Schedule

The lecture series is held in the winter semester 2025/2026, every Monday from 17:00–18:00. All lectures are offered online and will be recorded.

The Zoom link for all lectures is:

• tuwien.zoom.us/j/63867281732
• Meeting ID: 638 6728 1732
• Passcode: Xnupv5gi

Registration

Whether you’re a student, a professional looking to expand your knowledge, or a citizen interested in sustainability issues – this lecture series is open to anyone. Switch on your laptop and join us!

Students from participating universities can register to get credits for the lecture series. Please refer to your respective institution for registration.

TU Wien students can register for VU 194.155 “Sustainability in Computer Science” via TISS. Depending on your study program, the lecture series is a free elective or a “Wahlpflichtfach”; please refer to TISS for further information.

Upcoming Lectures

Introduction to Computational Sustainability: From Sustainable IT to the IT for the Sustainable World

By Ivona Brandic, TU Wien on Oct 20, 2025.

In the first part of this talk, we will discuss the concepts of sustainable IT. We will present novel approaches for sustainable fault tolerance and trustworthy geographically distributed AI applications utilized on systems ranging from the size of a smartphone to a warehouse scale data center. Furthermore, we will discuss the novel concept of hybrid classic/quantum systems as a response to the increasing demand for computational resources. Scientific applications are nowadays utilizing different types of hardware accelerators including GPUs, TPUs and NPUs. With the arrival of the post Moore Era and the rise of quantum computing, we are experiencing new opportunities but also challenges when trying to integrate quantum computers into the well-known computational continuum. This integration into so-called hybrid systems promises resource efficiency at a new order of magnitude. We will discuss challenges regarding the data encoding, noise, transpilation and the high heterogeneity of quantum architectures which necessitate the development and integration of additional hardware/software layers. In the second part of the talk, we will present several use cases, where IT can be utilized to combat climate change and help us to develop a more sustainable world including sustainable watershed management through IoT-driven artificial intelligence and satellite-based monitoring of livestock in the Alpine region.

Sustainable Security

By Daniel Gruss, TU Graz on Oct 27, 2025.

Global ICT electricity consumption is already beyond 11 percent of the worldwide electricity production and still increasing. By 2030 it may reach around 25 percent. Previous approaches to improve efficiency and performance have often sacrificed security, leading to disastrous security issues like Meltdown and Spectre. Patching just these 2 vulnerabilities increases power consumption on affected computers by a seemingly harmless 5 percent. By 2030, this may be more than 1 percent of the global electricity production by just a single out of thousands of patches. This development is not sustainable. In this talk, we will discuss both the problem and potential revolutionary solutions.

Blockchains and Sustainability

By Krzysztof Pietrzak, ISTA on Nov 3, 2025.

The Bitcoin cryptocurrency, through the underlying blockchain technology, for the first time achieved consensus in a permissionless setting, that is, in a distributed way where everyone can participate towards securing the system. To achieve this, the key idea is to “vote” using computing power, rather than identities. The blockchain technology is interesting from a sustainability perspective as it poses unique challenges, but also promises to address existing issues, for example through DePIN projects, which aim to build and operate real-world physical infrastructure (like wireless networks, sensor grids, compute/storage networks, energy systems, etc.) in a decentralized, open, and permissionless way. In this lecture I’ll discuss a cryptographic primitive, proofs of space, and show how a project (Chia) uses them to address the main challenge, namely the massive electricity waste of the Bitcoin blockchain. At the same time, proofs of space are the key enabler of a DePIN project (Filecoin) constructing a decentralized storage network.

Sustainability in Software Engineering

By Franz Wotawa, TU Graz on Nov 10, 2025.

In this talk, we are going to discuss the intersection of software engineering research and sustainability. We start with discussing existing approaches in software engineering for improving sustainability and in particular reducing the energy consumption of applications. Afterwards, we outline the application of sustainability to software.

Sustainable Neuromorphic Edge Computing

By Atakan Aral, University of Vienna on Nov 17, 2025.

Neuromorphic computing and edge intelligence are converging to enable a new generation of sustainable, energy-efficient computing systems. By mimicking the brain’s event-driven and parallel processing mechanisms, neuromorphic architectures offer ultra-low-power computation that aligns naturally with the constraints of edge environments. When combined with edge computing, these systems can process sensor data locally, reducing latency, bandwidth, and energy consumption. This lecture introduces the principles of neuromorphic and edge computing, highlighting how their fusion supports sustainability across distributed systems. Case studies from environmental and infrastructure monitoring demonstrate how neuromorphic edge computing enables continuous, low-power operation in remote and resource-limited settings, advancing both technological efficiency and environmental responsibility.

Computer Science Between Energy Savings and Waste: From Videoconferencing to Blockchain

By René Mayrhofer, JKU Linz on Nov 24, 2025.

Digital information and communication services offer the potential for significant energy savings: video conferencing instead of trans-continental flight, file transfer and streaming instead of shipping physical media, or cryptocurrency instead of transporting gold and paper money. But what is the real energy balance of these digital options? In this talk, we try to quantify such comparisons based on estimates of the energy consumption of various digital services.

Space-Efficient Blockchains

By Georg Fuchsbauer, TU Wien on Dec 1, 2025.

