Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FITUnder shared leadership by Prof. Matthias Jarke and (from September 2015) Prof. Stefan Decker, FIT cooperates closely with the Information Systems group (Informatik 5) at RWTH Aachen University. Three FIT scientists hold professorships for Cooperation Systems (Wolfgang Prinz), Life Science Informatics (Thomas Berlage) and Media Informatics / Media Processes (Thomas Rose), respectively, in Informatik 5. The chair’s R&D focuses on developing and testing data spaces and data management systems, especially based on knowledge graphs and AI methods, and their applications, for example in the sciences, medicine, culture, and mobility.
A significant element in the institute‘s linkage to universities is the involvement in the Bonn-Aachen International Center for Information Technology (b-it) that was founded in 2003 as a joint venture of RWTH Aachen University, Bonn University, several Fraunhofer institutes in Birlinghoven, and the Bonn-Rhine-Sieg University of Applied Sciences. Fraunhofer FIT cooperates with b-it in research-integrated English-language master programs in Media Informatics and Life Science Informatics, aimed at the top tier of international students.
Fraunhofer FIT headquarters are located in Sankt Augustin and Aachen. Remote offices and project groups are attached to Bayreuth University (Prof. Dr. Maximilian Röglinger) and Augsburg University of Applied Sciences (Prof. Dr. Björn Häckel), Siegen University (Prof. Dr. Volker Wulf), University of Münster (Prof. Dr. Thomas Hoeren, Legal Data Processing) and Hamm-Lippstadt University of Applied Sciences (Prof. Dr. Harald Mathis).
Permanent links through former Fraunhofer FIT researchers or honorary professorships also exist to the universities of Bamberg, Duisburg-Essen, Koblenz, Ilmenau, Heerlen (The Netherlands), and many Universities of Applied Sciences in our region.lmenau, Bamberg and Heerlen (The Netherlands).