This Was the 29th Epilog
We honored our most excellent students of this winter term for their outstanding achievements in their studies.
Picture: Amélie Chapalain / TU Wien Informatics
TU Wien Informatics’ most excellent students of this winter term were awarded their certificates for outstanding achievements in their Bachelor and Master programs. The 29th Epilog took place at the Festsaal of TU Wien on January 21, 2020, and was hosted by our Vice Dean of Academic Affairs, Stefan Woltran. Gerti Kappel, newly ordained dean, explained the Epilog was showing the “real output of our Faculty”. “Knowing where you come from, what your roots are” was important, she pointed out to the students in her welcome address.
Distinguished Young Alumn
A jury, chaired by Margrit Gelautz and consisting of Pavol Cerny, Geraldine Fitzpatrick, Franz Puntigam and Jesper Träff, selected the four best graduates who presented their diploma theses. Soeren Nickel convinced the jury with his inspiring presentation “Computing Stable Cartograms. It’s hip to be square!” and his profound knowledge of the topic in the subsequent round of questions. He received the Distinguished Young Alumn Award endowed with €1,500. His diploma thesis, supervised by Martin Nöllenburg, focused on important features of a good cartogram, and he concluded that you can efficiently compute cartograms by using Linear Programming as an optimization method.
The other three best graduates who presented their diploma theses were also greeted with applause. Nicolas Grossmann wrote his diploma thesis on “Pelvis Runner: Comparative Visualization of Anatomical Changes” and was supervised by Eduard Gröller. Jakob Rath presented “Subsumption Demodulation in First-Order Theorem Proving”, supervised by Laura Kovács. Martina Sengstschmid researched “Community Blockchain Interaction Patterns” and was supervised by Eva Kühn.
An Impressive Display of Research Diversity
Margrit Gelautz emphasized that “we have a great variety of topics we work on at our faculty,” as could easily be seen in the comprehensive poster exhibition displaying the broad spectrum of research done by the students. The Best Poster Award—endowed with €500—went to Andreas Brandstätter, supervised by Radu Grosu. His poster presentation about “Local Positioning Systems for Quadcopters” was “informative, but not overloaded, and the text was very much to the point,” according to the jury.
Four New Bachelor with Honors-Graduates
Our excellence program for outstanding undergraduates, Bachelor with Honors, enables students to deepen their knowledge and inspires them for scientific research at an early stage in their academic careers. Jovan Jeromela, Markus Nissl, Daniel Öhlinger, and Aleksandar Pavlović were awarded their Certificates of Honors by Dean of Academic Affairs Hilda Tellioglu, including a personal letter of recommendation by the rector of TU Wien, confirming that they belong to the Top 5 percent of students at TU Wien.
Siemens Pushes Diversity
For almost a decade, Siemens AG Austria has been supporting TU Wien Informatics’ efforts to aiming at gender balance and promoting excellent female students in a successful research career with its excellence program. Bernhard Kienlein, Head of Digital Industries at Siemens AG Austria, presented the Siemens Awards for Excellence each worth €1,000 to six awardees: To undergraduates Lea Salome Brugger and Sophia Schober, and to graduate students Silvana Zechmeister, Laura Rosalia Luidolt, Kristina Schiechl, and Hanna Lachnitt. “It exactly needs the skills of computer science, this is what the industry needs,” said Kienlein while addressing the successful awardees. “Pushing diversity and increasing gender balance is important because there is improved performance with mixed teams in research and industry.”
A Keynote on Computational Design
With his keynote, Michael Wimmer gave an insight into the new Special Research Programme (SFB) Advanced Computational Design, which was granted €4 million for four years. It is intended to help close the gap between Informatics on the one hand and architecture and construction on the other. “Architecture and construction characterize our built environment, and with it our society in cultural, economic and ecological terms,” Michael Wimmer said. “However, digitization is not particularly advanced in this area.” Bridging the gap between Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) and ICT through a multidisciplinary approach, collaboration of different stakeholders and new computational design tools is the overall objective of the special research program to meet the requirements of innovative and resource-friendly design.
The Siemens Award for Excellence is sponsored by Siemens AG Austria.
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