Stefan Hiermaier

Professor Stefan Hiermaier serves as the Gips Schüle Chair for Sustainable Systems Engineering at the Technical Faculty of Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg and Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for High-Speed Dynamics (EMI). He also holds a guest professorship at Oxford University and coordinates the Sustainability Performance Center, a strategic collaboration between five Fraunhofer Institutes in Freiburg and the University of Freiburg.

Education:

• Studied air- and space-travel technologies at the University of Federal Armed Forces in Munich
• Doctorate in 1996 at the Faculty for Construction Engineering and Surveying
• Habilitation in 2002 at the same faculty
• Awarded professorship of High Dynamics in 2008

Professor Hiermaier's research centers on sustainable engineering solutions with three core pillars: sustainable materials, dynamic materials characterization, and failure mechanisms. His work integrates experimental and numerical approaches to examine energy efficiency and resource protection, with particular emphasis on strain-rate dependencies and material behavior under extreme loads. He has pioneered innovative test methodologies including Split-Hopkinson techniques for dynamic materials testing and in-situ X-ray computer tomography for examining damage-formation mechanisms.

Current research projects include:

• SCHARF – Concurrent multi-scale characterization of robust functional material systems (Carl Zeiss Foundation)
• PROSET – Prospective Assessment of Emerging Technologies (Eva Mayr Stihl Foundation)
• BeSurf – Beyond the Surface (Gips Schüle Foundation)

He has made significant editorial contributions as co-editor of the International Journal of Impact Engineering and editor of the series Epsilon-Punkt-Forschungsergebnisse aus der Kurzzeitdynamik. From 2012 to 2016, he served as president of the DYMAT association (European association for research into dynamic material behavior).

His teaching portfolio includes Fundamentals of Resilience, Physics of Failure, Material Life Cycles, Particle Methods in Engineering, and Dynamics of Materials. His research receives support from major foundations including Carl Zeiss, Eva Mayr Stihl, and Gips Schüle.