FIZ Karlsruhe intensifies its research activities

Karlsruhe, November 2016 – Research at FIZ Karlsruhe – Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure is being thoroughly intensified. After legal specialist Prof. Dr. Franziska Boehm from Münster, who has been heading FIZ Karlsruhe’s new Intellectual Property Rights unit since the fall semester 2015/16, the next researcher to accept an appointment by FIZ Karlsruhe was computer scientist Prof. Dr. Harald Sack. Before, he had been working for many years as a senior researcher at Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam. His expertise makes him the ideal candidate for establishing FIZ Karlsruhe’s new Information Service Engineering unit that focuses on models and methods for developing and providing information services. With this new research focus FIZ Karlsruhe consistently complements its research, service, and product portfolios and responds to the dynamic changes in today’s digital environment: Data and other information as well as the increasingly digitized workflows and processes significantly change the demands of users and customers on modern information services.

In the Big Data era we have to be able to identify precisely those pieces of information in the huge flood of data which constitute a true value for research. To this end, the data first of all have to be intelligently indexed so that the information can then also be re-trieved from other heterogeneous and distributed sources. Ideally, even information that has not been explicitly searched for, but is directly related to and complements the information of interest, can be found. This adds real value to the search results.

This is where Prof. Sack’s research comes into play. He develops semantic and explorative search methods based on semantic analyses not only for text documents, but also for multimedia content. Starting with the next spring semester, Prof. Sack will be teaching at KIT. At present he holds an open online class on the topic “Linked Data Engineering” at Hasso Plattner Institute. Information on his activities is also available on Twitter.

“I am eagerly anticipating my new tasks at FIZ Karlsruhe where research and application are closely coupled,” Prof. Sack comments on his new professional environment. “It is important that we base the increasingly dynamic development of our products and services on research,” says Sabine Brünger-Weilandt, President & CEO of FIZ Karlsruhe. “Therefore, I am very much looking forward to working with Prof. Sack. His fields of research perfectly fit in with FIZ Karlsruhe and its activities.”

About FIZ Karlsruhe
FIZ Karlsruhe – Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure is a not-for-profit limited liability company and the largest non-academic information infrastructure institution in Germany. As such, its public mission is to develop and provide products and services for an information infrastructure to science, research, and industry. FIZ Karlsruhe strives to strengthen the transfer of knowledge in Germany and abroad and to support the promotion of innovation. FIZ Karlsruhe is a member of the Leibniz Association, which comprises almost 90 institutions involved in research activities and/or the development of scientific infrastructure.
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