Staff 430 Phone +49 30 34637000 | Location Berlin, Germany Founded 2001 | |
Focus Information and Communications Technology Directors Prof. Manfred Hauswirth; Prof. Ina Schieferdecker Address Kaiserin-Augusta-Allee 31, 10589 Berlin, Germany Hours Closed now Thursday10AM–7PMFriday10AM–7PMSaturday10AM–7PMSunday10AM–7PMMonday10AM–7PMTuesday10AM–7PMWednesday10AM–7PM Similar Fraunhof für Produktio, Berlin Institute of Technolo, Technische Universität Berlin: Pr, Daimler Center for Automotiv, Technische Universität Berlin ‑ F Profiles | ||
The Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems, or FOKUS, is an organization of the Fraunhofer Society. Headquartered in Berlin (Charlottenburg), the institute is engaged in applied research and development in the field of Information and Communications Technology. The institute is jointly led by Prof. Manfred Hauswirth and Prof. Ina Schieferdecker. Manfred Hauswirth also holds a chair in at the Technische Universität Berlin. In addition to her position at Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS, Ina Schieferdecker is also a professor for Quality Engineering of Open Distributed Systems at Technische Universität Berlin. Gerd Schürmann is the institute’s deputy director.
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History
FOKUS was founded in 1988 as a research establishment for Open Communication Systems and an institute of the former "Gesellschaft für Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung GmbH" (GMD, Society for Mathematics and Data Processing). Since the merger of GMD with Fraunhofer in July 2001, FOKUS has been an institute of the Fraunhofer Society. In 2012, the three ICT institutes FOKUS, FIRST and ISST Berlin were brought together under the name of Fraunhofer FOKUS.
In October 2014, Prof. Dr. Manfred Hauswirth was appointed Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems FOKUS in Berlin. On 1 January 2015 Prof. Dr. Ina Schieferdecker was appointed to the institute's board.
Main research areas
Fraunhofer FOKUS develops vendor-neutral solutions for ICT systems. The institute focusses on practice-oriented research and development of digital interconnectivity. Fraunhofer FOKUS cooperates with business enterprises and public administration to support digitisation through research. It also carries out research into some of the key challenges to social development and the smart cities of the future, such as access to information, the sustainable and efficient use of resources, networked mobility and a modern public administration system. Research activities focus on interoperable, user-centered domain- and inter-organizational solutions.
The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), for example, which has become the standard for Voice over IP and Internet telephony, was originally developed at Fraunhofer FOKUS. Fraunhofer FOKUS also played a significant role in the introduction of the new ID card in Germany in 2010.
Business Units
The success of the institute is based on an organization comprising different business units:
Infrastructure
In 2015, FOKUS employed 434 people, including 164 students and interns. The Fraunhofer FOKUS budget in 2015 was 30 million euros. 20.7 million euros was spent on personnel, 8.6 million euros on equipment and materials and 0.7 million euros on investments.