Two RUB researchers: NRW Academy honors top performance in science!

Two RUB researchers: NRW Academy honors top performance in science!

Bochum, Deutschland - On May 14, 2025, two scientists from the Ruhr University Bochum, Prof. Dr. Alfred Ludwig and Prof. Dr. Martin R. Hofmann, included in the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences and the Arts (AWK). This award emphasizes the outstanding research achievements of the two academics, which make significant progress in their respective fields.

Prof. Dr. Alfred Ludwig heads the chair "Materials Discovery and Interfaces" at the Institute for Materials. His research focuses on the efficient discovery of new materials with special properties. By combining material research with artificial intelligence (AI), it significantly accelerates the process of material discovery. Ludwig is also the founder and director of the Center for Border Dominated Supreme Cominated Service (ZGH) and is committed to the spokesman for the Collaborative Research Center 1625.

research and funding

Another focus of Ludwig lies in the automated synthesis of thin-shift material libraries. He is a co -founder of the "Research Center Future Energy Materials and Systems", which operates within the "Research Alliance Ruhr". The work of Prof. Dr. Martin R. Hofmann as head of the Chair for Photonics and Terahertztechnology, on the other hand, focuses on the development of energy -efficient procedures for data transmission on the Internet. His research projects are supported by a Reinhart Koselleck project of the German Research Foundation (DFG) with 1.25 million euros.

Hofmann's work include the use of spin lasers for information transmission, a technique that uses the polarization of light. He also deals intensively with semiconductor lasers and optical imaging.

The energy requirement of Ki

The increasing requirements for technologies and computing power raise important questions about sustainability. According to reports from tagesschau.de need data centers that support AI applications, immense amounts of water and electricity. For example, the training of AI models such as Chatgpt-3 consumes an estimated 5.4 million liters of water, whereby significant shares are required for cooling processes.

The energy requirement of data centers that process AI-based applications will probably increase to over 150 terawatt hours by 2030, which almost corresponds to the current consumption. This would make up about five percent of the total of European electricity consumption, as reported to Tagesschau.de . The majority of the energy supply still depends on fossil fuels, despite the progress that great providers such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon make towards renewable energies.

In addition, large tech companies such as Google have already publicly reported an increase in their greenhouse gas emissions, which are caused by the growing energy requirements in their data centers. Microsoft and Google strive for climate neutrality by 2030 and invest in the development of technologies to measure the energy consumption and the CO2 effects of AI.

An example of the development of the latest technologies is the XAI AI data center, which uses 100,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs; Each GPU needs 700 watts, which leads to a need of 70 megawatts. These developments require massive investments in the infrastructure and the production of clean energy in order to meet the increasing requirements.

Overall, scientists such as Ludwig and Hofmann are faced with the challenge of combining their research fields with the pressing questions of energy efficiency and sustainability. It remains to be seen to what extent their innovative strength can help to maintain the balance between technological advances and ecological requirements.