News Archive 2010

B-IT Media Informatics student Zeynep Akata was awarded the prize for best work on image retrieval at this year’s international summer school on Visual Recognition and Machine Learning in Grenoble, France. Ms Akata is one of the few master’s students who were admitted to this prestigious event that took place from July 26-30 and attracted 120 researchers and PhD students from renowned institutions in the US and Europe. Together with her supervisors Dr. Christian Thurau and B-IT Professor Christian Bauckhage, Ms. Akata develops novel algorithms for “Multiview Processing of Images for Segmentation, Retrieval, and Clustering”. Her master’s thesis is carried out in close cooperation with Fraunhofer IAIS.

Deniz Sarier graduated with an M,Sc. in the B-IT Media Informatics programme in 2008 and currently holds a stipend as a Ph.D. student in the B-IT Research School, supervised by B-IT Professor Joachim von zur Gathen. Her paper "Generic Constructions of Biometric Identity Based Encryption Systems" received the Best Student Paper Award at WISTP2010, the 4th International Workshop in Information Security Theory and Practices. The workshop was devoted to "Security and Privacy of Pervasive Systems and Smart Devices" and the Award is sponsored by ISL, the Institute of IT-Security and Security Law, University of Passau.

Silhouettes is an interactive collaborative gesture-based experience for the German-Chinese House at the World EXPO 2010 in Shanghai. It was developed by Prof. Peter Russell's CAAD group and B-IT Professor Jan Borchers' Media Computing Group.

Echoing the theme of EXPO 2010, the German-Chinese House and its host, the German-Chinese government initiative Germay and China - Moving Ahead Together, EXPO visitors can create a virtual city neighborhood together by interacting with a large-scale display wall using only their body silhouettes. Their city neighborhood becomes part of a growing 3D virtual city that can be seen online.

The exhibit opened on May 1st along with the rest of the World EXPO 2010, and will be on display until June 24th. On the first day, more than 2,000 visitors enjoyed the interactive experience, and the German-Chinese House expects more than 170,000 visitors during the 2 months Silhouettes and the house will be open.

More details about the initiative, current photos and videos, and information about the unique bamboo structure housing the exhibit, can be found at the home page of the Germay and China - Moving Ahead Together initiative (in German and Chinese).

An international Symposium will be organised from May 27 -29, 2010 at B-IT to celebrate B-IT Professor von zur Gathen's 60th birthday.

More information, in particular about registration and programme.

B-IT Professors Hofmann-Apitius and Bajorath have organised the B-IT Life Science Informatics Lecture Series 2010. Due to the success of the Lecture Series in Summer Semesters 2008 and 2009 it will be continued this year.

More information about this year's invited lecturers and their topics can be found here.

Due to the success of Informatiktage in B-IT in the previous years, it was decided that Informatiktage should be held here again. Informatiktage are organised by Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V and will be held in the time of March, 19-20, 2010 at B-IT. This gathering focuses on workshops and keynote lectures, addressing excellent graduate and doctoral students in computer science.
All lectures will be held and all courses will be taught in German.

Read more...

... about the overall programme (in German)

... about the workshops (in German)

B-IT provides a platform for an intercourse among scientists, industry and politics. The 2. B-IT Wirtschaftsforum serves to highlight the competence available in the field of Life Science Science Informatics in the ABC (Aachen-Cologne Bonn) region. A dialogue is essential in promoting the dynamically growing field of Life Science Informatics and benefiting from its outcomes.

These benefits may include innovative research, new products and economic growth.

More information...

Peter Schaar, Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, will give a talk (in German) at B-IT on January 21, 2010. The talk wil be delivered within the B-IT lecture series on Data Privacy (B-IT Ringvorlesung Datenschutz).

Date: January 21, 2010
Venue: Lecture hall B-IT
Time: 19:30 hours

Peter Schaar will speak about "Das Ende der Privatsphäre" (in German).