"This is the first major success in my scientific work and a confirmation of its quality from an international community. The recognition really means a lot to me and motivates me to push ahead with my work. And perhaps it will lead to new collaborations," says Ziegeler, who is currently also working at HELLA GmbH & Co. KGaA in Lippstadt, a FORVIA Group company, in addition to his scientific work.

The "Therminic" workshop on thermal analysis of integrated circuits and systems in Budapest brought together experts from all over the world for the 29th time. Dr. Nils Jonas Ziegeler received the conference's Best Paper Award for his work "Tridiagonal Approaches for Network Identification by Deconvolution", which he wrote together with Dr. Peter Nolte and Prof. Dr. Stefan Schweizer from Fraunhofer AWZ Soest.

The award-winning paper deals with the thermal management and reliability of semiconductor chips. In the automotive sector, this is a challenge in the development of high-performance headlights and rear lights: If these components become too warm, the light output of an LED is reduced, there is a risk of failure or heat sinks have to be installed, which are costly and require a comparatively large amount of energy. This is why manufacturers aim to dissipate the inevitable heat as efficiently as possible when designing lights.

As part of his doctoral thesis in collaboration with the Fraunhofer Application Center for Inorganic Phosphors, Ziegeler has already managed to patent a new testing method that combines the fields of thermography and thermal management. In this way, inaccuracies in the evaluation of heat paths and thus power losses can be reduced. The approach can also be transferred to other fields of application in which a precise understanding of the temperature development and thermal load of individual components is required, such as in heat pumps and electric cars.

Schweizer, Director of the Fraunhofer AWZ Soest and Professor of Physics and Energy Technologies in the Department of Electrical Power Engineering at the South Westphalia University of Applied Sciences, congratulates: "The award shows that we are carrying out high-quality and internationally recognized research work and are heading in the right direction."