How would you describe your work in 90 seconds?

I work in so-called electronic design automation, which is a very specialized field. We are developing software tools, and with these software tools we help people to design hardware chips. So, these hardware chips integrate the processors that the software runs on and any other circuits. These chips go into all kinds of devices, from servers to very small devices like wearables, a smartwatch for example. It’s a highly complex field because these circuits consist of transistors, and you can put billions of transistors on one chip. For that, you need software that helps you design these systems as you can’t do this manually anymore. A main part of my work is to advise PhD students. This involves giving them guidance in their scientific endeavors and discussing new scientific ideas with them. Then there’s teaching, of course, which is very different at the PhD level than it is for bachelor’s or master’s students. There’s also other scientific work you have to do, like reviewing papers, etc. Reading papers can get quite challenging because there’s a lot of research going on and you have to keep up to date with current developments. Lastly, there are also administrative tasks, and organizational work inside of the Research Unit.

How did you get in touch with informatics?

There were quite some detours. After finishing school, I was interested in physics, but then I wanted to work more on the applied side, so I went for engineering. I studied communications engineering at the Technical University of Munich, and I did some internships where I already did a little bit of electronic design automation. For my doctorate, I went into electronic design automation. I wrote software that helped design analog circuits, which is still on the side of electrical engineering, but after that, I switched more to the computer science side and now I’m designing software that helps to design digital computers. So, my work is right at the boundary between electrical engineering and computer science. With my move from TU Munich to TU Wien, I’ve switched from electrical engineering to computer engineering, which is part of the faculty for informatics here, which felt very natural.

Where do you see the connection between your research and everyday life?

At a foundational level, every computing system needs an integrated circuit. And the people who design these integrated circuits need software tools. We are not designing a nice wearable that you can showcase; we are designing a tool with which somebody can design a computer that then goes into the wearable. It’s now reached a level where it’s highly complex to do that, so you need a lot of software tools. Having said that, you also need a lot more than software. By now, you have more people checking the designs than people who do the actual designing. Let’s say if 100 people design a chip, you need at least 120 people who check that it was done the right way.

What makes you happy in your work?

It’s a real privilege to be in science and getting paid for something you like doing, which in my case is to work on complex problems. Microelectronics, for me, is one of the most fascinating fields in science. It is, at least in my eyes, the most advanced technology humans have on this planet. The technology is now down to 4 nanometers for device density. The wavelength of light is about 400 to 700 nanometers, so the technology is way smaller than that, and you can build something with that that works. It’s surprising how many people you need to make chips work because they’re so complex. And that’s, of course, only possible due to the work of hundreds of people that came before us. I’m very happy I can be a part of that and contribute something. It’s great to be at the frontier of novel problems, and to try and find solutions for them. That’s a privilege you only get when you work in science.

Why do you think there are still so few women in computer science?

That’s a very difficult question, especially for electrical engineering and computer science. Overall, I think there are several aspects to it. One aspect, of course, is upbringing, what you’re taught, and how society works. I think the first thing you need if you’re going into this field is to be excited about technology, and somehow people tend to get boys more excited about technology. It starts with things like stopping at a construction site with your son and showing him all the machines that are used in construction. Girls are showcased different things, so the first step would be changing that, but it has to be more than that. I had a lot of female students in my courses, whose parents were engineers, so they kind of inspired this excitement for technology from a very early age. Maybe it’s also that there are some misconceptions about engineering and computer science. I think there’s still this stereotypical picture of a computer scientist sitting alone, coding all day. And if you look at my field of research, the reality looks very much different. Because of the complexity, you spend most of your time trying to understand a problem and collaborating with other people, so there’s also a lot of teamwork involved. It’s actually a very team-focused work you’re doing. Maybe it also has to do with what you’re shown in popular fiction, but that doesn’t reflect what this work is really like. It’s a very hard question, but you have to take measures to counter these stereotypes. Even though I don’t think we’re making much progress, I think that having role models, and especially having some female role models, is a good start.

Daniel Müller-Gritschneder is Professor of Embedded Computing Systems at TU Wien Informatics. Daniel Müller-Gritschneder will hold a joint Inaugural Lecture on November 12, 2024; 17:00 CEST at EI 9, Gußhausstraße together with Jessica Cauchard and Paweł Woźniak.

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