September 3, 2021
Dr. Volker Jungnickel, head of the “Metro-, Access- and Inhouse (MAI)” group in the "Photonic Networks" department at the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI), receives an extraordinary professorship at the Technical University of Berlin in recognition of his outstanding achievements in research and teaching.
The extraordinary Professorship is an honor that can be awarded after an official procedure with external reviews and in cooperation with the Berlin Senate. The academic distinction was granted to Dr. Jungnickel in mid-July by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Christine Ahrend, Vice President of TU Berlin.
As a PhD physicist, Dr. Volker Jungnickel has been involved in research since 1991. During the course of his career, he has worked on various optics and radio topics: Ultrafast spectroscopy, semiconductor quantum dots, laser applications in medicine, optical wireless transmission, 4G experimental system with novel MIMO techniques, optical wireless systems (LiFi) and LIDARs. In 2015, he qualified with the habilitation in communications engineering.
Dr. Volker Jungnickel has been involved in about 280 scientific publications to date, with over 10,000 citations in Google Scholar and 100,000 reads in ResearchGate. In addition, he holds over 30 patents and has made countless standardization contributions. Dr. Jungnickel leads the IEEE P802.15.13 "Multi-Gbit/s Optical Wireless Communication" standardization project and is the Technical Editor of the IEEE P802.11bb "Light Communications" project.
At TU Berlin, Dr. Jungnickel has been teaching in the Master's program in Electrical Engineering/Computer Science since 2002, currently the module "Advanced Wireless Communications". In cooperation with Berlin universities, he has supervised numerous diploma, master's and doctoral theses, thus enabling students to enter research at Fraunhofer HHI. Thanks to his eye for tomorrow's research talents, many projects at Fraunhofer HHI have been handled more successfully.
Currently, Dr. Volker Jungnickel is conducting research at Fraunhofer HHI on Telekom's access network, a multifaceted and challenging field that requires a wide range of expertise and holistic approaches. The access network includes all fixed and mobile data connections to the Internet, over various mobile and fixed media (mobile communications, fiber optics, copper cables and others) with widely varying characteristics. Today, combined (convergent) fixed and mobile solutions are needed in many cases, such as optical fronthaul for mobile communications or LiFi connectivity over plastic fibers or power lines.
For the researcher, it is precisely this versatility and the far-reaching social implications that make his field of research so appealing to him: "Access technology is a mass market. Everyone has a cell phone, Wi-Fi and DSL or fiber optics. Telekom puts about half of its investments into access technology. It has to become more and more powerful, but, because of the many connections, it has to remain cost-effective and energy-efficient. What we are developing will have an impact on communication between a large number of people, and in the future also between machines and devices."
Dr. Volker Jungnickel will stay at Fraunhofer HHI as a researcher: "I look forward to working with colleagues and students on exciting projects. The fruitful discussions between experienced and young colleagues have always been the 'cream in the coffee' for me at Fraunhofer HHI."