Dr. Silke Sommer, Head of the Component Safety and Lightweight Design Business Unit at the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials IWM, is the first woman to be honored with the prestigious Carl von Bach Medal of the University of Stuttgart Materials Testing Institute on October 8, 2024 at the MPA Seminar of the University of Stuttgart. This award recognizes her pioneering contributions to research in materials mechanics, particularly in the fields of crash simulation and lightweight construction technology.

The Carl von Bach Medal, named after the founder of the Materials Testing Institute (MPA) in 1884, is awarded to outstanding scientists who have created a decisive link between theory and practice in materials science. Carl von Bach worked personally and closely with important personalities such as Rudolf Diesel, Count von Zeppelin and Gottlieb Daimler. He was also a co-founder of predecessor organizations of the VDI (formerly Württembergischer Ingenieurverein) and the TÜV (formerly Dampfkesselrevisionsverein). His research into operational safety and material resilience has shaped the thematic focus of the MPA to this day, particularly in the fields of renewable energies and vehicle safety.

The award, presented by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Stefan Weihe and Dr.-Ing Martin Werz, is an expression of the close, decades-long collaboration between the Fraunhofer IWM in Freiburg and the MPA at the University of Stuttgart. The two institutes work together on topics such as the energy transition, the operational safety of hydrogen components, the development of material and failure models as well as crash and process simulation. Since it was founded in 1884, the MPA has developed into the largest university research institution of its kind in the world.

In close cooperation with the MPA, Dr. Silke Sommer initiated and researched numerous projects on resource efficiency and CO₂ reduction. Since 2020, she has headed the Component Safety and Lightweight Design business unit at Fraunhofer IWM and has dedicated her scientific life to the development of mathematical models for the evaluation of joints.

Her research feeds into commercial crash simulation programs and supports the digital development of sustainable electric drive architectures as well as the crash evaluation and durability analysis of lightweight structures. Dr. Sommer's work has led to these models now being used in commercial finite element programs and play a central role in the safety assessment of modern vehicles — a field that has long been dominated by men.

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