© Stiftung Jugend forscht

Fabian Höfer (17) is the winner of the prize for a work in the field of electronics, energy or information technology, a special prize in mathematics / computer science. His work focuses on jitter or unwanted interference effects in electronics. When digital circuits go into action, their switching times are not always the same, but fluctuate a little, and randomly. Höfer constructed a kind of digital roulette based on an electronic mini-measuring laboratory - a circuit that produces over 350 random numbers per second. These are highly welcome in both science and computer science. Researchers need them for realistic computer simulations, computer scientists for creating secure codes to digitally encrypt confidential data.