Our employees are the cornerstone of the institute’s success. In 2020, our workforce again experienced record growth. Compared to 2019, the number of staff on the books rose from 1112 to 1136, 88 of whom are PhD students.
In addition, we employed 498 student assistants and 18 trainees at the institute.
How we use diversity as an opportunity for development
Our teams at Fraunhofer IIS are diverse and that’s part of our strategy for success. The interplay of different expertise and training, but also of different cultures and unique qualities, yields perspectives and insights that would be impossible for individuals to develop on their own. In an age of increasing automation and artificial intelligence, the value of human creativity at work is growing all the time. Greater diversity in our teams empowers them to generate more creative ideas and drive the success of the institute and its partners.
Using carryovers from previous years, Fraunhofer IIS had a balanced budget in 2020. Fully 41 percent of its funds came from industry and business. The base funding, provided by the German federal and state governments, amounted to 29 percent. Meanwhile, 24 percent of the budget came from public-service revenue. Additional revenue derived from foundations and other research institutions.
In 2020, as in previous years, most of the invention discloses we submitted originated from our Communications Systems and Audio and Media Technologies research areas for subject matter such as 5G and radio communications, as well as speech and audio coding.
In addition, Fraunhofer IIS’s established structures engaged in intellectual property activities with other institutes within the Cognitive Internet Technologies cluster, which account for a significant share of the invention disclosures.
Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS