About us

Fraunhofer UMSICHT is actively involved in shaping energy and raw materials management, focusing its research on four main areas: Circular Economy, Carbon Management, Green Hydrogen and Local Energy Systems. 

As a pioneer for technical innovations, we promote sustainable management, environmentally friendly technologies and innovative behavior in order to improve people's quality of life and promote the innovative capacity of the domestic economy.

We develop solutions that make a decisive contribution to a resource-conserving society and economy. Our focus is on achieving a balance between economically successful, socially just and environmentally compatible developments.

Facts and figures

Fraunhofer UMSICHT has a site in Oberhausen, an institute branch in Sulzbach-Rosenberg and a plastics technology center in Willich. The institute was founded in June 1990 as a non-profit technical-scientific institution with the support of the city of Oberhausen and local industries. The institute complex at the Oberhausen site comprises five buildings with office space, a data center, a library and a representative event room. Workshops, technical shops (3100 m²) and laboratories (1400 m²) form the technical infrastructure.

Since July 1, 2012, the institute branch in the Nuremberg metropolitan region, based in Sulzbach-Rosenberg, has been part of Fraunhofer UMSICHT.  In 2023, the workforce at both sites comprised 603 employees – mostly with training in the natural sciences and engineering. Of these, 49 percent are scientific staff, 16 percent are administrative staff, 4 percent are training staff and 31 percent are students, pupils and interns.

In 2023, the institute generated a turnover of € 69.3 million. This includes € 15.6 million in industrial returns, € 34.5 million in public returns (incl. EU), € 2.8 million in other income, € 8.7 million in basic funding and € 7.7 million in funding from internal programs.

Institute of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft

As an institute within the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, we are globally networked and promote international cooperation. In order to use synergies in technology development and expand scientific value adding, we work with partners worldwide. Strategic collaborations exist in Kuwait, with the University of Alberta in Edmonton/Canada and with the University of Birmingham, UK, among others. Details can be found on the International Networks page.

The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, based in Germany, is one of the world’s leading applied research organizations. It plays a crucial role in the innovation process by prioritizing research in key future technologies and transferring its research findings to industry in order to strengthen Germany as a hub of industrial activity as well as for the benefit of society.

Founded in 1949, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft currently operates 76 institutes and research units throughout Germany. Its nearly 32,000 employees, predominantly scientists and engineers, work with an annual business volume of 3.4 billion euros; 3.0 billion euros of this stems from contract research, which is divided into three funding pillars. Fraunhofer generates a share of this from industry and license-fee revenue, totaling 836 million euros. This high proportion of industrial revenue is Fraunhofer's unique selling point in the German research landscape. Another share of contract research revenue comes from publicly funded research projects. The final share is base funding supplied by the German federal and state governments and enables our institutes to develop solutions now that will become relevant to the private sector and society in a few years.