Welcome to KSRI

KSRI welcomes diafania, an EXIST-funded startup mentored by Prof. Dr. Gerhard Satzger, which uses AI to transform unstructured real-estate documents into reliable, structured data. The startup's automated extraction, validation and enrichment processes reduce manual effort and errors, speed up information retrieval and open the door to new AI-driven services such as predictive analytics and virtual agents. Diafania now plans to scale its solution across the European property market.

A new round of our mentoring program with our partners Bosch and IBM is starting. Due to high demand, we have now expanded the program.
Are you an innovation tech talent? Then apply for a one-year mentoring program... 

Due to high demand, we have extended the application deadline: 20 June.

On May 6, 2025, the new "Industry on Campus" partnership between the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG was officially launched.  The aim of the partnership is to closely integrate corporate practice and the research ecosystem to investigate and design innovative use cases for AI-based business processes at EnBW. As part of the collaboration, up to three EnBW researchers will be supported as doctoral students at KIT for a period of three years. The doctoral projects will be supervised by Prof. Alexander Mädche, Prof. Christof Weinhardt, and Prof. Jella Pfeiffer at the Institute for Information Systems (WIN). 

Further information is available in the press release.  

We are happy to welcome Prof. Dr. Werner Kunz from University of Massachusetts, Boston giving a research talk on "The Future of Work – Understanding the Collaboration Between Humans and Machines".

Date: Tue, April 1, 2025, 14.00 – 15.00
Location: Kaiserstr. 93, Geb. 05.20, 5C - 01

In July 2024, the spokesperson roles of the KSRI Board of Directors were re-elected. Prof. Stefan Nickel was confirmed in his role as spokesperson and will continue in this role for another two years. Dr. Carsten Holtmann (IBM) was elected as 2nd Spokesperson to fill the important role of industry representative on the Executive Committee. He takes over the leading role from Dr. Jens E. Müller (Bosch), who is leaving the board of directors and will remain closely connected to the KSRI by supporting our strong network in the KIT Business Club even more actively in the future with a revised commitment of Bosch.

We are pleased to announce that Emilia Grass has joined KSRI as a Junior Professor. Emilia brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to her new role, where she leads the Operations of Critical Infrastructures research group.

One of the projects her group is working on is cyber resilience in today's healthcare sector.

The increasing use of digital technologies in healthcare has led to an increased vulnerability to cyber threats.

Want to know more?

Our Service Workspace recently served as the location for an ARD television report focusing on our research in emergency medical services planning and emergency care. Stefan Nickel and Sven Watzinger were on hand to discuss the latest developments and findings in these important areas. This feature will be included in a wide-ranging report on emergency services to be broadcast on ARD this summer.

The "WiNo" symposium bridged the gap between researchers and practitioners in emergency logistics by presenting analytical methods and scientific approaches. Organized by the Health Care Lab in collaboration with the Institute for Rescue and Emergency Medicine, it attracted stakeholders from politics, service providers and payers. Discussions focused on practical applications and implementation challenges, while workshops refined project ideas. This blend of theory and practice is fostering continuous improvement in rescue service logistics.

Adobe Firefly - AI generated

Would you like to gain insights into the working world of large international corporations? Are you looking for personal and professional development for your individual journey? Would you like to learn about career options and development opportunities and be inspired and accompanied by female role models? 
Take your chance and apply now until May 10 at Female Talents @ KIT 
 The registration deadline has been extended to May 10 due to the public holidays.

We invite you to join us on Dezember 4th at 5:30 pm (KIT Building 50.43, Room -102) for a KSRI Speaker Series with Marcel Pfaffhauser, Quantum Community and Education Developer at IBM.

The talk is part of the lecture series "Introduction to Quantum Computing". Thanks for the cooperation to IBM, KASTEL and the KIT Department of Informatics.

The Health Care Lab is pleased to announce that it has received two more years of funding from the state of Baden-Württemberg for their project EVRALOG-BW. The focus is on patient-oriented planning in Emergency Medical Services. The aim of the project is to find out how we can make logistical decisions in the Emergency Medical Services in such a way that patients can be helped in the best possible way. With the help of real data from past rescue operations, simulations will be used to combine the best medical care and logistics. Through interdisciplinary work with practitioners from the emergency services, the aim is to improve the quality of care not only in theory but also in practice.

