Stefan Hiermaier is a university professor of Sustainable Systems Engineering at the Technical Faculty of the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg. He has been head of the Fraunhofer Institute for High-Speed Dynamics since 2015. He was a visiting professor at the University of Oxford. He studied Aerospace Engineering at the University of the Bundeswehr in Munich and received his doctorate in 1996 at the Faculty of Civil Engineering. He completed his habilitation there in 2002. In 2008, he was appointed to adjunct professorship for high-speed dynamics. His research activities focus on sustainable solutions for the selection, processing, and use of materials as well as on material and structural behavior under dynamic loads. He pursues the integration of experimental and numerical methods to investigate energy efficiency and resource conservation in processes as well as strain rate-dependent and shock wave-stressed material behavior. The main topics are the development of mesh-free methods and the formulation of mathematical models for material behavior under crash and impact loads.
