Emmy Noether meeting in Potsdam

Before the meeting close to Berlin I once more underestimated the size of the planet (and how far Berlin is away from any other place in Germany). I volunteered to co-organize the computer science workshop on Friday afternoon and then realized when booking the flights that it is easily possible to get for lunch time on Friday to Berlin when leaving Santa Clara on Thursday morning. Was not an issue as there were others to run the workshop and I arrived on Friday late afternoon - thanks :-).

The political discussion on Friday night was on the utility of basic research. Frankly I did not really get the question. Increasing our understanding is a clear value. For me also the economic value of research is pretty obvious - even if the research outcome (basically what is in the papers and patents) is not of direct monetary value the people we educate (BSc, MSc, PhD) while the research is done are clearly of great value for the economy (an I would guess significantly more the staff cost that was invested in them).

The Emmy Noether meeting (this year with over 160 participants, all young researchers - I am already one of the old ones ;-) is the only meeting I go to where I really meet many other disciplines close up - it was really interesting to discuss about sociology and theology - and how it relates to computer science. I wonder what would happen if we would get together such a diverse set of people for 2 weeks to initiate new projects. Would this create entirely new ideas for research? Perhaps we should try…

Here you can find more information on the DFG Emmy Noether program - a very unique program for young researchers.

DFG Emmy Noether Meeting in Potsdam, Art, Ceilings

Meeting with other researchers that run or have run Emmy Noether research groups is very different from normal conferences and meetings. The participants are across all disciplines - from art history to zoology ;-) The meeting focuses mainly on strategic, political, personal, administrative and organizational issues when starting a research career. This year we had child care organized during the meeting and Vivien came with me to Potsdam.

On Saturday night I learned that we (our galaxy) will eventually collide with the Andromeda Galaxy (but after our sun is out fuel - so I do not worry too much). Vivien found this fascinating, too. Learning more about astrophysics (looks defiantly more complicated than the things I usually do) teaches me to worry less about the immediate usefulness and direct utility of research results - also in our domain.

I am fascinated how different research can be and at the same time how similar the enthusiasm is people have for their research. By now - being one of the old guys - I co-organized two workshops. One together with Dr. Hellfeier from DHV on how to negotiate for a professorship and one with Stefanie Scheu and Rainer Hirsch-Luipold on teaching and PhD-supervision.

I talked to Riko Jacob (CS at TU Munich) about teaching computer science in school and he showed me a picture of a tangible shortest path calculator (I took a photo of the photo ;-). Perhaps I have at some point time to play with the installation in Munich.

On Sunday morning we took the water taxi - direct from the hotel peer - to the central train station in Potsdam. Christian Scholl from Göttingen (he does Art History) took some time to show us around the castle Sans Souci. After our discussion I wondered if we should consider a joint seminar from computer science/media informatics and art history - in particular ideas related to ambient media, interactive facades, and robotic buildings would benefit from a more historic awareness. There is an interesting PhD thesis on ceiling displays [1] - for a shorter version see [2]. I met Martin Tomitsch at a Ubicomp DC and I was impressed with the idea and its grounding in history.

[1] Tomitsch M. (2008). Interactive Ceiling - Ambient Information Display for Architectural Environments. PhD Thesis, Vienna University of Technology, Austria.

[2] Tomitsch, M., Grechenig, T., Vande Moere, A. & Sheldon, R. (2008). Information Sky: Exploring Ceiling-based Data Representations. International Conference on Information Visualisation (IV08), London, UK, 100-105. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?tp=&arnumber=4577933&isnumber=4577908

Emmy Noether Meeting in Postdam

From Friday to Sunday I was in Potsdam for the yearly Emmy Noether meeting organized by DFG (German Science Foundation). The Emmy Noether Program seems to me one of the most attractive funding options for early career researchers I know of (world wide).

This year I was in the preparation team for the meeting and was co-organizing one workshop where we discussed experiences with research funding in other countries and what ideas for improving current programs we can see. The workshop was on how we can benefit from having students rather than seeing them as “teaching load” – especially in computer science (I organized it with Andreas Butz).

The meeting is always very interesting as it brings together people, funded by DFG in the Emmy Noether Program, across all disciplines. In the political evening we had a keynote by Professor Hans Weiler looking at the current problems of the German systems ("Eliten im Wettbewerb - Die deutschen Hochschulen und die internationale Konkurrenz" ) – one message I saw in the talk is that Germany is very efficient – looking how little money is spend in education and research the outcome is surprising. (But this is only a positive message if we do not want to play a leading role in the world of science and technology). It became very clear that the overall system lacks massively in funding. The additional funding that is provided by the German Government in the widely publicized call for elite universities (Exzellenzinitiative) is 1900 million Euros over 5 years (about 5€/citizen/year)– impressive? Not really – this less than the amount projected for the “Yale Tomorrow” campaign – a 5 year program in fundraising by a single University in the US. And Stanford University has even a bigger campaign as Prof. Weiler told – and there are a few other Universities in the league in the US...