Research Profile

The research agenda of the department is oriented on the one hand to promising or emerging innovations within the disciplines of electrical engineering and computer science, and on the other hand to essential societal needs: The progressive and ubiquitous digitization of almost all areas of life requires both an infrastructure consisting of electronic components, computer systems, and devices of information, communication, and automation structures, as well as algorithms and software for data collection and analysis, for extraction and machine learning of knowledge from data, and for automated decision making. While numerous application fields can benefit from research into technologies and methods with this objective, a particular pressure to act arises in the context of climate change, which implies a sustainable and rapid transformation of energy systems to the extensive use of renewable energies while maintaining the reliability of supply. In line with these needs, current and medium-term research activities are focused on the three focal areas of learning systems, smart technologies (for digitization) and sustainable energy systems.

The focus "Learning Systems" groups the activities of those disciplines that research the ability of technical systems (also and especially in interaction with users) to generate knowledge from data, physical principles and contextual information and to transfer it into goal-oriented and automated (thus artificially intelligent) behavior even under changing boundary conditions.

The "Smart Technologies" focus area, on the other hand, combines research work on hardware and software as well as methods that enable solutions for diverse use cases and lead to special requirements for robustness, safety, and sustainability being met.

The focus area "Sustainable Energy" summarizes the working groups that investigate mechanisms and procedures of the transition to energy systems without fossil energy sources or a sustainable use of available energy resources.

The delimitation of these fields is intentionally not sharply defined in order to promote the interaction of the disciplines of different foci and to achieve synergies between the three fields; also, several disciplines act in more than one focus.

The research profile determined by the focal areas is unique among the departments/faculties of electrical engineering and computer science in the German university landscape. Even though the number of professorships is comparatively small, the profile can benefit synergetically from the combination of electrical engineering and computer science in one department. The profile's content-related relationship to foreseeable trends in German and European research funding (e.g., with respect to artificial intelligence and sustainability) enables promising applications for third-party funding in the coming years. Through the integration in and interaction with interdisciplinary institutions (including ITeG, CINSaT, CESR, ISAC) as well as Fraunhofer IEE, there are numerous opportunities for cooperation in the application and implementation of joint collaborative projects. At the same time, the three research areas are directly thematically related to the newly defined university-wide research areas "Sustainability" and "Materials and Nanostructure Sciences", so that further synergies can be expected here.