic of energy conservation. 

Dr. Katja Lasch has been newly appointed as the Director of German House for Innovation and Research (DWIH). She along with her associate had visited Fraunhofer Office India to meet with Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India for an introductory meeting to discuss the engagement between Fraunhofer and DWIH and the upcoming activities of DWIH in India. Fraunhofer is also one of the supporters of DWIH in India

Mahratta Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture (MCCIA) had organized a “Large Scale Industry 4.0 Summit” on February 4th 2020 in Pune. The main focus of this summit was to discuss the policy level initiatives from the relevant Ministries of India and abroad, and sensitizing the manufacturing industry about Industry 4.0 and steps leading towards it. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India was invited to present Fraunhofer’s profile in Industry 4.0 in the international session on “Scope for Collaborative Opportunities” in this summit. Her presentation was very well received by the audience, who represented large, medium and even small scale companies from India and abroad. A High Level Delegation from Karlsruhe and Baden Württemburg in Germany led by Ms. Theresa Schopper, State Minister of the State Baden Württemburg also attended this summit

Fraunhofer Office India participated at the ‘IMTEX Forming 2020’, South East Asia’s largest metal forming machine exhibition. It was a 6-day event that kick-started on January 23rd - 28th 2020. Fraunhofer Office India, showcased the capabilities of Fraunhofer IWU in Light Weighting of Automobile Components, Forming Technology, Forging Technology and Additive Manufacturing.

Dr. Andreas Sterzing was invited by IMTMA as a guest speaker to give presentation on forming technology and the advancement made in the area of forming technology at International Seminar on Forming Technology 2020, on 22 January. Over 250 delegates from 112 companies, representing a wide cross section of the metal working industry participated in the seminar. The presentation was focused to the forming technology and lightweight approach to the various components of automotive sector, shipping industry, and Aerospace. 

A delegation of experts from Fraunhofer, Frankfurt School of Finance, University of Stuttgart and National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) visited Kochi from January 13th - 22nd 2020 to conduct on-site assessment of the city under the cooperation between Fraunhofer and Cochin Smart Mission Ltd. (CSML) for the project “Kochi Smart City Innovation Lab”. Dr. Marius Mohr, Head of Group Bioprocess Engineering and Circular Economy, Fraunhofer IGB led the delegation. He is also the leader of this project. This was a very fundamental activity in the project, in which the experts interviewed the key stakeholders in Kochi in the following sectors of focus water, energy and building to draw an analysis of the city profile and define the critical areas of intervention in against climate change. The on-site assessment concluded with a “Smart City Project Development Workshop” on Jan 22nd 2020, where the results of the assessment were presented and the measures that CSML should embrace against climate change were discussed. 

Maratha Chamber of Commerce, Industries & Agriculture (MCCIA), Goethe Institute and Consulate General of Federal Republic of Germany in Mumbai had organized a conference on “Culture Fit” - German and Indian SMEs ‘ on November 29th 2019 in Pune, and invited Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India as a speaker to present the best practices of successful IndoGerman cooperation in India. She delivered a presentation on “Examples of Best Practices” of successful Indo-German cooperation in India. The main focus of the presentation was on building mutual trust and confidence between India and Germany to strengthen the scientific and industrial ties between two countries.

As a part of Global Innovation Alliances (GIA), the German Consulate General had participated in Bengaluru Tech Summit on November 19th 2019, together with Fraunhofer India and members of the BIGSUN network and conducted a session on Artificial Intelligence. During this summit Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India, spoke on ''How Artificial Intelligence is of huge importance to all of us and how it is going to be profound for our everyday life. Will it displace humans? No it won't. Artificial Intelligence is an assimilation of human intelligence onto the machine. The German government has a strategy paper just like India. In Germany, they want to focus on mobility, agriculture, production technologies, and healthcare."

This year Travelling exhibition “Germany’s Energiewende“ to India was organized in Bangalore and Kochi. This was a public exhibition on Germany’s transition to clean an sustainable energy sources. The exhibition opened on November 18th 2019 in Bangalore with a panel discussion on 'Energiewende in India - Status quo and the future'. The panel comprised of the following speakers - Mr. Martin Rohlmann, Cultural Officer of the German Consulate Bangalore, Prof. Tejali Kanitkar, National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Mrs. Palak Agarwal, CoFounder & COO, Batti Ghar Foundation and Mr. Amir Bazaz, Senior Consultant, Indian Institute of Human Settlements (IIHS). The German Consulate General in Bangalore had invited Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer office India to moderate this panel discussion. 

Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) - Telangana Chapter had organized an education summit in Hyderabad on November 15th 2019, and invited Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India to speak in the session on “Education-Research-Skills for Economic Growth”. Ms. Anandi Iyer delivered a presentation on “Converting Research into Products”. Her presentation was very well received by the audience, most of whom were from academia and industry focussing on workplace of tomorrow, which calls for a redesign of the higher education courses to enable students to develop new types of skills. 

