On 17 June 2016, the HIU celebrated its fifth anniversary with around 100 guests. Professor Michael Weber, president of the University of Ulm, Professor Horst Hahn, founding director of HIU, Professor Maximilian Fichtner, director of the HIU and guest speaker Professor Jürgen Garche drew a very positive conclusion.
On 24 September 2010, the former presidents of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the University of Ulm, Professor Eberhard Umbach and Professor Karl Joachim Ebeling, and the coordinator of the HIU and later founding director Professor Horst Hahn submitted one out of three proposals for the funding and formation of the HIU to the Helmholtz Association. On 1 January 2011 the HIU was established as a center of excellence for battery research in a ceremony with the former Federal Research Minister Annette Schavan and the Baden-Württemberg Minister President Stefan Mappus.
In his address at the anniversary event University President Professor Weber stressed the great importance of electrochemistry for its university and underlined how much the University has benefited from the establishment of the HIU on the university campus in the last five years.
The establishment of the institute was quickly succeeded because of the existing expertise of the two founding partners and associated partners of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW), Professor Hahn summed up. At the beginning 35 new positions were created, now 130 scientists working at the HIU. As a member of the Helmholtz Association, the HIU is financed with 90 percent by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and with 10 percent by the State of Baden-Württemberg. The base budget of HIU is 5.5 million euros per year.
In 2014, the HIU has been integrated as a regular institute in the program-oriented funding of the program “Storage and Cross-linked Infrastructures” (SCI), of the Helmholtz Association. In October of the same year the scientists moved into the new building, which annulled the spatial separation of the researchers who worked at various locations of the partners before.
Professor Fichtner praised the more than 300 scientific publications that have been released since the founding and at the same time wished further innovative ideas in battery research by his colleagues.
- Pictures of this event
