Semester Update: Review & Preview

Date 2021-08-10

MCiT & DiBSE News

 

The MCiT & DiBSE semester update contains a review of numerous events & celebrations of the past months from our study programs as well as exciting news and results of our research unit, extended by a short preview of the upcoming winter semester.
Summertime, travel time, reading time: The MCiT & DiBSE semester update provides you with additional reading. Foto credit: Arno Rottensteiner

New in our team

Gerhard Gaube

"After studying computer science and subsequently working at various universities in the east and south of Austria, I have finally found a job at MCI in Innsbruck. Here I can dedicate myself to my preferred focus areas of software engineering in distributed systems and cloud computing in projects and teaching. I am also particularly looking forward to the perfect environment for me and will then shift my sporting activities to the Nordkette or even start in the other direction to Italy."

Florian Merkle

"During my MCIT master's degree, my interest in the technical and theoretical aspects of new technologies was awakened. In the course of my master thesis on 'The Impact of Network Pruning on the Adversarial Robustness of Deep Neural Networks' – under the excellent guidance of DiBSE & MCiT lecturer Pascal Schöttle – I was able to dive deep into the research field of neural networks and their susceptibility to manipulation. Now I am looking forward to continue working on this exciting topic as a project assistant."

Martin Nocker

"After my bachelor's degree in computer science at LFU Innsbruck, I transferred to TU Munich for my master's degree in electrical engineering and information technology. Back in Tyrol, I gained professional experience as a software developer for two years before embarking on a new career path with MCI. Here I am now conducting research together with experienced experts in the field of machine learning while maintaining data confidentiality. I am happy to be part of the MCI and DiBSE team as a project assistant since February 2021."

New lecturers

In addition to our new staff members, we also welcome new lecturers. One of them is Jens Mache, we were able to recruit him for several courses at once including Data protection & Data security, Bachelor MCiT as well as for the two DiBSE courses Operating Systems and Academic & Professional English Communication. Another new member of the DiBSE team is David Baumgartner for the course Databases II & Big Data. In the MCiT master's program, Daniel Wintersberger took over the course Research Design for the first time in summer semester 2021. Thank you very much for your commitment!

Looking forward to new challenges at the department this winter semester: In the MCiT bachelor program Christian Wörgötter will take over the course Principles of databases and Stefan Hupfeld the course Micro- and Macroeconomics. There are three new external lecturers in the MCiT master's program: Anastassia Lauterbach will teach Applied Project in MCiT II, Claudio Winkler will teach eBusiness Systems and Günther Egger will provide our master's students with fruitful insights into Marketing in a Digital World. Rolf Sint will also teach at DiBSE for the first time. Together with Markus Steyerer he will teach IT Governance. Mark Koller will take over the course Business Solutions. Welcome to our team!

Management, Communication & IT insights

Teresa Spieß receives MCI professorship

On June 23, 2021, our lecturer Teresa Spieß was awarded the MCI professorship in a festive ceremony. The certificate of appointment was presented by our Head of Department & Studies Peter J. Mirski, together with the deputy chariman of the academic council Franz Pegger and MCI Rector Andreas Altmann. Dear Teresa, we congratulate you most sincerely on your professorship and look forward to many more years together! For more insights click here.

WKT Science Award for MCiT Alumna Adriana Wacker

The Science Award of the Tyrolean Chamber of Commerce honors outstanding master's theses and dissertations that demonstrate a high degree of innovation and are of importance to the Tyrolean economy. Our MCiT Master Alumna Adriana Wacker could convince the jury with her master thesis "Projected and Perceived Image of Tyrol as an Alpine Tourism Destination". For more insights click here.

MCiT Forum 2021

This year's MCiT Forum was dedicated to the topic "A new Digital World – How did Covid-19 change the IT Industry?". The months of intensive preparations by our 2nd semester MCiT master students paid off: 11 talks, 13 top-class international speakers and numerous participants attended the digital conference on June 2. "The highlight of our online event this year was definitely the keynote speech by Anastassia Lauterbach. I am pleased that our MCiT Forum once again provided a great opportunity for numerous IT-interested people from the industrial and academic environment to inform themselves about current topics and to exchange ideas," emphasizes Peter J. Mirski, Head of Department & Studies. For more insights click here.

Digital Business & Software Engineering insights

DiBSE students win MCI Creativity Award

As an Entrepreneurial University, the MCI strives to promote the commitment and creativity of its students. Each year, the MCI Creativity Award honors outstanding business concepts and product ideas. 86 MCI students took part in this year's competition. Our two DiBSE students Michael Karbasch and Stefan Dobler beat the competition with their idea 'WASP' – a software solution that automates the collection, processing and analysis of train data – and won the MCI Creativity Award 2021. For more insights click here.

DiBSE at Girls Day 2021

On June 24, 2021, the 20th Girls Day took place. 36 interested schoolgirls visited MCI IV on this day and spent a day looking behind the scenes of our technical degree programs. Elisabeth Rabanser and Alexander Monz brought our study program Digital Business & Software Engineering to life. True to the motto "learning by doing", the young visitors – without any previous knowledge of programming – were able to experience that creating software is not "magic". For more insights click here.

