From November 18th to 19th, 2024, the Software Campus community met for the annual summit event in Berlin. Dr Stephan Pfisterer from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research welcomed programme participants, alumni, partners and representatives of the DLR Project Management Agency.
18 participants presented their research projects as posters, demos and science slams (link to the booklet with the projects, here). Together with science slam coach Ingo Nordmann-Mohn, they had the chance to scrutinise and refine their short slam presentations in advance. The popular scientific presentation of the research projects realised at the Software Campus is both a challenging task and one of the highlights of the summit. Out of our three science slam finalists, Juraj Vladika (TU Munich), Haralampos Gavriilidis (TU Berlin) and Marius Gerdes (KIT), Haralampos Gavriilidis was able to convince the audience the most, by fighting against centralised data management together with “AI Princess”.The winning prize – a one-year subscription for “DIE ZEIT Digital” – was sponsored by the Software Campus partner Holtzbrinck Publishing Group.
On stage we also had more programme participants and alumni: As in the year before, three participants had the opportunity to present their startup or startup idea on stage. Hassan Nassar (Comphey), Philip Heltweg (JValue) and Omar El Nahhas (Stratif.AI) took the opportunity.
Beyond that, Software Campus alumni Ben Hermann, now Professor of Secure Software Engineering at TU Dortmund University, gave an insight into security-critical aspects of software components.
In the panel ‘Beyond Software Campus – opportunities for Transfer, F(o)unding and Collaboration’, industry and research partners discussed with the audience. Silke Munske (Volkswagen), Stefan Melles (DATEV) and Alexander Nouak (Fraunhofer ICT Group) shared their perspectives and ideas for a more effective and sustainable collaboration beyond individual research projects.
The Summit was also dedicated to the Communities of Practice that were newly established this year. Here, participants, alumni and partners come together in eight thematic communities. They discussed the biggest and most relevant challenge currently facing their research area from different perspectives and developed ideas on how they can contribute to a positive development as a specialist community.
Additionally, as on our yearly summits, at the end of our event a graduation ceremony took place. The two chairs of the steering committee, Dr Max Riedel (ZEISS) and Prof Dr Jeronimo Castrillon (TU Dresden), handed out graduation certificates to 14 participants.
Pictures: © Stefanie Loos
