Foreword by the Director

Dear Readers,

it is with deep sadness that I must begin this foreword – on March 21, 2024, we unexpectedly and far too soon lost our long-time institute director and colleague Prof. Dr. Matthias Jarke, who had shaped Fraunhofer FIT significantly over two decades and was active at FIT until the end. I had the privilege of working with Matthias over the past few years and learned a great deal from him during that time. Matthias, you will be missed by all of us.

In remembrance of Matthias Jarke, I would like to report to you about an eventful and successful year 2023. A central topic that has intensively occupied us is the rapid development in the field of Artificial Intelligence, especially large language models. Here, we see it as our task to support German and European companies in taking an active role in the development and application of these technologies. To this end, FIT is investing in the newly created Generative AI Lab to develop new technologies and bundle forces. At the same time, we are working on concrete recommendations for action for politics and business in order to remain competitive in the global competition – whether in the field of Artificial Intelligence or in the design of tax laws.

Helpful – also on a national level – is the creation of data infrastructures and data spaces, for example in the areas of energy, circular economy, and health. We have also further advanced developments of the Industrial Metaverse with applications for digital twins, remote collaboration, and virtual training in industry.

Our new motto has guided us in this: "enabling. digital. spaces." captures FIT's ambitions to be an enabler of new digital spaces and experiences. I am pleased that FIT brings together many core technologies for the future under one roof.

We have set ourselves ambitious goals for 2024: We want to further deepen our research on Artificial Intelligence, data spaces, and digital twins, increasingly bring it into application, and leverage their synergies. At the same time, we will expand our international collaborations to learn from global developments and make our contribution.

I look forward to partnering with you on this journey. Let us work together to harness the opportunities of new technologies and find answers to the pressing questions of our time – in memory of Matthias Jarke and his life's work.

Sincerely,

Prof. Dr. Stefan Decker