We are happy to welcome Prof. Dr. Werner Kunz from University of Massachusetts, Boston giving a research talk on "The Future of Work – Understanding the Collaboration Between Humans and Machines".
 
This talk explores the evolving collaboration between human and digital employees in service contexts. As AI and service robots become more prevalent, understanding how humans and machines can effectively work together is crucial. 

Felix Kretzer successfully defended his PhD thesis titled “Designing AI-Based Graphical User Interface Prototyping Assistants“ on March 27th 2025. His work contributes to the fields of human-computer interaction and information systems engineering by providing design knowledge for LLM-based GUI prototyping assistants. His findings present insights for both researchers and practitioners, enabling them to more effectively create GUI prototypes and on this basis ultimately better software systems. 

Christian Boos, Global VP and Head of Sustainability Innovation at SAP and Prof. Alexander Mädche signed a research collaboration agreement on human-centered AI for sustainable business on March 18th 2025. The collaboration focuses on designing human-centered AI-based assistants supporting sustainability professionals in their daily work to protect our planet while driving efficient businesses. As part of the collaboration multiple design science research cycles are performed.

Moritz Langner successfully defended his PhD thesis titled “Gaze-adaptive LLM-based Reading and Writing Assistants“ on March 10th 2025. His work contributes to the human-computer interaction body of knowledge by providing empirical evidence on the feasibility of eye-based cognitive state recognition and designing gaze-adaptive LLM-based assistants. The thesis project was carried in association with the DFG-funded KD2School (https://kd2school.info/) 

The Institute for Information Systems (WIN) will be present with four full papers and three late-breaking work papers at the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. CHI is the premier international conference of Human-Computer Interaction and will be held from April 26th to May 1st in Yokohama, Japan (https://chi2025.acm.org/). 

This week, we had the pleasure of hosting researchers from Fraunhofer ISST, TU Braunschweig, TU Dortmund, Universität Stuttgart, and LMU at KSRI, KIT for an in-depth workshop on digital sustainability and circular economy. Over the past two days, we explored how digital technologies, platforms, and AI can accelerate the circular economy while addressing critical regulatory and governance challenges. Our discussions focused on three key areas:

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and IBM are expanding their long-standing collaboration with the aim to jointly develop and strengthen digital innovations and support young talents in science and industry. The official launch of this new strategic cooperation was on January 09, 2025. The organizations have set the focus on the promotion of joint research in fields such as “Digital Innovations for Services and Platforms,” “Artificial Intelligence (AI),” and “Human-Machine Collaboration.” To this effect, a tenure-track professorship supported by IBM will be established at KIT’s recently founded Institute for Information Systems (WIN), helping KIT and IBM encourage the active dialog between science, business, and society about developments in technology and their impact.

Burnout, depression, anxiety disorders - more and more people suffer from mental illness. Because access to psychotherapy is limited, some are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Chatbots show great potential. But does the technology lack the necessary empathy?  

In a recent podcast of Deutschlandfunk Florian Onur Kuhlmeier talks about our research at the human-centered systems lab (h-lab). 

The International Journal of Human-Computer Studies has published the paper "AF-Mix: A gaze-aware learning system with attention feedback in mixed reality" for publication. The paper is co-authored by Shi Liu, Peyman Toreini, and Alexander Maedche. 

The Einstein Center Digital Future (ECDF) is an interdisciplinary project of Technische Universität Berlin, Charité Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and Universität der Künste Berlin. Effective January 20th, the new scientific advisory board started its work, The Scientific Advisory Board of ECDF has the task of advising on the development of medium and long-term goals, promoting cooperation with other research institutions, and making strategic recommendations to the Executive Board. It regularly comments on the scientific work of the professors of the ECDF. 

Prof. Maedche gave a talk on February 18th, 2025 at the  University College London Interaction Centre (UCLIC) on Biosignal-Adaptive Systems with a particular focus on supporting remote meetings.    Remote meetings as a modern way of work are widespread due to distributed team setups.  While there are various benefits in terms of time savings, reduced travel costs and emissions, there are also negative outcomes such as a lack of engagement or increased fatigue. Biosignal-adaptive systems that dynamically adapt to users represent a promising solution to improve remote meetings. 

This week, we had the pleasure of welcoming the team from the Cognitive Systems Engineering Lab (Prof. Taro KANNO, Yingting CHEN) of the University of Tokyo back to KIT—nearly half a year after their last visit. During their stay, we held several meetings to discuss ongoing research projects and explore new collaboration opportunities. In addition to these discussions, we conducted design workshops on the future of team work and AI as part of our collaborative study, further strengthening our exchange in the fields of human-centered and adaptive systems. Stay tuned for the results!