News › Fraun­ho­fer IOF – Award for suc­cessful tech­no­logy transfer

Fraun­ho­fer IOF, the Digi­tal Inno­va­tion Hub Pho­to­nics (DIHP) and Quan­tum Optics Jena GmbH have been awarded the Tech­no­logy Trans­fer Prize of the Ger­man Phy­si­cal Society (DPG) for the suc­cessful trans­fer of quan­tum opti­cal rese­arch into mar­ke­ta­ble high-secu­rity appli­ca­ti­ons. The award cerem­ony took place on May 22, 2025 as part of the 6th KTT Forum in Bremen. 

The award-win­ning pro­ject focu­ses on pho­to­nic tech­no­lo­gies for quan­tum com­mu­ni­ca­tion – in par­ti­cu­lar sys­tems for quan­tum key dis­tri­bu­tion (QKD). The under­ly­ing tech­no­logy is based on highly effi­ci­ent sources for ent­an­gled pho­tons, which were deve­lo­ped at Fraun­ho­fer IOF and suc­cessfully trans­fer­red into mar­ke­ta­ble pro­ducts by Quan­tum Optics Jena. 

The award also reco­gni­zes the role of the DIHP as an inno­va­tion inter­face in Jena, which sup­ports spin-offs such as Quan­tum Optics Jena GmbH and thus spe­ci­fi­cally pro­mo­tes the trans­fer from rese­arch to industry.

Fur­ther infor­ma­tion: Link