Germany is amongst India's most important partners both bilaterally and in the global context. India and Germany have a strategic partnership since 2001, which has been further strengthened with the Intergovernmental Consultations (IGC) at the level of Heads of Governments allowing for a comprehensive review of cooperation and identification of fresh areas of engagement. H.E. Mrs. Angela Merkel, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany led the highest German Parliamentary Delegation to New Delhi on November 1st and 2nd 2019 for 5th IGC with Hon’ble Prime Minister of India Shri. Narendra Modi and his cabinet. 17 MoUs were signed during the 5th IGC. MoU between Fraunhofer and Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Govt. of India to promote, establish and expand Scientific and Technological Research Cooperation between India and Germany was amongst the 17 signed MoUs. 

Fraunhofer was a prominent part of the events and activities around the visit. Mrs. Anandi Iyer was present in New Delhi on the invitation of the German Embassy and the Indian Government, and participated in the official events around the visit. This included the Indo German Energy Forum where she was one of the dignitaries who inaugurated the business event ahead of the Forum. She also met with the Chancellor Delegation, and had detailed discussions with Mrs. Anja Karliczek, Federal Minister for Education and Research,Mrs Julia Kloeckner, Federal Minister for Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection as well as Mr. Christian Hirte State Secretary for Economics and Energy. Fraunhofer signed a MoU with the Council for Education and Scientific Research on the subject of partnership in Frontier Technologies, with focus areas being Water, Building Technologies, Battery Technologies and Advanced Production Technologies. Fraunhofer was also the Innovation Partner to the 63rdAGM of the Indo German Chamber of Commerce, where the Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel was the Chief Guest. 

The Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany- Dr. Angela Merkel inaugurated and attended 63rd Annual General Meeting of the Indo-German Chamber of Commerce (IGCC).

Fraunhofer was the “Innovation Partner” to the 63rd Annual General Meeting of the Indo-German Chamber of Commerce. Around 12 Indo-German companies and institutions displayed diverse products and services in the exhibition. Fraunhofer office India also coordinated a stand, featuring and showcasing the competencies in Artificial Intelligence, Industry 4.0, Smart city and Renewable energy through poster presentation. The stand was visited by industrial delegates, policy makers and individuals to see Fraunhofer competencies and how Fraunhofer can assist them as a technology partner.

Energy And Environment Foundation with the support of Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, Ministry of Jal Shakti, Government of India and NITI Aayog, Government of India have organised the 10th World Renewable Energy Technology Congress & Expo-2019 in New Delhi and invited Dr. Matthias Vetter, Head of Department Electrical Energy, Fraunhofer ISE as a speaker.

German Ambassador to India H.E. Mr. Walter J. Lindner is on a mission to understand the research landscape in India, and had expressed his keen interest to visit Fraunhofer Office India, understand its activities and interact with some of its important Indian clients. With this objective, Fraunhofer Office India had organized a roundtable and invited some of its very important clients and partners on July 23rd 2019, where they shared their thoughts and views on their cooperation with Fraunhofer. 

“Dr Torben Seemann, Managing Director, Fraunhofer Project Centre on Light weighting, Wolfsburg, speaking at the Light Weighting Conference by ACMA on April 30th 2019”, the conference was attended by Indian Automotive fraternity.

As one of the supporters of DWIH (German House for Innovation and Research), Fraunhofer was invited to speak at DWIH’s Annual Symposium 2019 focusing on Future of Work, held on March 19th and 20th 2019 in New Delhi. Dr. Moritz Haemmerle he delivered a presentation on ‘The Future Work Lab’ in the session on ‘Artificial Intelligence and New Working Environment’.

Mr. Aditya Fuke, Manager – Smart Cities & IoT represented Fraunhofer Office India in the Indo German Summit on Green Buildings and Sustainable Energy organized by RSET in Kochi on February 19th 2019, and he delivered a presentation on ‘Smart & Sustainable Cities: Morgenstadt Approach’ in the session on ‘What makes a City Smart?’

Ms. Anandi Iyer attended the 63rd Founders’ Day Lecture of the Indo-German Chamber of Commerce and the lecture was given by Ms Svenja Schulze, German Minister for Environment, Nuclear Conservation and Nuclear Safety.

Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India had coordinated a visit of a very high-level delegation of senior scientists from CSIR led by Dr. Shekhar Chintamani Mande, Director General, CSIR to Fraunhofer Institutes in Germany. During the visit of Prof. Frank Treppe, Managing Director Political and International Affairs & Associate Board Member, Fraunhofer Gesellschaft to India in January 2019, a meeting was organized with CSIR to identify potential collaborative opportunities. As a next step in this engagement, the CSIR delegation visited Fraunhofer IGB, IPA and IBP to identify specific research topics of mutual interest in additive manufacturing, coatings, image processing, lightweight construction technologies, functional materials, membranes, energy and water conservation and energy efficient buildings for developing collaborative R&D proposals.

