Informatics anniversary celebrated nationwide

Yesterday a Germany-wide anniversary celebration of computer science took place. Organized by the Technische Universität Dresden (TUD), five universities, including Saarland University, celebrated 50 years of computer science education together but also locally. Each of the five universities contributed to the program with local lectures, which were broadcast to the other universities in Dresden, Darmstadt, Munich and Saarbrücken by livestream.

Michael Kretschmer, Prime Minister of the Free State of Saxony and patron of the festival, opened it at 9:10 am. After him, Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke in a video message produced in advance as the “greetings from the Federal Chancellery”.

Saarland University President Professor Manfred Schmitt then assisted the remote-controlled robot arm, which built the “Deutschlandcampus der Informatik 2069”, on behalf of the Department of Computer Science. With the help of special augmented reality glasses, Schmitt was also able to view and interact with the structure in a virtual scene enriched with holograms. This was followed by presentations from the various locations. For Saarland University, Professor Philipp Slusallek, head of the research area Agents and Simulated Reality at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), gave the lecture “How does artificial intelligence help to understand the world?” /gb