Beyond 5G: Bringing 6G to the Factory Floor
Starting in January 2026, the project “6GEM+: Value-oriented 6G Communication Systems for the Networked Digital Industry” has officially launched. Led by Professor Haris Gačanin, who holds the Chair for Distributed Signal Processing at our faculty, this initiative marks the transition from pure research to practical industrial transfer.
RUB, Marquard
While 5G laid the groundwork for mobile connectivity, it faces limitations in demanding industrial environments. Current systems often struggle with integrated AI computing, real-time data transmission, and the ultra-low latency required for advanced robotics. The 6GEM+ Transfer Hub is designed to overcome these barriers, ensuring that the next generation of networks can support fully autonomous logistics and AI-driven production.
Supported by 25 million euros in funding from the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space (BMFTR), the project will run for four years. It brings together a powerful consortium including TU Dortmund, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, and the Fraunhofer Institutes for Production Technology (IPT) and Material Flow and Logistics (IML). A key element of this project is the involvement of industrial “use-case mentors” who provide real-world insights to ensure that the developed technologies are not just innovative, but ready for the factory floor.
Invitation to a lecture: AI and medicine – three practical examples
Researchers from Uniklinik RWTH Aachen cordially invite you to attend a public online lecture entitled ‘AI and Medicine – Three Practical Examples.’ The event will take place on Wednesday, 21 January 2026, from 5:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. as a Zoom lecture followed by a discussion. Participation is free of charge, and a video recording will be made available afterwards.
Photos Own images Truhn, Boor, Martin
The lecture will focus on how artificial intelligence (AI) already supports medical practice today and what challenges still stand in the way of its widespread clinical application. Using the three fields of application of radiology, pathology and intensive care medicine as examples, researchers from Aachen University Hospital will provide practical insights into current developments at the interface between medicine and computer science.
In radiology, AI has great potential, particularly in image analysis. Prof. Dr. Daniel Truhn uses breast cancer detection as an example to show how AI-based methods are already being used today, where they can support doctors, and why the path to routine care is still proving challenging. Radiology is currently in a transitional phase in which the first algorithms are finding their way into everyday clinical practice, but technical, regulatory and organisational hurdles still remain.
AI-supported methods are also changing diagnostic practice in pathology. Prof. Dr. Peter Boor explains how deep learning applications are already being used and what conditions are necessary for their efficient deployment. Digital infrastructure plays a central role here, but it is not yet available nationwide, particularly in Germany. The presentation shows how AI influences daily work in pathology and what developments can be expected in the future.
Intensive care medicine continuously generates large amounts of diverse data that must be evaluated on an ongoing basis in order to adjust treatment decisions. Dr Lukas Martin presents AI approaches that can help to make better use of this data, relieve the burden on medical staff and improve the quality and outcome of treatment. In addition to technical implementation, regulatory aspects and issues of acceptance among staff, patients and relatives will also be discussed.
The lecture is being held in cooperation with the Faculty of Computer Science at RWTH Aachen University, Forschungszentrum Jülich, the German Informatics Society, the Regional Industry Club for Computer Science in Aachen, Aachen University of Applied Sciences and the Aachen group of the German University Association, and highlights the importance of interdisciplinary cooperation for the use of AI in medicine.
Access to webinar and video
Picture Coding Symposium 2025: Global Video Coding Experts at RWTH Aachen
Aachen became the global hub for image and video coding this December. For the first time, the renowned Picture Coding Symposium (PCS) was held at RWTH Aachen. Led by Professor Mathias Wien and Professor Jörn Ostermann, 162 participants from 19 countries gathered at the SuperC to share cutting-edge research.
Foto: Mirco Seidler
A Tribute to Professor Jens-Rainer Ohm A major highlight was the honoring of Professor Jens-Rainer Ohm, former head of the Institute for Communications Engineering. His work on global standards like AVC, HEVC, and VVC is the foundation for video transmission on nearly every modern television and mobile phone.
