November 17, 2020

On October 26, Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Michael ten Hompel was awarded the Innovation Prize of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) in the category “Honorary Award”. NRW’s Minister of Economic Affairs and Innovation, Prof. Dr. Andreas Pinkwart, hereby commended ten Hompel’s outstanding contributions to sustainable advances in science, business and society. As the managing director of the Fraunhofer IML, ten Hompel directs the research work of his institute within the Competence Center Machine Learning Rhine-Ruhr (ML2R).

At the award ceremony in Düsseldorf, Minister Pinkwart described ten Hompel as a “unique innovator of modern logistics and a pioneer of the Industry 4.0”. According to Pinkwart, Dortmund-based Michael ten Hompel is contributing to the renewal of the economy and society as well as the creation of jobs through his energy, creativity and inventiveness.

“Being awarded with the Innovation Prize of the State of NRW is the highest recognition for a researcher from the Ruhr area. Even more so, it is a recognition of our research location Dortmund and sets a visible sign for the economic, but more notably the scientific and social importance of innovative logistics, without which sustainable and resource-saving living would not be possible. I stand here as a representative of the hundreds of committed scientists and researchers who make this possible,” said ten Hompel.

ML2R: Michael ten Hompel contributes his expertise in the AI application field of Logistics

As managing director of the Fraunhofer IML, ten Hompel directs his institute’s research work within the competence center ML2R. The Fraunhofer IML compliments its partners within the competence center with its focus on resource-limited Machine Learning in logistics use cases, the industrial transfer of research results and the work on compilers for Machine Learning models.

In addition, Prof. ten Hompel holds the chair for Materials Handling and Warehousing (FLW) at TU Dortmund University and is co-initiator of the European Blockchain Institute, which is funded by the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of Economic Affairs. Michael ten Hompel is regarded as one of the fathers of the Internet of Things and as the inventor of the shuttle technology in intralogistics, which recently led to the development of the LoadRunner. In conjunction with the large-scale project “Silicon Economy”, ten Hompel and his team work toward the breakthrough of a digital platform economy in Germany and Europe.

The ML2R congratulates Prof. ten Hompel on his accolade. The Innovation Prize of the State of NRW in the category “Honorary Award” is given to personalities who have made outstanding contributions to sustainable changes in science, economy and society through their competence, passion and commitment.