The Association for Electrical, Electronic & Information Technologies (VDE) Rhine-Main has awarded prizes to the best diploma theses from the Department of Information Technology – Electrical Engineering – Mechatronics (IEM) at the Giessen -Friedberg University of Applied Sciences. Seven graduates received the Friedrich Dessauer Foundation Prize.

The first prize winner is Thilo Hoffmann, whose development of a novel human-computer interface based on virtual reality elements most impressed the judges. He was followed in second place by Marcus Zerb, who presented an amplifier he designed from conception to the finished circuit board. Third prize was shared by Jakob Belschner (topic: Wi-Fi for trains) and Kawa Nazemi (e-learning), while four graduates – Christina König, Dennis Eder, and the team of Robert Boczki and Adrian Degner – tied for fourth place. "The differences between all the outstanding diploma theses were so minimal that we considered this decision the best one," said Prof. Dr. Hans-Dieter Spindler as he presented the certificates to the winners together with Dagmar Borchert from the VDE Rhein-Main.

In addition to the prizes totaling 1200 euros, the graduation ceremony also included the recognition of the top-performing graduates. Ten of the 80 new graduate engineers achieved a grade of 1.5 and, besides their certificates from Dean Prof. Dr. Karl-Friedrich Klein and Vice Dean Prof. Dr. Michael Peppel, received book prizes.

In light of the flood of awards, the dean of the Friedberg Department , Prof. Dr. Karl-Friedrich Klein, looked to the future with a bit more optimism as he told his audience about the increasingly dramatic shortage of engineers in Germany. He also found the "great response from students, especially in the field of electrical engineering," encouraging, as they had recently taken advantage of the information days to visit the university in Friedberg. In his annual review, Klein considered the groundbreaking ceremony for the new university building, which is scheduled to house the entire media informatics department as well as large parts of the other two Department ' degree courses in the summer of 2008, to be an "important event.".

FH President Prof. Dr. Günther Grabatin, who, like the very first Friedberg VDE Prize winner, Dr. Sven Hischke, warmly congratulated all the graduates, encouraged his young audience to maintain contact with "their university of applied sciences." He further emphasized that the prizes demonstrated the "continuous achievement of top-level performance" in the IEM Department . Grabatin added that the Department had played a "significant role" in the university's growth from just under 1,600 students in the late 1990s to over 4,000 today, thanks to the introduction of new Degree Courses .