Page 5 - ILK Research Report 2020

Introduction

The year 2020 was largely determined by the Corona particularly worthy of mention this year. We were able to
pandemic and undoubtedly represents a caesura; on a place our topics with extraordinary success, which is not
global and national societal as well as economic level. But least a recognition of our practice-oriented competences
the last 12 months have also brought radical changes to and the high topicality of our ready-to-transfer technol-
our daily work. New forms of teaching, research, cooper- ogies. This success was crowned in December with the
ation and communication had to be found, implemented approval of the "National Lightweight Engineering Valida-
and adopted ad hoc. Within a few weeks, we managed to tion Center" by the BMWi and the PTJ. Here we will pave
digitize all courses, learn unfamiliar forms of practicals the way – associated with the term "neutral lightweight
and exams, and advance research work almost entirely in engineering" – to a resource-neutral production of sus-
the digital space. Unfortunately, however, we also had to tainable lightweight solutions and open up new research
cancel the Dresden International Lightweight Engineering and application (transfer) fields together with proven part-
Symposium for the first time. ners. Following on from this, research work in the field of
hydrogen technologies for climate-friendly mobility at the
The initial paralyzing feeling gave way over the summer ILK, in particular on H2 storage and conduction, which is
to a dull sense that we will be working as a "team at a dis- also implemented in the context of the hydrogen strategy
tance" for a long time to come. In this context, the – from of the TU Dresden, should also be mentioned.
the point of view of the ILK board – successful emergency
response of the TU Dresden should be emphasized, which At this point, we not only invite the partners of our ap-
served as a practical guideline and ensured a maximum proximately 100 current research projects to proactively
of safety for us and our employees. Despite all the down- support us on the way to "neutral lightweight engineering"
sides, the situation also shows that the competence pro- or to contribute together with us to master this global ef-
file that has been successful in science corresponds well fort. Because the pandemic is currently showing the posi-
with what the pandemic demands of us – the ability and tive but also destructive forces in our society as if under a
willingness to communicate as well as the ability to orga- burning glass. So how would it be if there were a similarly
nize ourselves. This is certainly also the reason why the energetic race to overcome climate change as there has
year 2020 again held many successes in store for the ILK. just been in the development of vaccines?
In addition to the extremely successful acquisition of sev-
eral fundamentals oriented DFG research projects and With this positive thought, we wish you a successful and
the application-oriented research within the framework healthy 2021 and hope you will find some starting points
of numerous EU, BMBF, AiF and SAB projects, the tech- for solving our global challenges in this year's ILK research
nology transfer program for lightweighting of the BMWi is report as well.

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