Studying coincidence in literature and films

A position as post-doctoral researcher at the Department of English and American Studies brought Matthias Klestil to Klagenfurt from Bayreuth. His research currently focuses on material from literature and films, which addresses versionality and coincidence. In our interview with Matthias Klestil, he tells us about the paths that led him to Klagenfurt, and he reveals what he finds fascinating about the USA.

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Finding faults in Excel

A familiar situation for many: A large Excel file that includes many sheets, rows and columns – and in the end, the correct result stubbornly refuses to materialize. Troubleshooting can be complicated whenever numerous formulas and references are involved. Patrick Koch is working on the project “Debugging of spreadsheet programs (DEOS)”, funded by the FWF, which aims to simplify the search for errors. He recently received the “ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award” for his publication on this subject.

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Artificially intelligent metal detector for the needle in the haystack of knowledge

There are individuals who are immensely knowledgeable. And yet, as Maria von Ebner-Eschenbach tells us, “knowledge expands when it is shared.” But does knowledge that has been gathered in vast knowledge bases always remain free of errors? And how does one go about drawing accurate conclusions from collected knowledge? Patrick Rodler, Post Doc at the Department of Applied Informatics, is working on artificially intelligent error detection and error correction in knowledge bases.

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Smaller & lighter: Printed sensors for spectrometers

Imagine that a pipeline that stretches for miles and miles springs a leak. Traditionally, this would mean many miles of walking for someone tasked with finding the hole. In an ideal world, this search for the precise point of methanol leakage could also be performed by a drone, onto which a spectrometer has been mounted that specializes in analysing chemical samples. Existing devices are currently far too heavy; the drone would soon have to give up. Lisa-Marie Faller is working on a technology, with which the fitted spectrometers can be made much smaller and would therefore be suitable for this type of deployment, amongst others. In recognition of her work, the doctoral student received the Best Paper Award at the IEEE Conference EuroSimE in Dresden in April.

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