AUGUST-KRAMER INSTITUTE

Dear Reader,
Our life is focussed (consciously or unconsciously) on needs. Meeting the majority of these needs poses a constant scientific challenge. The continuous provision of innovative techniques, technologies and products necessitates corresponding instruments. The transfer of scientific results or conclusions into a practical application - in other words, an innovation - is particularly demanding.

The AUGUST-KRAMER INSTITUTE wishes to make a contribution towards innovations. In this case, particular focus is placed on the resources of energy, material and land. In numerous fields of work within the focal points of energy systems, material and process engineering plus geoengineering, the facility offers specialist skills and cutting-edge equipment.

The institute's activities in accordance with the 5-point E2LAN programme guarantees internal research, business start-ups and innovation formation, training and advanced training, commission-based development and research services plus network formation and co-operative alliances. With commitment, the AUGUST-KRAMER INSTITUTE and Nordhausen University of Applied Sciences will make a perceptible contribution towards the scientific and economic development of the region of Northern Thuringia and beyond. In this context, we would like, with the name chosen for our facility, to honour the life work of historic Nordhausen personality Dr. August Ephraim Kramer, and establish a symbol of regional attachment.

I would be delighted if the institute is able to serve you as a supporting platform for research and training.

Prof. Matthias Viehmann
director of the institute until 2008

I am delighted to welcome you to the AUGUST-KRAMER INSTITUTE's Internet platform at Nordhausen University of Applied Sciences. The following pages are intended to awaken your interest in this facility and stimulate your desire to become familiarised with the services offered by this competence centre for material flow, energy and land management. The research facilities available within our institute and the specialist knowledge stored by its employees serve a very special goal: By means of skilfully and practically trained engineers/bachelors/masters, we would like to provide your company with a locational advantage and simultaneously impart the stimuli and innovations which are possible thanks to continuous knowledge transfer from research to practice.

The AUGUST-KRAMER INSTITUTE offers a permanent invitation to industry and companies to make use of the potential which has been developed here, to register their requirements and to look for application-oriented solutions together with our scientists. Contact us, irrespective of whether you are interested in

• energy systems,
• material and processing engineering or
• geoengineering,

to name just a few examples. As a university of applied sciences, we see our core competence in the field of application-oriented research. Dr. August Ephraim Kramer, who gave this institute its name, was a Nordhausen scientist and inventor. He switched professions to the field of telegraph engineering to enable him to design his invention, the pointer telegraph, practically and to market it. In doing so, he successfully combined the worlds of science and industry. This is also the motto of the AUGUST-KRAMER INSTITUTE: To be a bridge which is much travelled in both directions between science and industry.
We invite you to do so! Make use of the services which we offer!

Prof. Jörg Wagner
Rector