Ms. Anandi Iyer represented Fraunhofer in the Seminar on Digital Transformation in Germany organized by the Indo-German Chamber of Commerce (IGCC) in Bangalore. During the seminar she also met with Prof. Dr. Andreas Pinkwart, State Minister of Economic Affairs, Innovation, Digitalization and Energy of North Rhine-Westphalia to discuss the activities of Fraunhofer in Digitalization.

IMTEX is a flagship event for the Indian metal cutting industry organized by Indian Machine Tool Manufacturers’ Association (IMTMA). It is South and South East Asia's apex exhibition showcasing the latest trends as well as technological refinements from India and other global players. The mega event attracts visitors from a wide spectrum of manufacturing and ancillary industries including key decision and policy makers as well as industry captains who are keen to source latest technologies and manufacturing solutions for their product lines.

For the last 6 years, Fraunhofer has been showcasing its capabilities in Lightweight technologies in Automotive components, forming technology and additive manufacturing along with select exhibits at IMTEX, and every year, Fraunhofer has received a constructive reciprocation for its capabilities from the organizers IMTMA. This year Fraunhofer was the knowledge partner to IMTMA for Industry 4.0 pavilion at IMTEX 2019. Under this partnership, Fraunhofer had organized a conference on ‘Factory of the Future’ on January 25th 2019 at IMTEX 2019. Fraunhofer was also offered a large exhibition space to showcase its Factory of the Future model. Fraunhofer institutes IWU and IPT participated and showcased their competencies along with select exhibits in light-weight materials, additive manufacturing, industrial process automation, human-machine interaction, autonomous systems, digital twins etc.

Prof. Frank Treppe, Managing Director Political and International Affairs & Associate Board Member, Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, Dr. Eckart Bierduempel, Head - Multinational Networking, Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, Dr. Andreas Sterzing, Division Director - Bulk Met-al Forming, Fraunhofer IWU, Mr. Peter Blau, Division Director - Machining and Removal, Fraunhofer IWU and Dr. Kristian Arntz, Head of Department Non-conventional manufacturing processes and technology integration, Fraunhofer IPT were the visiting Fraunhofer delegates for IMTEX 2019. Fraunhofer Office India also coordinated the visit of Ms. Renate Schimkoreit, Minister & Head Economics and Global Affairs, German Embassy to the conference on Factory of the Future.

Fraunhofer Office India and Rotary International had jointly to organized a Forum on Social Innovation, Technology and Enterprise with an objective of combining humanitarian efforts with innovation, which will deliberate the impacts Social Innovation has on society and organization, and its need in India. This event was organized in the evening on December 6th 2018 in Hotel Taj MG Road, Bangalore. Three Fraunhofer technical presentations followed by a panel discussion on Impact of Social Innovation both curated by Fraunhofer were the highlights of this forum. Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India presented the Fraunhofer innovation Ecosystem. Dr. Thomas Schlegl, Head of Department, Energy System Analysis, Fraunhofer ISE presented on Energy: The Green Gold focusing on sustainable technologies in solar rooftops, solar pumps, AgroPV etc. Dr. Simon Schmidt, Head of Climate Culture Building, Fraunhofer IBP presented a visionary approach in developing sustainable technologies based on climate and socially compatible situations, as well as local solutions for the construction sector. Dr. Eckart Bierduempel, Head of Multinational Networking, Fraunhofer Gesellschaft and Vice President of World Association of Industrial and Technological Research Organizations (WAITRO) was one of the panelists in this forum.

Fraunhofer Office India has completed its 10 years in India in 2018. On this milestone achievement, Fraunhofer Office India had organized a high-level panel discussion in the evening of December 5th 2018 in Hotel Shangri-La, Bangalore on ‘Innovation - the Fulcrum of a Global Industry’ with marquee leaders from the industry and government namely Mr. Thomas Fuhrmann, Managing Director and CEO, TUV Rheinland India Pvt. Ltd., Dr. Makarand Sr. Vice President - Innovations, Reliance Industries Ltd., Mr. Anantha Sayana, Vice President & Head - Digital, Larsen & Toubro Ltd., Ms. Saloni Malhotra, Vice President - Innovations, Invest India, Govt. of India and Ms. Anandi Iyer, Director, Fraunhofer Office India. The panel discussion was moderated by Prof. Dr. V. Sumantran, Chair-man, Celeris Technologies Pvt. Ltd. The panel discussed the innovation ecosystems across leading nations, India scenario challenges and opportunities, trends and way forward to scale up the Indian innovation ecosystem, with focus on skill development, scaling up Indian Manufacturing, digitalization and strengthening industry-academia link in India. The panel discussion was attended by a very select audience of industry captains and senior government officials, who are close business associates of Fraunhofer in India. This was followed by an exclusive networking dinner hosted by Fraunhofer Office India.