News Archive

Since Tuesday, an oak statue several meters high has been standing in front of the building of the Helmholtz Centre for Information Security (CISPA). “We watch over your security! Our new landmark symbolizes protection, defensive capability and ambition,” said Professor Michael Backes, founding director of the CISPA, explaining the background of the figure on his Facebook page. The artists Res Hofman, Michael Tamoszus and Andrej Löchel carved the wooden figure.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a worldwide professional association of engineers, has appointed Professor Michael Backes, Scientific Director of the Helmholtz Centre for Information Security (CISPA) in Saarbrücken, Germany, as an IEEE Fellow.

According to the CHE ranking of master’s degree programs published today, Saarland University is the leader in both subjects. The ranking is based on the evaluations of the local students. The Centre for Higher Education Development (CHE) assesses these and divides the results into more than 20 criteria in order to enable students in particular to make a nationwide comparison when searching for a suitable degree program. Indicators such as number of students and international orientation are [...]

Even experts have less and less of an understanding of the behavior of complex software systems nowadays. Meanwhile, these systems are increasingly involved in our daily lives, whether as intelligent home automation, in autonomous vehicles or in industrial production. Scientists from Saarland University, two Max Planck Institutes and the Dresden University of Technology now want to develop mechanisms in a new Collaborative Research Center to better communicate the behavior of complex software systems [...]

Jilles Vreeken, leading the group “Exploratory Data Analysis” at the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, was awarded the Tao Li Prize in Singapore at the IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM). The Tao Li Prize was established in December 2017. The award is named after Professor Tao Li of Florida International University, who passed away in December 2017 and, despite his young age, was considered an outstanding teacher and ingenious researcher in information [...]

Last week the State Chancellery of Saarland invited nine computer scientists to a reception in order to thank them for their commitment to the competition “Landmarks in the Land of Ideas”. Three Saarbrücken computer science projects in the areas of dependable systems, bioinformatics and cybersecurity were able to prevail among almost 1500 applications. Thus, the Saarland Informatics Campus received the title “Excellent Place in the Land of Ideas” three times this year.

Professor Backes, a few days ago your research center organized the Summer of Cybersecurity event in the Congress Hall. Why are researchers so committed to engaging with the public? At some point we came to the conclusion that we could not effectively serve the interests of citizens by holding smaller events. Members of the public kept coming to us with similar questions. Therefore, we came up with the idea to create a large-scale event, which would have workshops on everyday IT security that could [...]

The weekly magazine DIE ZEIT presented the “ZEIT Karriere Award” for the fourth time in a row on October 18 in Berlin. An advertisement of the Saarland Informatics Campus is one of the winners. Together with its print and online job markets the magazine honors both job advertisements and image ads, i.e. advertisements that express emotions in a special way towards a product, a brand or a company.

Traditionally, the student council awards the so-called Busy Beaver Awards at the beginning of each semester. These awards are given to lecturers for outstanding performance in teaching [...]

Last Thursday, “Fusion”, the incubator for IT security at the CISPA Helmholtz Center in Gründung, was inaugurated. In the future it should bring together research and industry. Among the 100 guests selected was Ammar Alkassar, Saarland’s representative for innovation and strategy, as well as regional and national representatives from the start-up scene, industry and politics. The opening ceremony was preceded by a “tour of structural change”. It invited a discussion [...]

The Bundestag, the German federal parliament, has set up an Inquiry Commission on Artificial Intelligence (AI), which will start work on the 27th of September, 2018. One of the 19 appointed experts is Professor Antonio Krüger. Since 2009 Krüger has been Globus Foundation Professor of Computer Science at Saarland University and Director of the Innovative Retail Laboratory at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence. In 2010 he established the Media Informatics study program at Saarland University, which he manages to this day. /gb

GandALF 2018, the Ninth International Symposium on Games, Automata, Logics, and Formal Verification, will be held September 26–28 in Saarbrücken. It is the first time that the symposium is taking place outside of Italy. The aim of symposium is to bring together researchers from academia and industry who are actively working in the fields of games, automata, logics, and formal verification. Hence, GandALF 2018 covers a wide spectrum of themes to stimulate cross-fertilization, ranging from theory to applications.