HPI Research School Awards Ten New Grants to Scientists

Potsdam. The Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) has announced that it will be awarding grants for its international Research School to ten young scientists. Beginning in the coming winter semester, the junior researchers will reinforce the team of the Potsdam Research School, which currently consists of 27 members. Suitable candidates who are working towards their PhD or who already hold a doctorate are invited to submit their application to the HPI Research School. The deadline is August 15th.

With its branches at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, (11 scholarship holders), the Technion in Haifa, Israel (11 scholarship holders), and the Nanjing University in China (7 scholarship holders) the Potsdam Graduate School has dedicated itself to the field of "Service-Oriented Systems Engineering". Scholars investigate the current overarching questions from different perspectives in their own research areas. This model, introduced at HPI in 2005, calls for junior researchers to be jointly mentored by their professors rather than only on an individual basis.

"Each of our PhD candidates consequently also learns the questions, theoretical models and practical approaches of other disciplines", said HPI director Prof. Christoph Meinel describing the significant advantage. This facilitates a mutual understanding of content and supports fruitful collaborative work with other scientists and specialists. That the model of the International Research Training Group is successful proves not least the large number of Research School alumni who work successfully with major IT corporations such as Google, Microsoft, and IBM. Since the founding of the Research School ten years ago, there are 50 completed doctorates. 21 in Potsdam, 13 at the Technion in Israel, nine at the University of Cape Town and seven in China at Nanjing University.

The Research School, "Service Oriented Systems Engineering", focuses on – to put it very simply – service programs to facilitate a standardized form for the exchange of loosely coupled programs and data. Such programs are increasingly superseding the intermeshed software applications and processes used up to now. "In case of reconfiguration, this allows for the flexibility to make changes and saves the needs for basic, expensive reprogramming", said Prof. Andreas Polze, spokesman of the Research School.

The work of the PhD students at the HPI Research School involves research questions on architecture, modeling and the security engineering of service-oriented systems. Additional areas address fundamental issues such as: the self-adaptive administration of services at the operating system level, questions concerning the application of services in the fields of adaptive process management, service composition and process design. 3D computer graphics, geoinformatics, and human computer interaction are further challenging service-oriented system application topics investigated at the HPI Research School.

Applications to the HPI Research School must be submitted by August 15th of the respective year, with research positions normally available each October. Please send applications to the following e-mail address: research-school-application(at)hpi.de. HPI Research School spokesman is Prof. Dr. Andreas Polze, and the acting coordinator is Prof. Dr. Robert Hirschfeld.

Short Profile of the Hasso Plattner Institute

The Hasso Plattner Institute for Software Systems Engineering in Potsdam is Germany’s university excellence center for IT Systems Engineering. It is the only university institution in Germany offering bachelor and master programs in “IT Systems Engineering” – a practical and engineering-oriented course of studies in computer science, in which currently 480 students are enrolled. The HPI School of Design Thinking is Europe’s first innovation school and is based on the Stanford model of the d.school. It offers 240 places for a supplementary study.

There are a total of ten HPI professors and a further 50 guest professors, lecturers and contract teachers at the Institute. HPI carries out research noted for its standard of excellence in its ten computer science topic areas, as well as at the HPI Research School for PhD candidates, with its further research branches in Cape Town, Haifa and Nanjing. HPI teaching and research focuses on the foundation and application of large-scale, highly complex and interconnected IT systems. The development and exploration of user-driven innovations for all areas of life is an additional area of importance. HPI always earns the highest positions in the CHE university ranking. Since the beginning of September 2012, the Institute has offered openHPI openhpi.de, an interactive Internet educational network that is open to everyone.