Peter Gumbsch said he was deeply honored to receive the TMS Fellow Award and to be accepted into this prestigious group of world-leading figures in materials science. This recognition would not have been possible without the invaluable support of many colleagues at Fraunhofer IWM and KIT. In his acceptance speech, Gumbsch said that the TMS had played a significant role in his professional development and had fostered important collaborations and friendships. The award was presented on March 18, 2026, at the annual TMS conference in San Diego.
TMS – The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society
TMS is one of the world's leading professional societies for materials science and engineering. With over 13,000 members from more than 70 countries, it connects scientists, engineers, and industry experts in the fields of minerals, metals, and innovative materials. The society promotes global knowledge exchange through high-profile conferences, specialist publications, and programs for young talent. Topics such as sustainable metallurgy, lightweight construction, and recycling are at the center of current research.
Curriculum Vitae Prof. Dr. Peter Gumbsch
Peter Gumbsch is Professor of Materials Mechanics at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Materials Mechanics IWM in Freiburg. His research focuses on the behavior of materials, components, and systems at the limits of their load-bearing capacity. His goal is to make materials and components safer, more reliable, and more durable, and to improve the materials and energy efficiency of technical systems.
His research is focused on understanding the behavior of materials and describing it mathematically. In addition to deformation and fracture processes, he is particularly interested in friction and wear. His concepts of multiscale materials modeling combine nano- and microstructural processes inside materials with their macroscopic behavior. Peter Gumbsch and his team are doing pioneering work in linking materials data, materials modeling, and product development.
Peter Gumbsch has received numerous awards and honors, including the Masing Memorial Prize in 1998, the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize from the German Research Foundation in 2007, the Hector Science Prize in 2009, and the DGM Prize in 2013. In 2016, he was appointed Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He is a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the German Academy of Science and Engineering acatech, and the National Academy of Engineering NAE in the United States of America. In 2015, he was appointed to the German Science and Humanities Council (Wissenschaftsrat) and served as chairman of its Scientific Commission from 2017 to 2021. From 2019 to 2025, he was Chairman of the Fraunhofer MATERIALS Group and a member of the presidential council of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft.
Peter Gumbsch is currently working on creating digital repesentations of materials as well as digital twins of materials and components. His goal is to make materials and components digitally compatible with industrial value chains in terms of their behavior and properties, thereby accelerating development processes, increasing materials efficiency, and making materials recyclable. He is the spokesperson for the MaterialDigital platform of the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space (BMFTR) and coordinates the European initiative MaterialsCommons4.eu.
Press release: "Peter Gumbsch Receives Top Honor from the American Professional Society TMS" [ PDF 0,15 MB ]
Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials IWM