The 2024 report is now available

The 2024 report on the Werner Siemens Foundation’s philanthropic activities invites readers on a journey into minuscule worlds where researchers in WSS-funded projects draw on sophisticated methods to enter the mini-, micro- and nanosphere—and bring about advances in medicine, electronics, chemistry and the earth sciences.

Scientific knowledge helps us to better understand our world, to solve critical problems and to both simplify and enrich our lives. The Werner Siemens Foundation is committed to furthering scientific progress by funding top-tier research projects in the life, natural and engineering sciences. The recently published WSS report now presents the progress these projects made in 2024.

All WSS projects share the clear ambition of making a meaningful contribution to solving the major challenges of our time. In pursuing this aim, researchers push the very boundaries of scientific knowledge. Some of these boundaries are located in extremely small dimensions—indeed, depending on the research field, breakthroughs are possible only on the mini-, micro- or even nanoscale.

This fascinating exploration of minuscule worlds forms the focus of the 2024 report. Readers will learn where developments in the area of miniaturisation are boosting precision in medical interventions and examinations. For example, one article relates how the team at the Werner Siemens Imaging Center in Tübingen is further developing medical imaging techniques to enable ever new insights into the smallest of structures inside the human body.

In an interview, the leaders of the CarboQuant and single-atom switch projects explain how they use revolutionary ideas to make electronic components smaller, more powerful and more efficient. And in a second interview, Thomas Zurbuchen, former Head of Science at NASA, discusses how the miniaturisation of advanced research instruments is a driving factor in the success of space missions.