The interactive atmosphere promoted the exchange of knowledge and ideas between international researchers from both academia and industry. The organizers were pleased with the positive feedback and emphasized the importance of such events for scientific progress and international cooperation.
RWTH Electrical Engineering Ranks 8th in Europe
Our Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology continues to set benchmarks for excellence. In the latest EngiRank 2025, RWTH Aachen secured the 7th position among 239 technical universities in Europe, with our department leading the way:
Top 10 in Europe: Our Electrical Engineering program is officially ranked 8th across the entire continent.
Excellence in Scores: Achieving 91.91 out of 100 possible points, RWTH has shown steady improvement and maintains its position as the #2 technical university in Germany.
Driven by Innovation: The ranking highlights our outstanding performance in research, internationalization, and the number of patents filed.
Martin Braun
This ranking reinforces our faculty’s reputation as a global leader in technology and innovation. To our students and staff: thank you for making us one of Europe’s elite engineering institutions!
Three outstanding theses from our faculty awarded the Friedrich Wilhelm Prize 2025
At the Friedrich Wilhelm Prize award ceremony on Friday, a total of 17 students and doctoral candidates from RWTH Aachen University were honoured for their outstanding scientific work. Among them were three award winners from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology.
The award winners from our faculty were Jonas Timon Schroeder, M.Sc., for his master’s thesis (supervised by Prof. Monti), Dr.-Ing. David Wasylowski for his dissertation (supervised by Prof. Sauer) and Dr.-Ing. Felix Jiang for his dissertation (supervised by Prof. Ingebrandt). The prizes were presented by RWTH Rector Ulrich Rüdiger in the auditorium of the main building; with musical accompaniment provided by the RWTH Big Band.
Photo: Andreas Schmitter
The Friedrich Wilhelm Prize is awarded by the Friedrich Wilhelm Foundation, which was established in 1865 by the legal predecessor of today’s Aachener und Münchener Beteiligungsgesellschaft. Its main focus is to promote research and teaching and to support students and scientists at RWTH Aachen University. The foundation is named after Friedrich Wilhelm III, Crown Prince of Prussia and later Emperor. In 1858, he received a donation of 5,000 talers to establish a polytechnic institute in the Rhine Province. This donation formed the basis for the later Friedrich Wilhelm Foundation and thus for the development of RWTH Aachen University.
The award-winning theses impressively demonstrate the scientific breadth and capabilities of our faculty. The award winners represent key areas of modern electrical engineering and contribute to the visibility and strength of our research with their outstanding theses. The faculty warmly congratulates Mr Schroeder, Dr Wasylowski and Dr Jiang on this significant award.
Prof. Max Lemme as co-author in Nature Photonics
The Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology congratulates Prof. Max Lemme on a special scientific achievement: as co-author, he contributed to a consensus statement publication in the renowned journal Nature Photonics. The publication is entitled ‘Guidelines for accurate evaluation of photodetectors based on emerging semiconductor technologies’ and provides important impetus for the international research community.
A consensus statement publication summarises the current state of knowledge in a specialist field and formulates recommendations, standards or procedures that promote reliable and uniform scientific practice. In this article, leading experts from research and industry have developed for the first time a comprehensive framework for the precise characterisation, documentation and comparability of photodetectors based on novel semiconductor materials.
There is a great need for such guidelines: photodetectors made from innovative material classes such as organic semiconductors, perovskites, quantum dots, two-dimensional materials, metal oxides and carbon nanotubes have made enormous progress in recent years. At the same time, inconsistent measurement methods and reporting standards have so far made it difficult to compare different studies and thus hindered scientific development in this field.
The recommendations that have now been published create a common foundation for the community and support transparent, reproducible and comparable research practices. This benefits not only academic working groups, but also industrial development processes and the emergence of future photonic technologies.
