Director

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

Prof. Lauster studied Aerospace Engineering at the University of the Bundeswehr Munich, completing his studies with a diploma thesis in Technical Mechanics. He earned his PhD in Irreversible Thermodynamics on the behavior of real fluids and habilitated in Statistics on the dynamics of many-particle systems.

Leadership and Spokesperson Roles

• Since February 2014, Prof. Lauster has been the spokesperson for the Fraunhofer Space Alliance.
• Since 2021, he has been the spokesperson for the SPACE business unit of Fraunhofer AVIATION & SPACE (formerly Fraunhofer Space Alliance; a consortium of over 30 institutes conducting applied research in aerospace).
• Since late 2020, he has been the deputy spokesperson for the Fraunhofer Defense, Prevention, and Security Research Division.

Memberships and Appointments

• Member of the Research and Technology (F&T) Advisory Board of the Federal Ministry of Defense (BMVg).
• Member of the Strategy Group of the Research Director at the BMVg.
• Member of the German Academy of Science and Engineering acatech since 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