The Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT helps to shape the future with novel, market-oriented products. Our researchers work in interdisciplinary teams and combine insights from computer science with questions from other fields. Thus, the institute invents and develops applications custom-tailored to support people in their jobs and to enrich their leisure time. Our specific strength is a comprehensive system design process, from test and validation of concepts to the handover of well-implemented systems. We apply it to create complex systems that combine our technological innovations with significant benefits in their practical use, and to derive product frameworks from these systems. FIT's current research focuses on:
Business applications in the private and public sector, in particular micro-analytic simulation to assess the impact of tax legislation as well as (risk) analysis and efficiency improvement of complex business processes, e.g. with analysis and decision support tools;
Cooperation tools for effective organizational collaboration and to support social networks;
Mixed and Augmented Reality applications, e.g. games and demonstrators for exhibitions, science parks or trade fairs;
Life science & bio informatics, such as navigation systems for minimally invasive surgery, molecular diagnostics and optical systems as well as automated image analysis;
Mobile information and E-Learning systems, focusing on dynamic adaptation to changing context parameters and metadata, describing e.g. traits of the user, interaction schemata or the situation of use;
Software engineering, with special emphasis on optimizing human-computer interaction and on usability of applications and devices, web compliance and accessibility.
FIT has a staff of about 110 researchers from Computer Science, the Social Sciences, Psychology, Business Administration, Economics and Engineering. They are organized in four departments and cooperate closely with Prof. Jarke's Information Systems group at RWTH Aachen University.