The move from “proof of work” to “proof of stake” has arguably overcome the problem of energy waste in blockchains. However, for public verifiability, most systems require all transactions to be stored forever, by every “full node”. In Bitcoin this data currently amounts to almost 700 GB, while in Ethereum it is over 1.4 TB. We will overview two approaches to space-efficient systems. “Mimblewimble” is a protocol where spent transactions can be erased from the blockchain while maintaining verifiability. “Mina” uses a heavy-weight cryptographic concept called recursive zk-SNARK to reduce its blockchain size to 22kB, which will never grow.

Emerging Computing Paradigms for a Sustainable Next-Generation Computing Landscape

By Stefan Nastic, TU Wien on Dec 15, 2025.

We are witnessing a transformative evolution of computing landscapes, giving rise to what is known as a 3D continuum. The 3D computing continuum refers to an integrated, interconnected system of computing resources and services that operate across multiple tiers, including Cloud, Fog, Edge, IoT, and recently, space-based systems such as satellites. These tiers work together, enabling data processing, storage, and computation to occur seamlessly and concurrently across different levels optimizing performance, latency, and resource usage. The modern 3D computing continuum is increasingly defined by high resource consumption, rising energy demands, a growing carbon footprint and the potential for significant environmental and economic impacts. Serverless computing has established itself as a compelling paradigm for developing modern and sustainable continuum-native applications. It represents the next step in the evolution of edge and cloud computing paradigms and introduces novel programming models, execution models, services, and platforms. Serverless computing paradigm is especially appealing due to its low management overhead, easy deployment, scale-to-zero, and the promise of optimized costs. In this talk, we take a closer look at the state of serverless computing, particularly focusing on the opportunities and challenges related to building sustainable serverless applications and systems in the 3D continuum.

Carbon Footprint of Social Media (and other popular platforms)

By Andreas Uhl, PLUS on Jan 12, 2026.

With the increasing importance of sustainable solutions in ICT, social media platforms have been increasingly criticized for their significant carbon footprints. We will have a look at corresponding results and will analyze the methodology how these estimations have been obtained, partially revealing that the perspective from which such investigations are being conducted is significantly biasing the results.

From Algorithms to Empathy: Reimagining Computer Science for a Sustainable Future

By Michaela Zint, University of Michigan on Jan 19, 2026.

Computer science occupies a pivotal position in the sustainability transition: it is both a contributor to environmental challenges and a potential catalyst for transformative solutions. As digital infrastructures increasingly shape how people learn, connect, and respond to global crises, the design of computing itself becomes a sustainability issue. This lecture explores the intersection of computer science, climate change, and emotion—three dimensions that together influence human and planetary well-being. Drawing on interdisciplinary research in sustainability education, emotional science, and human–computer interaction, I examine how algorithms, data systems, and AI technologies affect emotional responses to the climate crisis, from anxiety and overwhelm to hope and collective efficacy. I also discuss how computing education can foster emotional intelligence, ethical reasoning, and systems thinking as essential competencies for responsible innovation. By viewing sustainability not only as a technical challenge but as a profoundly human one, the presentation invites both students and faculty to imagine new forms of computing that strengthen empathy, meaning, and purpose while advancing environmental goals. Ultimately, it calls for a redefinition of digital progress—one that aligns computing power with the emotional and ecological intelligence needed for a livable future.

Green HPC: Paving the Way for Sustainable Supercomputing

By Philipp Gschwandtner, University of Innsbruck on Jan 26, 2026.

As the demand for high-performance computing continues to surge, the environmental impact of powering and cooling these massive computing infrastructures has become a pressing concern. This talk attempts to unravel the critical intersection of computational power and sustainability within the HPC domain, focusing on energy-efficient hardware, multi-objective optimization and other relevant hardware and software practices.

Recorded Lectures

Electric Load Disaggregation as a Means for Increasing Energy Awareness and Reducing Energy Consumption

By Wilfried Elmenreich, University of Klagenfurt on Oct 13, 2025.

When the EU introduced smart meters, the idea was to give consumers more information about their power consumption, thus raising energy awareness. Tailored appliance-level feedback is expected to lead to more careful use of energy and thus to savings of around 12%. Despite the potential benefits, implementing a network of small measurement devices, each per appliance/socket, has raised concerns due to the added energy consumption and intrusive visibility of smart adapters impacting user experience. Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring employs computer algorithms to extract appliance consumption data from a single, smart meter measuring the entire system’s consumption. While this concept has been around since 1985, when George W. Hart (MIT) proposed it in a report for the Electric Power Research Institute, recent advancements in computer science have propelled its potential. This talk explores the significance of load disaggregation and its relevance in today’s context, where smart meters and small embedded devices like the Raspberry Pi offer sufficient computational resources. The presentation delves into the evolution of load disaggregation algorithms, from traditional bin-packing techniques and Hidden Markov Models to the cutting-edge application of deep neural networks powered by machine learning. As these techniques continue to evolve, the talk also addresses the pressing need to address privacy issues and develop comprehensive, long-term interfaces that engage consumers in a captivating manner to monitor their power consumption effectively. In conclusion, the talk highlights the potential of Electric Load Disaggregation in increasing energy awareness and reducing energy consumption. Leveraging advancements in computer science, this technology promises to substantially impact sustainable energy practices, empowering consumers to conserve energy and promote a greener future.

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