On 25 September, the Vodafone Chair ‘Mobile Communications Systems’ at Technische Universität Dresden (TUD) led by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Gerhard Fettweis celebrates its 20th anniversary with friends and partners of collaborating research institutions and industry companies as part of the annual Industry Partner Program event. Since the foundation of the Chair in 1994 (at this time by ‘Mannesmann Mobilfunk’), eleven start-ups have been initiated under Prof. Fettweis’ guidance.

During the past 20 years, Prof. Fettweis participated in more than one hundred research projects (e.g., funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the European Union, the German Research Foundation, or the Free State of Saxony) and raised third-party funds for projects with a total volume of about € 500 million. Gerhard Fettweis, who was appointed as a professor at the age of 32 years, is also a very dedicated educator: during the past two decades, he supervised almost 250 Master students and nearly 70 PhD students graduated with the prestigious Dr.-Ing. degree under his supervision.

Since 2012, Fettweis coordinates the Cluster of Excellence ‘Center for Advancing Electronics Dresden’ (cfaed) of Technische Universität Dresden (TUD) in which more than 300 scientists from over 20 countries explore new technologies for future microchips in nine different research paths. The Collaborative Research Center ‘Highly Adaptive Energy-Efficient Computing’ (HAEC), also coordinated by Fettweis since 2011, is integrated in the Cluster of Excellence as one of its research paths. Until March 2010, Gerhard Fettweis headed the leading-edge cluster Cool Silicon which was financed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Free State of Saxony.

Gerhard Fettweis is a member of ‘acatech’ (German National Academy of Science and Engineering) and has received an honorary doctorate degree from Tampere University of Technology in Finland. Since 2009, Gerhard Fettweis is a ‘Fellow’ of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), which is the global professional association of electrical engineers. He has been awarded many prizes - most recently the ‘Stuart Meyer Memorial Award’ which is the highest recognition for mobile communications’ researchers.

From 1981 to 1986, Gerhard Fettweis studied Electrical Engineering at the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule (RWTH) Aachen where he earned his Ph.D. in 1990. He then worked as a guest researcher at IBM and TCSI Inc. in California, US.
He was born in Antwerpen/Belgium in 1962. His father Alfred Fettweis was also a professor for communications systems at the Ruhr University in Bochum.

The Vodafone Group is one of the biggest providers of telecommunications in the world, counting 90,000 employees and a turnover of € 55 billion.

Further enquiries:
Birgit Holthaus
cfaed press officer
+49 351 463-42848