Prof. Max Lemme is not only the holder of the Chair of Electronic Components at our faculty, but also the managing director of AMO GmbH, whose research focuses are closely linked to the topics covered in the publication. The development and integration of novel materials for optoelectronic components is one of the company’s core activities. Participation in this international consensus paper underscores the great scientific and technological relevance of this work.
AMO GmbH has also highlighted the publication in its own article. Further information can be found on the website and on LinkedIn.
Visibility for cutting-edge research: Professor Weihan Li once again among the most cited researchers
Professor Weihan Li, holder of the Junior Professorship in ‘Artificial Intelligence and Digitalisation for Batteries’ © David Ausserhofer
Professor Li, from the Institute for Power Electronics and Electrical Drives (ISEA) at RWTH Aachen University, has once again been included in the list of the world’s most cited scientists, known as ‘Highly Cited Researchers’. This recognition is a testament to the influence of his work in the field of AI-supported battery research.
The list of ‘Highly Cited Researchers’ is published annually by Clarivate Analytics. Based on the citation index of the Web of Science Core Collection, it identifies scientists whose publications are among the top one per cent most cited in their field and publication year. In scientific contexts, citations serve as an indicator of a publication’s relevance and are considered a measure of its quality. The more frequently a text is cited, the greater its visibility and the greater the global perception of the author. The current list includes 7,131 researchers who, according to the database, are among the most influential 0.1 per cent of the international research community.
Batteries are a key technology in the energy transition. Their performance largely determines the range, safety, service life and cost of their technical applications. Professor Li is investigating how accurately the condition and performance of battery cells can be predicted during production. He has held the Junior Professorship for ‘Artificial Intelligence and Digitalisation for Batteries’ at RWTH Aachen University since March 2025. At the Centre for Ageing, Reliability and Lifetime Prediction of Electrochemical and Power Electronic Systems (CARL), his junior research group develops data-based models, digital twins and automated diagnostic procedures.
The aim is to make the battery digitally communicative, characterised by precision and real-time capability – Weihan Li is working on this future.
His project, ‘SPEED: Fast Performance Characterization of Lithium-ion Batteries from Production Lines with Machine Learning’, has been awarded a grant of €1.85 million by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space as part of the ‘BattFutur – Junior Research Group Battery Research‘ competition.
Professor Li was born in China and completed his studies in automotive engineering at Tongji University. In 2014, he came to RWTH Aachen University to undertake a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, subsequently completing his PhD at the Institute for Power Electronics and Electrical Drives. His research has also taken him to Imperial College London, the University of Oxford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He completed his doctorate with distinction in 2021 and founded the junior research group ‘Artificial Intelligence for Batteries’ the following year. With support from industry collaborations (accounting for around 40% of third-party funding) and CARL’s infrastructure, which comprises over 6,000 test circuits and provides a reliable database for AI modelling, he has grown the group to include 13 doctoral students.
The scientist can now look back on receiving a number of awards and prizes, including the highly prestigious German Study Prize from the Körber Foundation, one of the most highly endowed prizes for young scientists in Germany. He has published 53 scientific articles, two monographs, three patents and has supervised over 40 theses.
Further information on Professor Weihan Li’s research and career can also be found on the RWTH Aachen University website.
Prof. Andreas Ulbig re-elected to the Executive Board of VDE ETG
The Energy Technology Society within the VDE (VDE ETG) has elected its new board. Among the confirmed members is once again Prof. Dr. sc. Andreas Ulbig, Chair of Active Energy Distribution Networks and member of the management board of the Institute for Electrical Systems and Networks, Digitalisation and Energy Economics (IAEW) at RWTH Aachen University.
© IAEW / Plattform Lernende Systeme
With around 9,000 members, the VDE ETG is one of the most important scientific platforms for exchange on all aspects of the energy system in Germany. The association brings together expertise from science, business and industry to provide technical support for the further development of the energy system.