We are delighted that KSRI PhD student Johannes Jakubik had the privilege of presenting his research in the area of foundation models and Generative AI for the prestigious IBM-NASA project at the THINK conference in Frankfurt. He shared the keynote stage with David Faller (VP Development & Managing Director IBM Germany Research & Development).

We invite you to join us on May 3rd at 4:00 pm (KIT Building 10.91, Redtenbacher HS) for a KSRI Speaker Series with industry experts from Dillinger Hüttenwerke.

Join us to meet and discuss with Jan Necil (technical manager for models, optimization and simulation in technical logistics), Michael Hecht (expert for technical process models in steel production - including electric arc furnace), Dr. Benjamin Blaß (specialist for data science - machine learning and image analysis), Dr. Heike Busch (expert for production planning and technical logistics).

We are always delighted when our scientists move out into the world... we are even happier when they visit us with new ideas. We invite you to join us Feb 21st, at 2:00 pm (KIT building 01.85, KD2Lab) for a KSRI Speaker Series with Christian Haas from WU - Vienna University of Economics and Business on: "Computational (Re-)Districting - An Algorithmic Approach to Addressing Policy Questions."

Abstract

On January 1, 2023, Dr. Carsten Holtmann has been joining the KSRI leadership team as a director. 

Carsten is living in Karlsruhe since 1999. He has always been closely connected to the local IT and Science community. He has been working as a researcher, and lecturer at KIT, as business unit leader at FZI, and acting as a strong promotor of networking initiatives amongst local SMEs, industry, and science.

We are happy to welcome Dr. Carsten Holtmann as a director and are looking forward to IBM’s continued commitment to the close partnership with KIT and its industry-on-campus engagements.

Use your chance to get inspiring insights into your dream job and learn from a personal female mentor – apply for Female Talents @KIT 2023 until January 31st with one of our partners: IBM and Bosch!

Learn more about the program and how to apply here!

We would like to thank everyone for this successful and inspiring year 2022. We are grateful for our growing network and especially all the great people and minds within. We wish you happiness and good health for this holiday season and we are very much looking forward to see each other again next year!

We warmly welcome Prof. Hilde Kühne from Goethe University Frankfurt for our KSRI Speaker Series on December, 8th. We will have the pleasure to hear a talk about "Multimodal Embedding Spaces for Video Understanding". You are invited to join us at the KD2Lab (building 01.85) on December 8th at 14:30 h.

Abstract: 

Until recently, most methods for action classification and detection relied on supervised learning. But video annotation is very cost and time-consuming as it usually requires not only the label but also corresponding time stamps to capture its relevant content. Hence, relying on hand annotation alone will make it challenging to cover considerable amounts of video data and to develop systems to work on large-scale domains beyond existing datasets.

This talk will address methods, benchmarks, and evaluations for learning human actions without labels, focussing on the idea of inferring actions within videos without any label via multimodal embedding spaces that allow matching visual sequences to semantic concepts.

The rapid digital transformation of businesses and society creates new challenges and opportunities for Service Science. With a focus on 'Digital Service Systems' the Karlsruhe Service Research Institute (KSRI) has become a globally leading service institute and a service innovation hub.

For the 8th time, KSRI invites international experts from industry and academia to the Service Summit in Karlsruhe on October 14th. Digital service experts and stakeholders from important service domains will give you insights into their visions and showcase industry examples. In addition to keynote speeches, researchers from KSRI and its partners from KIT as well as industrial partners will present their latest research results - via hands-on demonstrations and a poster exhibition.

With this year's theme, we focus on the the potential of digital services and AI for society and the economy and further sustainable development. Be part of the future, design the digital transformation in an inspiring atmosphere and connect with peers and thought leaders!

