Dr. Sylvia Schattauer
Dr. Sylvia Schattauer has served as Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy Systems IWES since January 2022. The IWES is active in the field of wind energy and hydrogen technology. Fraunhofer’s construction and operation of three hydrogen labs has laid the groundwork for a digitally networked infrastructure with the capacity to test and qualify the electrolysis and fuel cell systems over 25 Megawatts (MW) required in the industry. Prior to accepting her current position, Schattauer was Deputy Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Microstructure of Materials and Systems IMWS in Halle (Saale), Germany. There, she supervised the Hydrogen and Carbon Process Technology division on behalf of the Fraunhofer Executive Board. Before that, as the Deputy Head of Materials/Life Sciences, she served on the board of Fraunhofer headquarters in the research department of the President. This position also encompassed the overall supervision of research coordination in the Materials division for the Fraunhofer Society, and Schattauer was tasked with managing key cross-institute projects (exceeding EUR 10 million) and developing location concepts and profile regions.
Schattauer, who is also a mother of four, studied electrical engineering with a focus on environmental technology and renewable energies in Berlin and completed her doctorate in experimental physics with a focus on soft matter physics at the University of Potsdam. As a postdoctoral researcher, she worked at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research in the field of organic electronics in Potsdam and contributed to the development of methanol fuel cells and electrolysis systems at Heliocentris Energy Solutions AG in Berlin. She also worked as a research assistant at the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing in the area of material recovery from solar cells. She has been with the Fraunhofer Society since 2011.
