Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT
Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT

Appointments, awards and honors

Prof. Dr. Manfred Schoch
Prof. Dr. Maximilian Röglinger
Prof. Dr. Niklas Kühl

Manfred Schoch has been appointed Professor of Business Informatics at Esslingen University. He will continue his research work at the Business & Information Systems Branch of Fraunhofer FIT.

The 2024 BWL ranking by WirtschaftsWoche and Handelsblatt evaluates the publication activity of business researchers from Germany, Switzerland and Austria. In the Scientific Pioneers category, Prof. Dr. Maximilian Röglinger was ranked among the top 1.5 percent, 56th out of 3,723 economists considered. In the Young Stars in Business Administration category, Prof. Dr. Niklas Kühl was ranked 37th out of 413 researchers under the age of 40.

Matthias Babel, Marvin Ehaus, Marc-Fabian Körner, Leo Schick and Prof. Dr. Jens Strüker won the Best Paper Award of the 58th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) in the Decision Analytics and Service Science track with their paper “Introducing the Trust Diamond for Energy Flexibility Provision: On the Tension of Data Verifiability and Privacy”.

Katharina Kneissel, Antonie Lockl and Prof. Dr. Anna Maria Oberländer were honored with the Best Paper Award of the 45th International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2024) for their paper “Game Changers – Designing Digital Solutions for Social Inclusion at Scale”.

For their paper “Quantifying chatbots' ability to learn business processes” Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Kratschl, Andreas Egger and Christoph Kecht won the Best-Paper-Nachwuchsaward of the German association Die Wirtschaftsinformatik.

At the 6th International Conference on Process Mining (ICPM 2024) Fraunhofer FIT alumnus Dr. Daniel Schuster, currently managing director of the FIT spin-off Process Intelligence Solutions UG, was awarded the Best Process Mining PhD Dissertation Award 2024 for his dissertation »Incremental Process Discovery«.

Laura Watkowski, Andreas Drechsler (Victoria University of Wellington), and Sarah Hönigsberg (ICN Business School), were honored with the Best Pedagogical Paper Award of the Central African Chapter of the Association for Information Systems (CACAIS 2024) Conference for their joint paper “Feeding Two Birds with One Scone: Teaching Students AI Literacy alongside Regular IS Topics by Integrating Generative AI into Assignment Design”. 

As part of Digital Week Dortmund, DIVR e.V. presented the XR Science Award 2024 in the “Best Tech” category to the “Industry 5.0” exhibit in the TouchTomorrow truck, which was developed in collaboration with Fraunhofer FIT and the Dr. Hans Riegel Foundation, which commissioned the project. The prize is awarded to research projects in the fields of VR / AR and XR. The innovative mixed reality station was developed under the main responsibility of Florian Buchholz in cooperation with our researchers Dr. Leif Oppermann and Andoni Retegui Schiettekatte. It uses state-of-the-art technologies, such as the mixed-reality glasses Meta Quest 3, to provide a realistic interactive experience. The TouchTomorrow truck, which visits schools across the country and serves as an extracurricular learning center in the schoolyards, reaches up to 10,000 students annually.

(from left to right) Program Director Carina Feuerriegel (Dr. Hans Riegel-Stiftung), Dr. Leif Oppermann, Andoni Retegui Schiettekatte, Urs Riedlinger (all three from Fraunhofer FIT).