This week, we warmly welcome Anudar Hanibal from Carve8 / 1886Ventures as a guest speaker at KIT. We are looking forward to her talk "Innovation Rollercoaster: From Corporate Lab to a Startup" and invite you to join on July, 14th at 09:45 am (KIT building 11.10, Kleiner ETI). 

Being managing director of a startup and looking back at an exciting career at Daimler AG, Anudar will provide first-hand insights into the challenges of driving innovation in dynamic environments. 

We are looking forward to seeing you, Anudar Hanibal, and other interested listeners on campus!

We warmly welcome Dr. Lisa Precht for our KSRI Speaker Series on July, 5th when she speaks about why "We need to talk... Voice control and chat bots in 2022 - best practices and exciting applications".

Abstract: Speech – whether written or spoken – is the most natural form of interaction for humans. Voice control and chat bots are therefore becoming increasingly popular. In addition to the growing willingness of customers to try out this still "young" operating modality, however, their associated expectations are also rising. Although many providers have created excellent technical conditions in this area, conversations with voice assistants or bots sometimes still result in disappointing experiences and leave customers frustrated. In this presentation, I will shed light on the psychological perspective on which best practices can be used to create dialogs that not only delight customers, but can even contribute to greater efficiency or security. I will look at possible applications in areas, such as mental health, security and aging, as well as information search in times of fear and new threats.

We are happy to welcome Kivanç Semen for our KSRI Speaker Series on June, 20th, 17:15 h at TRIANGEL OpenSpace. His talk „Die Zukunft ist PIC – Privacy | Information Security | Compliance“ is part of the Community Congress Cyber Security and will be held in German. You can find the complete programm of the Community Congress here and are warmly welcome to join for the full evening. 

In his talk, Kivanç Semen will share some insights about his founding experience. In summer 2017 - when the DSGVO was about to come into effect, he and his school friend Thomas Regier decide to put their vision into action and build a business that protects the people behind the data.

Kivanç Semen is founder and CEO of DataGuard. He studied business informatics and industrial engineering at KIT, Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and the Universidad Carlos III in Madrid. During his studies, he set his focus on data privacy and IT-security. He worked as a programmer and IT-consultant since youth and founded his first consulting firm with the age of 17.

Lukas Dierolf, Luca Dilger, and Simon Maier, three students of the Faculty of Economics at KIT, observed during the pandemic that many students had difficulties to take advantage of online teaching formats in between face-to-face events. Too few places on campus were accessible for this. They decided to find a solution themselves and applied for the DigitalChangeMaker Accelerator of the Stifterverband and the Reinhard Frank Foundation with support from KSRI/IISM and Innovation and Relations Management (IRM).

On 07.03.22 they received the acceptance. Now it's time to get to work. Congratulations to the team!

We are happy to welcome Dr. Markus Pertlwieser as a guest lecturer for an inspiring talk on: Digitalization in the Banking Industry and Beyond: Doing Things Right vs. Doing the Right Things?.

Dr. Markus Pertlwieser is CEO of Penta – a digital platform for business banking solutions – and a proven expert in digital business models and platform economy. He has 20 years of experience in developing corporate strategies and has been responsible for numerous product innovations. Prior to joining Penta, Dr. Markus Pertlwieser worked in various management positions for Deutsche Bank AG, most recently as Chief Digital Officer and as a member of the Executive Board of DB Privat- und Firmenkundenbank. He started his career at McKinsey Company after graduating from KIT.

Due to the current situation, the event will take place online via Zoom. We offer this as an open guest lecture within our course “Digital Services: Business Models and Transformation” @IISM-DSI. You are cordially invited to sign up (free of charge): info@ksri.kit.edu.

Are you looking for personal and professional development for your individual journey? Would you like to learn about career options and development opportunities and be inspired and accompanied by female role models?

Female Talents@KIT – It’s your opportunity for personal and professional development. Apply now and get a picture of your dream job!

It gets cosy in TRIANGEL Open Space. Last weekend "intro CAFÉ" has opened its doors within the Innovation location at Kronenplatz. It is operated by a team of KIT students in a café-startup mode. Dishes are at least vegetarian, if not even vegan – everything produced sustainably and fair.

Go check it out! :)