In the early Middle Ages, the German city of Aachen was the northern capital of Charlemagne's empire. Today, the city is home to western Europe's largest technical university (Technical University in Aachen), the only one in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) given elite status in Germany's recent Initiative for Excellence competition. In the last 25 years Aachen has been an incubator for over 1,000 start-up companies.
One of the university's leading figures is Rainer Fischer. Hs immense energy and resourcefulness have helped to build up a global network for the implementation of biotechnological inventions made in NRW. Fischer holds a chair of molecular biotechnology at the Technical University and is senior executive director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology. The institute is a special unit of the Fraunhofer Society dedicated to contract research, which earns two-thirds of its budget from research work done on commission. ...