Chairwoman Dr Britta Buchholz (Hitachi Energy) was re-elected for another three-year term until the end of 2028. Dr Alexander Montebaur (Westnetz GmbH) joins the board as deputy chair, along with Ben Gemsjäger (Siemens AG). In addition to Prof. Ulbig, Richard Tretter (Stadtwerke München GmbH) and Prof. Dr Jutta Hanson (TU Darmstadt) were also confirmed in their positions.
Prof. Ulbig has been a member of the ETG Executive Board since the previous term of office. He heads the Chair of Active Energy Distribution Networks at RWTH Aachen University and is also group leader at the Fraunhofer Centre for Digital Energy at Fraunhofer FIT. His academic and professional career includes positions at the University of Stuttgart, the Technical University of Hamburg, SUPELEC in France, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and ETH Zurich, where he received his doctorate in 2014. He then served as Chief Operating Officer of Adaptricity, an ETH spin-off he co-founded, until 2021, before accepting the appointment at RWTH Aachen University.
With the re-election of Prof. Ulbig, RWTH Aachen University continues to be strongly represented on the board of the VDE ETG.
Otto-Junker Prize 2025: Two ETIT Graduates Honored
This year’s Otto-Junker Prize 2025 brings double success for our faculty:
Two ETIT graduates have been honored for outstanding academic achievements.
Foto: Andreas Schmitter
Antoni Chajan was awarded for his excellent master’s thesis on topology detection in electrical distribution grids using machine learning, supervised at IAEW by Prof. Andreas Ulbig. He now works as a project engineer at FGH. In the photo: front row, second from the right.
Fenja Celine Lobenstein, Industrial Engineering – Electrical Power Engineering, completed her T.I.M.E. double degree at RWTH and CTU Prague with distinction. Her master’s thesis on the prediction of prices and market values of cross-zonal balancing capacities was supervised by Prof. Albert Moser at IAEW. Since 2025, she has been working as a portfolio manager at the energy utility Bonn/Rhein-Sieg. In the photo: front row, second from the left.
The Otto-Junker Prize is awarded annually to graduates of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology as well as the Materials Science group. The awards were presented by RWTH Rector Prof. Ulrich Rüdiger and the Otto Junker Foundation Board.
We warmly congratulate our award winners and celebrate this strong achievement for ETIT!
Four RWTH researchers admitted to the German Academy of Engineering Sciences
The German Academy of Science and Engineering, acatech for short, has accepted four scientists from RWTH Aachen University as new members: Fabian Kießling, Max Lemme, Constantin Häfner and Walter Leitner.
acatech is the central voice of technical sciences in Germany and is funded by the federal and state governments as a national academy. It advises politicians and society independently, factually and in the public interest on issues relating to shaping the future of technology. Its members come from the fields of engineering and natural sciences, medicine, and the humanities and social sciences. The patron of the academy is the Federal President.
With the admission of the four new members, a total of 35 scientists from RWTH Aachen University are now part of acatech. In addition to Professor Max Lemme, Professor Rainer Waser, Professor Dirk Uwe Sauer, Professor Jürgen Roßmann, Professor Rik W. de Doncker and Professor Steffen Leonhardt from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology are also members of the academy.
Max Lemme: Research into the electronics of the future
© Martin Braun
Professor Max Lemme holds the Chair of Electronic Components at RWTH Aachen University and is managing director of AMO GmbH. His research focuses on novel electronic and optoelectronic components based on two-dimensional materials such as graphene. The aim is to integrate these materials into future micro- and nanoelectronics, sensor technology and neuromorphic computing systems. Lemme is also spokesperson for the NeuroSys future cluster.
In addition to him, three other outstanding researchers from RWTH Aachen University were accepted into acatech: Professor Fabian Kießling, Director of the Helmholtz Institute for Biomedical Engineering and pioneer of molecular imaging, Professor Constantin Häfner, Director of Research and Transfer at the Fraunhofer Society and expert in high-power lasers, and Professor Walter Leitner, Chair of Technical Chemistry and Petrochemistry and Director at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion.
Their admission recognises their scientific achievements and their contribution to the further development of technical sciences in Germany.
