Key Research Fields

The importance of Biomedical Engineering is growing against the backdrop of an aging society and the desire to ensure a high quality of life and mobility for every individual, even in old age. Key projects focus on medical implants, telemedical assistance systems and technologically assisted rehabilitation techniques.

Close co-operation with companies providing support technologies in hearing, rehabilitation and orthopaedics – together with joint research centres shared with the Hannover Medical School (MHH) and the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Foundation (TiHo) – are making Hannover a prime location for innovation in Biomedical Engineering. Research centres in the field include the Centre of Biomolecular Drug Research (BMWZ), the Lower Saxony Centre for Biomedical Engineering, Implant Research and Development (NIFE), and, with an especially strong link to the faculty, the associated centre eNIFE, which was founded in 2014 and focuses on electronics in Biomedical Engineering. In addition, the cluster of excellence Hearing4all links medicine and engineering with the goal of understanding and improving human hearing in diverse situations.

The increasing digitally connected world is leading to a profound change in society, influencing human behaviour and decision making in many different contexts, from social interaction to politics. To shape this change in a positive way, research must adopt a structure and methodology which is both international and interdisciplinary. This will allow clear recommendations for action and strategies for innovation to be derived from the findings, and ensure that these prove useful in a wide range of situations in business, politics and society.

Against this background, links to the other key fields of research have been established, such as in the areas of e-health and smart grid technologies. At Leibniz University Hannover, the Leibniz Research Center L3S has been working successfully on interdisciplinary questions concerning the digital transformation for many years.

The focus is placed on topics such as the web and big data, the internet and distributed systems, and privacy and security, often working in close co-operation with industrial partners. Other projects exist in the area of semi-autonomous, networked vehicles, with questions ranging from video evaluation for driver assistance to Car-2-X communication, e.g., within the master plan "Mobilise", which is a partnership between Leibniz University Hannover and Technical University of Braunschweig.

The availability of affordable and clean energy as well as climate protection measures are among the 17 global sustainability goals adopted by the United Nations in 2016 and to be achieved by 2030. The transformation of energy systems, mobility and material value chains based on the unsustainable use of fossil fuels and nuclear energy towards the use of renewable energies is considered an important key element in achieving these two goals. Furthermore, reducing dependence on fossil fuels and raw materials is an important basis for securing a global peace order. Energy research at Leibniz Universität Hannover aims to explore the transformation process towards sustainable energy systems and to provide scientific support for the needs of society.

The Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science proved its outstanding research quality in the field of Energy in the 2011 Research Ratings of the German Science Council, where it was one of only two universities – together with RWTH Aachen University – to be rated "very good". The faculty also has extensive co-operative relationships introduced by the Leibniz Energy Research Centre 2050 (LiFE 2050). Examples include the co-operation with the Institute for Solar Energy Research Hameln (ISFH), the co-operative networks established with the universities of Bremen and Oldenburg in ForWind initiative, and also the co-operation with the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy Systems.

The research area of Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Systems has been developing rapidly in recent years and joins the three established research areas of the faculty. Artificial intelligence (AI) is characterized by learning complex relationships, automated decisions, and agents from a large amount of heterogeneous, error-prone, and uncertain data. In the combination of data representation, processing and complex models, modern AI enables suitable representation to be learned and semantically processed. This leads to a variety of applications in mobility, industry 4.0, energy, medicine and education.

As a method-oriented focus, there are essential links to all other research focuses, including in the areas of Personalized Medicine, Audio Signal Processing, Smart Grid, and Intelligent Mobility. The Leibniz Research Center L3S is one of the leading AI research centers in Germany with interdisciplinary application focuses and projects. Joint research collaborations take place with CISPA and within a Joint Lab Data Science and Open Knowledge with TIB - Leibniz Information Center for Science and Technology.