Best Master Thesis Award

Ten Master’s graduates were nominated for the Best Master Thesis Award. The jury, chaired by Margrit Gelautz, considers both the methodological and substantive aspects of each thesis, including the importance and originality of the subject, the quality of the scholarship, its structure, writing, and presentation – after a joint hearing with the nominees. The Best Master Thesis Award is endowed with €1500, and runners-up receive €750 each.

This year’s winner of the Best Master Thesis Award is Tobias Batik with his thesis on Design and Evaluation of a Novel Shape Changing Haptic Device for Virtual Reality. He was supervised by Hannes Kaufmann, Professor and Head of the Research Unit Virtual and Augmented Reality. Hannes Kaufmann introduced Tobias to the audience, praising his determination, creativity and dedication.

Tobias Batik’s thesis introduces Shiftly, a shape-shifting haptic device that enhances Virtual Reality (VR) by providing realistic touch feedback. Shiftly uses shape-changing technology based on origami to mimic the feel of virtual objects by adjusting its surface. A functional prototype was created, tested in VR, and evaluated in user studies. The device successfully simulates various shapes, including flat, convex, and edged, using only three actuators – a considerably smaller number than comparable state-of-the-art devices.

The two runners-up for the Best Master Thesis Award were Alexander Loitzl with his thesis on Supporting Register Pairs in CompCert supervised by Florian Zuleger; and Daryna Oliynyk with her thesis entitled Man of Steal: Exploring Model Stealing Attacks against Image Classifiers, supervised by Andreas Rauber and co-supervised by Rudolf Mayer.

Best Dissertation Award

The Best Dissertation Award was presented by Andreas Steininger, Director of the Doctoral School at TU Wien Informatics. Steininger emphasized the rigorous selection process, and the achievements for the scientific community that all nominated theses brought to the table. Six students were nominated for the Best Dissertation Award; amongst the 6 nominees, however, there was one dissertation that particularly stood out, which was Lukas Aumayr’s thesis “Foundations of Bitcoin-Compatible Scalability Protocols”. He was supervised by Matteo Maffei, Professor and Head of the Research Unit Security and Privacy. Matteo Maffei, evidently proud of his student, highlighted Lukas Aumayr’s perseverance and humbleness and the exceptional character he demonstrated throughout his research endeavors.

Lukas Aumayr’s dissertation addresses scalability problems in permissionless blockchains, which allow mutually untrusted users to transfer money in a decentralized way. The thesis evaluates existing Payment Channel Networks (PCN) protocols in terms of security, privacy, efficiency, and functionality and identifies their limitations. It introduces novel Bitcoin-compatible protocols, including Sleepy Channels for offline security, Blitz for faster multi-channel payments, and Thora for secure non-linear updates, among others. The novel protocols use Bitcoin’s scripting limitations to ensure compatibility with many cryptocurrencies, improving scalability and expanding blockchain applications.

Siemens Awards for Excellence

The faculty annually honors the best female Bachelor and Master students with the Siemens Awards for Excellence. Our partners from Siemens AG sponsor the prize endowed with 1000 Euros. It was a particular honor to have Patricia Neumann, CEO of Siemens AG Österreich, as a guest at the Informatics Awards. Following a short keynote on the importance of computer science for the future of the industry, Patricia Neumann handed over the certificates to the recipients of the award for the academic year 2023/24: Marit Einböck (Bachelor), Mona Eisenkirchner (Bachelor), Maria Novoszel (Bachelor), and Carmen Walser (Bachelor). Ivana Bocevska (Master), Esther Shifra Mugdan (Master). Unable to attend the ceremony were Siemens Awards for Excellence recipients Pia Schwarzinger (Master) and Barbara Weilgony (Master).

Bachelors with Honors

Our excellence program Bachelor with Honors enables the top 5% of students to deepen their knowledge and inspires them to do scientific research at an early stage of their academic careers. The program promotes close collaboration with researchers at TU Wien Informatics and makes the everyday experience of researchers accessible to young scientists. Vice Dean of Academic Affairs, Hilda Tellioglu, introduced all Bachelors with Honors with a few words, and handed over the certificates to Sonja Gerstenmayer, Lea Holter, Michael Kiran Huber, Radu Tulcan, Christian Muth, and Christoph Kern for their outstanding achievements. Nikolaus Spring, Alexandra Irger, and Thomas Fromherz also completed the Bachelors with Honors program but were unfortunately unable to attend the ceremony. Designed as a one-year extension of our regular bachelor programs, this excellence program is an additional offer to excellent undergraduates. Individual mentoring, an interdisciplinary, flexible approach, and distinct and exclusively performance-based rules are the program’s cornerstones. The Certificates of Honors include a personal letter of recommendation by the Rector of TU Wien.

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