The advent of fog and edge computing has prompted predictions that they will take over the traditional cloud for information processing and knowledge extraction in Internet of Things (IoT) systems. Notwithstanding the fact that fog and edge computing have undoubtedly large potential, these predictions are probably oversimplified and wrongly portray the relations between cloud, fog and edge computing. Concretely, fog and edge computing have been introduced as an extension of the cloud services towards the data sources, thus forming the computing continuum. The computing continuum enables the creation of a new type of services, spanning across distributed infrastructures, supporting various IoT applications. These applications have a large spectrum of requirements, burdensome to meet with „distant“ cloud data centers. However, the introduction of the computing continuum raises multiple challenges for management, deployment and orchestration of complex distributed applications, such as: increased network heterogeneity, limited resource capacity of edge devices, fragmented storage management, high mobility of edge devices and limited support of native monolithic applications. These challenges primarily concern the complexity and the large diversity of the devices, managed by different entities (cloud providers, universities, private institutions), which range from single-board computers such as Raspberry Pis to powerful multi-processor servers.Therefore, in this talk, we will discuss novel algorithms for low latency, scalable, and sustainable computing over heterogeneous resources for information processing and reasoning, thus enabling transparent integration of IoT applications. We will tackle the heterogeneity challenge of dynamically changing topologies of the computing infrastructure and present a novel concept for sustainable processing at scale.

The dynamics of networks enables the function of a variety of systems we rely on every day, from gene regulation and metabolism in the cell to the distribution of electric power and communication of information. Understanding, steering and predicting the function of interacting nonlinear dynamical systems, in particular if they are externally driven out of equilibrium, relies on obtaining and evaluating suitable models, posing at least two major challenges. First, how can we extract key structural system features of networks if only time series data provide information about the dynamics of (some) units? Second, how can we characterize nonlinear responses of nonlinear multi-dimensional systems externally driven by fluctuations, and consequently, predict tipping points at which normal operational states may be lost? Here we report recent progress on nonlinear response theory extended to predict tipping points and on model-free inference of network structural features from observed dynamics.

When it comes to integrating digital technologies into the classroom in higher education, many teachers face similar challenges. Nevertheless, it is difficult for teachers to share experiences because it is usually not possible to transfer successful teaching scenarios directly from one area to another, as subject-specific characteristics make it difficult to reuse them. To address this problem, instructional scenarios can be described as patterns that have been used previously in educational contexts. Patterns can capture proven teaching strategies and describe instructional scenarios in a consistent structure that can be reused. Because priorities for content, methods, and tools are different in each domain, a consensus-tested taxonomy was first developed with the goal of modeling a domain-independent database to collect digital instructional practices. In addition, this presentation will present preliminary insights into a data-driven approach to identifying effective instructional practices from interdisciplinary data as patterns. A web-based application will be developed for this that can both collect teaching/learning scenarios and individually extract scenarios from patterns for a learning platform.

Computer vision and AI methods are percolating many branches nowadays. Also in the research field of real estate rating computer vision and AI methods have lead to very interesting innovations. In this research talk, real estate classification by AI-enabled computer vision techniques is discussed. The talk will give an overview of recent research efforts in the field and focus on latest findings of our research group. This consists of age or heating demand prediction of real estates by photographs as well as the analysis of satellite images for detecting building footprints.