The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is to sponsor the application of micro system technology in small and medium-sized entities with 30 million Euros. To this end “application centres for micro system technology” are to be erected in Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Berlin, Bremen, North Rhine-Westphalia and Thuringia. The Federal research minister, Mrs. Annette Schavan talkes about an important leap of innovation for small and medium-sized entities (SMEs). »Using this new micro system technology our SMEs will become even more competitive and generate new jobs.« In her opinion, especially innovative SMEs could immensely benefit from such applications. The centres sponsored by the BMBF will be operable in summer and supported for a period of five years.
The sponsored centres are: MicroMountains Applications in Baden-Württemberg, the MST application centre Smart System Integration at the Fraunhofer institute for high fidelity and micro integration in Berlin, Embedded Microsystems in Bremen, the Mikrooptical Systems application centre in Thuringia, the application centre in Dortmund and the application centre Hybride Mikrosystems in Bavaria. Further information is available with the body responsible for the project which is VDI/VDE Innovation + Technik GmbH. 