University of Karlsruhe (TH)

University of Karlsruhe

 

Faculty of Informatics
Chair "Informatics for Engineers and Life Scientists" (Prof. Dr.-Ing. R. Vollmar)

The Faculty of Informatics (Fakultät für Informatik) was founded in 1972 as the first faculty of its kind in Germany. With its presently 1500 students, 26 professors and 180 scientific staff it has since then grown into one of the largest faculties of the university, and one of the largest informatics faculties in the nation. Its characteristic is the unparalleled broad scope of its informatics program in teaching and research , ranging all the way from computer technology and architecture to theoretical computer science, telematics, software techniques and systems, parallel and distributed systems, to applications mainly in the engineering sciences. The Faculty is thus well-prepared to continuously meet the challenges of an ever expanding body of knowledge in all these fields and to an ever growing spectrum of informatics applications, and to provide its own significant contributions.

With 26 research groups the Faculty offers an environment for an unusually broad range of research activities in informatics, often with close cooperation with the engineering faculties. The Faculty has attracted numerous research institutions and computer industry to the immediate geographic region, nicknamed the "TechnologyRegion Karlsruhe".

Fakultät für Wirtschaftswissenschaften Institut für Angewandte Informatik und Formale Beschreibungsverfahren (Prof. Dr. A. Oberweis, Prof. Dr. W. Stucky)

The AIFB Institute teaches students at the University of Karlsruhe (TH) basics, methods and concepts of Informatics which are needed for an expert design of informatics systems, information products and information services. For more than 30 years, the AIFB Institute in its function as an institute for Informatics of the Faculty of Business Science of the University of Karlsruhe (TH), has been responsible for informatics training within the study courses Business Engineering and Technical Economics. Within the scope of the interdisciplinary course Information Economics, which regards information as an economic asset, the institute teaches Applied Informatics. Information Economics is jointly offered by the Faculty of Business Science and the Faculty of Informatics. AIFB instructors also hold some of the lectures in Business Mathematics and Techno Mathematics offered by the Faculty of Mathematics.

Course offerings reach from classical subjects from so-called core informatics to practical informatics applications in business science. Important topics are

• analysis, modeling, construction and verification of informatics systems,
  
• economic solutions for complex problems requiring a lot of computing resources,
  
• corporate information systems using cutting-edge technologies,
  
• strategic planning and organization in informatics,
  
• knowledge management and Semantic Web
  
• process and quality management,
  
• project management,
  
• intelligent application systems,
  
• security issues with respect to information technology, information flow and data storage
  
• E-Learning.
  
• Usability engineering and software ergonomics, i.e., human-computer interaction, have been part of AIFB’s teaching program for 10 years. Research activities focus on corporate information and communication systems, efficient algorithms, knowledge management, complexity management, software and systems engineering, and E-Learning.

The AIFB’s visionary research activities in informatics are directed towards

• developing new, software supported methods of business organization, allowing for a universal interconnection of work equipment, and the co-operation in corporate and external networks
• transferring behavior which has proven successful in nature to informatics systems
• making the World Wide Web more intelligent
• developing self-configuring, self-healing, self-optimizing and self-protecting applications
• examining the potentials of mobile services and technologies and analyzing the possibilities of using them in an appropriate, cost-efficient way

To turn innovative ideas into research projects, the research teams of the AIFB Institute regularly apply for the participation in research funding programs of the European Union (EU), the German Federal Ministries (BMBF, BMWA), and the German Research Foundation (DFG). Third-party funds are also obtained from development projects carried out in co-operation with industrial enterprises. Funds from these sources by now make up almost two thirds of the institute’s budget.

Very close partnerships with enterprises actively support knowledge and technology transfer. The "AIK-Symposia" which the Institute arranges twice a year in co-operation with its related association "Angewandte Informatik Karlsruhe (AIK) e.V.", have established themselves as a forum for a vivid exchange of ideas between industry and science. The AIK e.V. was founded by the staff and former students of the AIFB Institute.