Our first DiBSE alumni

In September 2018, we welcomed the first Digital Business & Software Engineering bachelor students to our MCI campus. Time flies – less than three years later in July 2021, eleven of them are taking their final bachelor's exams at the early deadline and all of them are passing with flying colors. We would like to congratulate Franziska Langer and her male colleagues Sandro Berger, Çağlar Calayir, Marijan Divković, Philipp Eichhorn, Patrick Gössl, Sebastian Härting, Lukas Klingenschmid, Rossano Longo, Tobias Mirocha and Stefan Reinmüller on their Bachelor of Science in Engineering.

"Self-discipline and self-organization are important components for successfully completing our mobile study program. These and numerous other skills have been successfully demonstrated by our first eleven DiBSE alumni. I sincerely congratulate them on their academic achievements and I am already looking forward to seeing more DiBSE alumni at the regular deadline in September," says Head of Department & Studies, Peter J. Mirski.

Research projects

Please support our international research projects

Mentoring Young Talents: We strongly believe that mentoring is a vital part of an academic education and it is our goal to provide our talents a head start on their individual career paths. Therefore, we are currently working on a publication on the topic of identifying and evaluating mentors’ and mentees’ expectations. Please support us in designing the mentoring process of the future. Link to the survey

Leading The Future: In the context of our close cooperation with the international consortium "Follower Endorsed Effective Leadership & Sustainability", we are very pleased to take over the Austrian contribution. Please support us in discovering the ideal leadership style in different cultures. Link to the survey

Research cooperation with Fraunhofer Austria

The SMILe project "Secure Machine Learning Applications with Homomorphically Encrypted Data" is looking for new ways and solutions to harness the potential of sensitive data for machine learning using homomorphic encryption. Since April 2021, DiBSE Lecturer Pascal Schöttle and Project Assistant Martin Nocker are part of the Austrian research team. Fraunhofer Austria Research GmbH is responsible for the project coordination. The project duration is set for 30 months, until 09/2023. For more insights click here.

Research project Holo Light

MCI and Holo-Light GmbH are linked by a long-standing academic cooperation. On behalf of Holo-Light GmbH our Research Unit "Digital Transformation" is currently working on the research project "Augmented and Virtual Reality in the context of innovative streaming technologies." With AR/VR streaming, the rendering process takes place in the cloud or on a more powerful server rather than on the AR/VR hardware itself. This allows, for example, the rendering of more detailed 3D models and can replace the need to build expensive prototypes, offering significant benefits to the automotive industry, among others. The study consists of both, a quantitative questionnaire and qualitative interviews. The results are eagerly awaited in the last quarter of 2021. For more insights click here.

Conferences & publications

In the past months, our lecturers participated in numerous virtual conferences and presented their latest research results, sometimes together with MCiT alumni and students. Here is an excerpt:

AESP Workshop at SE, February 2021

WI 16. Internationale Tagung Wirtschaftsinformatik, March 2021 à For more insights click here.

Weidhaas, Schlögl, Halttunen, Spieß: Watch This! The Influence of Recommender Systems and Social Factors on the Content Choices of Streaming Video on Demand Consumers

EBEEC, May 2021

  • Mair, Dilger, Ploder, Bernsteiner: The recognition and impact of dynamic pricing with ESL technology on the purchasing decision of consumers in stationary grocery stores: Current findings and experimental design
  • Ploder, Dilger, Kirchgasser: The impact of transparency on trust and purchase intention – The moderating role of consumers’ blockchain awareness

Sustainability journal, June 2021

EDULEARN, July 2021 à For more insights click here.

KMO & LTEC, July 2021 à For more insights click here.

Congratulations to our teaching team on their latest publications!

Preview

Winter semester 2021/22

The latest developments concerning COVID-19 (infection numbers vs. occupancy of intensive care units, vaccinations, testing...) give us reason to hope that lockdowns etc. will no longer be required in the future and that "normal operation" will hopefully be possible in the upcoming winter semester. As of today, the face-to-face classes at MCI are based on the Covid-19 opening regulation of May 2021. This provides for equal treatment of vaccinated or recovered persons and tested persons ("3 G's"). The next few weeks will be indicative of the form in which courses can actually take place in the fall of 2021. We will send you an update on this on September 20, 2021.

2002 to 2022 = 20 years of MCiT studies & services

More than 1,000 degrees, around 900 graduates and currently around 350 students in 3 study programs: that is the balance of 20 years of the Department of Digitalization at MCI | The Entrepreneurial University. On the occasion of this anniversary, Head of Department & Studies, Peter J. Mirski invites you to join us in 2022 to discuss the future of technology, digital skills and adequate IT solutions for today's challenges. We look forward to an exciting exchange with our companions, friends, students and alumni. Details about the anniversary program will follow. You wish to make an active contribution? Your ideas are welcome! Via e-mail to: Office MCiT

Contact
Prof. Dr. Peter J. Mirski | Head of Department & Studies Bachelor's program Management, Communication & IT
Prof. Dr. Peter J. MirskiHead of Department & Studies
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