Successful term of office comes to an end

Prof. Matthias Rehahn / Copyright: Katrin Binner

"I took up my position with the Supervisory Board's mandate to work with Hereon employees to develop a mission and overall strategy that unites our Materials, Coastal and Climate research. The aim was to give the center a clear and highly relevant unique selling position in the international research landscape. We can be proud of the fact that we have succeeded in doing this very well despite unforeseeable global challenges," says Rehahn, summing up his time at the research center.

At the heart of the new mission is the development of methods to holistically assess the opportunities and risks of new technologies and their interactions with the complex natural environments in which they are to be used in advance using interdisciplinary research approaches. In future, this should enable planned measures to be optimized at an early stage with regard to their intended effect and to maximize their sustainability. At the same time, possible negative side effects should be minimized.

The experimental as well as computer-based skills, as they are at home in the various disciplines represented at Hereon, are used to develop prototypical "digital twins" based on concrete case studies. These will be used to create the most realistic possible images of the processes to be expected in the highly complex systems in the interplay between the real and digital worlds. These include, for example, adaptation to climate change, the sustainable use and protection of global coastal systems or the patient-specific effects of implants in the human body. The envisaged "digital twins of complex systems" enable responsible decisions to be made even before they are put into practice, with a minimum of lengthy real-life experiments.

The new target image and strategy development "Hereon 2030" was evaluated very positively by a high-ranking international commission, as extremely promising for the future and to be implemented quickly with the greatest emphasis.

Prof. Rehahn is leaving the Hereon with one crying and one laughing eye.

"On the one hand, I am very sorry to be leaving the center, as it has really grown on me," says Rehahn. His connection to Hereon goes far beyond his five years as Managing Director: he has been closely associated with the center for more than two decades, initially as a member of the technical-scientific advisory board, which he later chaired. "On the other hand, I am very much looking forward to spending more time with my wife and four children."

Elisabeth Gerndt, Administrative Director of Hereon, will manage the center until a new Scientific director is appointed, for which the Federal Ministry of Education and Research is responsible.