History

In 1960, the Institute for Measurement, Control, and Regulation Technology was founded at the Hochschule für Schwermaschinenbau Magdeburg, roughly the College of Heavy Machinery Engineering in Magdeburg, (renamed in 1961 as Technische Hochschule Magdeburg, in 1987 as Technische Universität, and since 1993 as Otto von Guericke University), from which today's Institute of Automation Engineering (IFAT) emerged. One of the students in the first cohort in the field of control engineering was Ulrich Korn (1941-2020), who was later appointed as Full Professor of Control Engineering on September 1, 1978. From 2000 to 2006, Professor Jörg Raisch headed what is now the Chair of Systems Theory and Control Engineering, one of the four chairs at IFAT. After Prof. Dr.-Ing. Rolf Findeisen held the professorship from 2007 to 2021, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Nicole Gehring took over the chair at the beginning of 2025.