Director

Prof. Dr. Dr. Michael Lauster has been Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Technological Trend Analysis INT in Euskirchen since September 2012 and holds the Chair of Technology Analysis and Foresight in Security Research at RWTH Aachen University.

He completed his studies in Aeronautics and Space Technology at the University of the German Armed Forces Munich with a diploma thesis in engineering mechanics on a topic from shell theory. He also received his PhD in Irreversible Thermodynamics on the behavior of real fluids and his habilitation in Statistics on the dynamics of many-particle systems. 

Since February 2014, he has also been the spokesman for the Fraunhofer Space Alliance and, since 2021, the spokesman for the SPACE business unit of Fraunhofer AVIATION & SPACE (formerly the Fraunhofer Space Alliance; an association of more than 30 institutes conducting applied research in the field of aeronautics and space). Since the end of 2020, he has been deputy spokesperson of the Fraunhofer Segment for Defense and Security VVS. He is also a member of the Research and Technology (R&T) Advisory Board of the Federal Ministry of Defense (BMVg) and the Research Director's Strategy Group at the BMVg. Furthermore, Prof. Lauster has been appointed as a member of the National Academy of Science and Engineering acatech by resolution of the General Assembly of October 2021.

• Collaboration on the study "Raumfahrt 2040" as the basis for a new space strategy of the German government

• Initiation and co-development of the IT system KATI (Knowledge Analytics for Technology and Innovation)

• Initiation and co-development of a new gaming approach for competition and cooperation scenarios FlexINT