On March 29, 2026, Dr.-Ing. Friederike Bruns was honored with the Helene-Lange Prize 2026 by the EWE Foundation. Awarded every two years and endowed with €15,000, this prize recognizes outstanding scientific achievements by women in the early stages of their academic careers who make a significant contribution to everyday life through innovative approaches in digitalization, with relevance to science, business, and society.
This year, the Helene-Lange Prize jury recognized the research work of Friederike Bruns, who completed her PhD degree at the Department of Computer Science in 2024 and is currently conducting research in the Research Group Distributed Control in Interconnected Systems, focusing on the synthesis and verification of cyber-physical systems. A central aspect of her research is ensuring temporal properties of communication in distributed cyber-physical systems, which are commonly found in many industrial control systems.
In addition, Friederike is developing novel methods for contract-based design, i.e., a system design based on specified requirements for safety-critical parameters. In this work, she addresses uncertainty in distributed control systems resulting from external environmental influences that cannot be modelled precisely or which originate from unavoidable parameter tolerances. Through this research, she makes a substantial contribution to enhancing the reliability and safety of industrial control. Furthermore, by actively striving to make her research accessible not only to academic but also to industrial audiences, she has already achieved significant visibility on both national and international levels.
We cordially congratulate Friederike on this well-deserved recognition of her scientific work. We also extend our heartfelt congratulations to the other nominated female scientists: Sophie Grimme, researcher in the field of Society at OFFIS – Institute for Information Technology, and Elisabeth Rohwer from the University of Bremen, acknowledging their notable contributions to technologies that enable individuals to actively shape the digital transformation in a self-determined manner.