For the Institute of Databases and Information Systems (DBIS), 2014 was an exciting as well as successful year. On one hand, excellent results could be achieved in research and teaching. On the other, important personnel decisions were made regarding the institute’s future course.

DBIS in Teaching: New Courses, Exciting Guest Lectures, High Attendance Figures

In the past year, DBIS extended its list of courses to meet current student demands. First and foremost, two new projects for media informatics students have been offered since autumn 2013: Mobile Business Applications (Bachelor) and Advanced Mobile Application Engineering (Master). Both students and teachers were enthusiastic about the outcomes of the first edition of these courses. For the Mobile Application Lab, which takes place this winter term, already twice as many students applied as slots were available. To meet this demand, DBIS added capacities to this laboratory course.

Finally, many of the students participating in these projects do their bachelor or master assignment with DBIS as well. Thereby, they apply the gathered knowledge and develop innovative ideas, concepts and prototypes for mobile applications and services in a variety of domains (e.g., automotive industry, clinical and psychological trials, tourism). For example, in November 2014, DBIS master student Steffen Musiol received the eXXcellence Award for his outstanding master thesis on the robust support of mobile tasks in process-aware information systems.

In 2014, attendance figures were increasing for established DBIS courses as well. For example, more than 100 students registered for the Business Process Management course this winter term. Similar numbers were reached for the Business Process Intelligence course. Besides lectures, exercises and laboratory hours, for both courses there are exciting guest lectures with speakers from industry. Further, the DBIS Lab as well as the DBIS courses on Database Management Systems, Information Systems and Service-Oriented Computing re-enjoyed a great popularity in 2014. Finally, DBIS was engaged in giving pupils insights into Computer Science during a BOGY internship.

DBIS students may be looking forward to exciting course offers in 2015. In particular, DBIS will renew its courses in the database field.

DBIS in Research: Conferences, Committees, Keynotes, and Awards

DBIS as Organizer of an International Top Conference

Helsinki, Beijing, and Vancouver in the previous years, Adelaide in 2015, and in 2014? Ulm! More than 150 experts from over 25 countries travelled to Ulm between 1st and 5th September 2014 in order to attend the  18th International IEEE EDOC Conference. The EDOC conference series provides the key forum for researchers, decision makers, enterprise architects, solution designers, and practitioners in the field of Enterprise Computing. For the second time, DBIS succeeded with hosting an international top conference at Ulm University.

DBIS was particularly glad that it was able to convince three distinguished speakers holding the conference keynotes. One of Europe’s most famous computer scientists, Prof. Wil van der Aalst from the Technical University Eindhoven (The Netherlands), who is a member of the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities and the Academy of Europe, gave a presentation about the role of Big Data in the analysis and optimization of business processes. Furthermore, with Dr. Heiko Ludwig from the IBM Research Center in San Jose/USA and Prof. Dr. Barbara Weber from the University of Innsbruck two other renowned scientists gave keynote talks about specialized topics in the areas of Cloud Computing and Business Process Management.

General Chair, Editorships, Committees und Publication Results

Prof. Manfred Reichert was General Chair of the EDOC 2014 conference. Since October 2014 he has been a member of the EDOC Conference Steering Committee as well. Furthermore, he has been co-editor of the IEEE EDOC 2014 conference and workshop proceedings. In 2014, Manfred further received invitations to the editorial boards of international journals (e.g. Int J Cooperative Information Systems, BISE) as well as to the program committees of the most important conferences in his field (e.g. BPM, CAiSE, CoopIS, EDOC, ICSOC, and BPMDS). Furthermore, he was invited keynote speaker at several international conferences and workshops (i.e., IEEE ICHI, BPCAS’14, and Modellierung’14). In 2015, again, he will contribute to the organization of international events. For example, Manfred will be General Workshop Chair of the BPM 2015 conference as well as co-organizer of the 8th International Workshop on Process-Oriented Information Systems in Healthcare (ProHealth’15).

DBIS researchers were again successful regarding scientific publications in 2014. This includes a number of accepted journal articles (e.g. Information Systems, Information & Software Technology, Software & Systems Modeling, Requirements Engineering und Information Systems & e-Business Management) as well as accepted conference papers (z. B. BPM 2014). Finally, several DBIS articles have been listed among the most cited papers by international journals in 2014 (e.g., Computers in Industry, Int J Coop Information Systems and Data & Knowledge Engineering).

Doctoral Thesis Award and Completed PhD Projects

DBIS is particularly proud of Dr. Vera Künzle who received the doctoral thesis award of the Ulmer Universitätsgesellschaft in July 2014. In the same month, Dr. Ulrich Kreher successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled Concepts, Architecture and Implementation of an Adaptive Process Management System at Ulm University. Ulrich has been one of the founders of the AristaFlow GmbH as well as chief software architect of the AristaFlow BPM Suite.

Several of our PhD students introduced their PhD project in a colloquium presentation at the faculty level last year. Hence, it can be assumed that there will be plenty of reasons to celebrate in 2015 as well.

Current and Future Research Projects: A Broadly Diversified Portfolio

DBIS is currently involved in a variety of national and international research projects, which address both basic and applied research. The grants for these projects stem from various sources including the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi), the European Union (EU), the Wilken Foundation, and industrial partners. Recently, we acquired a project funded by the BMWi in its research program “Zentrales Innovationsprogramms Mittelstand (ZIM)”. With Persis a regional partner from industry is involved in this project as well. Furthermore, DBIS was successful with acquiring a project in the context of BMWi‘s EXIST research program. Finally, DBIS has been pleased about the continuation of its long-term research collaboration with the Daimler AG as well as further third-party research grants (e.g. Children Hospital Zurich and KPMG).

A Strong National and International Research Network

Both the national and international research network of the institute are excellent. As chairman of the GI SIG EMISA, Prof. Reichert is well connected to the German scientific community. Furthermore, he is a member of the steering committee of the GI technical branch on Databases and Information Systems. Amongst others, national research collaborations exist with the Universities of Constance and Regensburg as well as with the Charité Berlin. Additionally, the long-term strategic collaborations DBIS holds with partners from the Universities of Innsbruck, Vienna and Ravensburg-Weingarten resulted again in considerable publications in renowned journals and conference proceedings. Recently started collaborations with colleagues from the Penn State University, the University of Verona and the University of Valencia have already led to common scientific publications as well. Finally, DBIS has been a member of the European BPM Round Table, the IFIP Working Group 5.8 „Enterprise Interoperability“, and other international research networks.

Leadership Changes, Innovative Strength Will Remain

There were important personnel changes in 2014 as well. After 25 years of commitment in teaching and research at Ulm University, Prof. Dr. Peter Dadam was retired in September 2014. With effect from 1 October 2014, Prof. Dr. Manfred Reichert became the new director of the institute. At the same time, Manfred was appointed as Dean of Studies in Computer Science at Ulm University. Finally, the open DBIS full professorship will be filled by Prof. Dr. Martin Theobald, an internationally renowned expert on "Data Science". Martin has been an Associate Professor at the University of Antwerp and will start his new job at Ulm University in February 2015.

The DBIS team wishes its students, partners and friends a happy new year and is looking forward to successfully collaborating with them in 2015 as well.