Peter Sanders receives Federal State Prize:

Prof. Dr Peter Sanders from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) receives the Baden-Württemberg Federal State Prize for Applied Research 2011. The computer scientist is awarded the prize endowed with 100,000 Euro for his research on the topic of route calculation. The award ceremony will take place in Freiburg in July. Sanders has developed a process for route planning devices allowing for the extremely fast calculation of optimal routes for driving. The technology enables the realisation of millions of route calculations per second. The basic idea is to use the hierarchy of street networks in such a manner, so as to obtain verifiable optimal routes although only a fraction of streets actually are looked at. For instance, motorways, the highest level in the hierarchy, suffice for calculating the route between Hamburg and Munich. The lowest level can be sufficient for travelling between a city's suburbs. The fields of application include, in addition to classical route planning, also traffic simulations, energy-efficient logistics and the intelligent placing of shared lifts. In the spring of this year, Sanders already received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Award for his research.

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