News Archive

IT security contests called “Capture the Flag” (CTF) are considered hacker contests, but for students this kind of competition is a practical exercise that beats any lecture on IT security in terms of learning enjoyment. Since 2014, the “saarsec” group, which also is made up of cybersecurity students from Saarland University, has taken part in such competitions. Now they will also be able to take part in the renowned CTF competition of the IT security conference “DEF CON”, which starts August 8th in Las Vegas, USA.

Penguins, Asian elephants and many other animal species live in the zoos of Saarbrücken and Neunkirchen. As they come from different continents, blood is regularly taken from the animals to check their health. These blood samples have now been used by bioinformaticians and human geneticists at Saarland University to search for biomarkers with which diseases can be detected at an early stage. The researchers want to use similar genetic patterns, which have been present in the blood of humans and animals for thousands of years, to improve computer-assisted disease prognosis.

They are the only German team among the seven finalists Airbus has selected to “shape the future of aviation”: Three young researchers from Saarland University want to make aircraft production safer and lighter. They have developed a system that uses artificial intelligence during assembly to ensure that the rivets, i.e. metal pins connecting the aircraft components, are absolutely secure. With their idea they prevailed against 269 teams of 284 universities from 72 countries. The final [...]

At the beginning of June, the German Weather Service counted 177,000 lightning bolts in the night sky within a few days. The natural spectacle had consequences: Several people were injured by gusts of wind, hail and rain. Together with Germany’s National Meteorological Service, the Deutscher Wetterdienst, computer science professor Jens Dittrich and his doctoral student Christian Schön from Saarland University are now working on a system that is supposed to predict local thunderstorms more precisely [...]

They prepare complex data material, analyze it using statistical and artificial intelligence methods in order to calculate previously unknown trends and facts. Such specialists are not only highly sought-after on the labour market. Even now, thousands of well-paid positions remain vacant. Saarland University is therefore introducing the bachelor’s and master’s degree program “Data Science and Artificial Intelligence” for the coming winter semester. Renowned experts from the [...]

The Department of Computer Science at Saarland University turned 50 years old as of a few days ago. While Günter Hotz was the first professor of computer science in 1969, there are now 1900 students enrolled in computer science, and around 800 scientists conduct research at the six world-renowned research institutes, which jointly operate as the “Saarland Informatics Campus” (SIC). During the last weekend in May, the Department of Computer Science celebrated its birthday with several events.

“Chappie” is the third movie in the film series “Artificial Intelligence in Cinema” and will be shown on 28 May at 18:30 in the Filmhaus Saarbrücken. The action film from 2015 deals with an autonomous police robot that is kidnapped by street gangsters and receives human consciousness. This leads to a dramatic chain of circumstances. Cosmina Croitoru, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Computer Science in Saarbrücken, will then comment on the science fiction movie [...]