News Archive

Congratulations! Saptarshi Neil Sinha, a researcher in the “Virtual and Augmented Reality” department in Darmstadt, successfully defended his dissertation, “Scene Understanding Meets Realistic Scene Synthesis: Novel Learning-based Technologies for Scene Digitization, Analysis and Editing,” on November 24, 2025.

As every year, the brightest minds in Visual Computing were sought during the Computer Graphics Night.

The Federal Ministry for Research, Technology, and Space (BMFTR) has awarded the 2025 Validation Prize to the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research IGD. The award recognizes the outstanding transfer of excellent research results into economic and societal practice.

Congratulations! Lars Nonnemann, an employee in the "Visual Computing" department in Rostock, successfully defended his dissertation titled *"A Multifaceted Model for the Layered Orchestration of Independent Visual Analysis Tools"* on June 30, 2025.

From June 23 to 26, 2025, the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research IGD became the epicenter of international research on intelligent environments. The 21st International Conference on Intelligent Environments (IE’25) brought together academia, industry, and society with an inspiring program full of technological visions, stimulating discussions, and personal encounters.

Following a successful debut last year, the Manufacturing and Mobility division of the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research IGD once again opened its doors to the public. The event built on the positive feedback from the Open Door Day held on November 6, 2024, which was organized in cooperation with the Automotive Cluster RheinMainNeckar. While the format has proven successful, this year it was expanded to target a broader audience – including participants from mechanical engineering, automotive manufacturing, the supplier industry, and software development.

As of May 1, 2025, only digital biometric passport photos are permitted for ID documents in Germany. This new regulation aims to make forgery more difficult and enhance security. However, despite this important measure, one major challenge remains: face morphing—the blending of two faces into a deceptively real-looking biometric image.

As every year, the brightest minds in Visual Computing were sought during the Computer Graphics Night. The jury, consisting of scientists from Fraunhofer IGD and associated university chairs, selected this year's award winners. Once again, we warmly congratulate them and extend our heartfelt thanks to the many guests who made the 26th edition a wonderful winter evening.

Congratulations on your doctorate! Alex Ulmer, researcher in the department of "Information Visualization and Visual Analytics", successfully defended his dissertation "Progressive Visual Analytics for Temporal Data". The thesis was supervised by Dr.-Ing. Jörn Kohlhammer (TU Darmstadt), Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dieter W. Fellner (TU Darmstadt/Fraunhofer IGD) und Dr. habil. Jean-Daniel Fekete (Université Paris-Saclay).

On November 6, 2024, the Automotive Cluster RheinMainNeckar met at the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research in Darmstadt to learn about the latest developments in visual computing.