Research Profile

Today’s and tomorrow’s IT systems are inherently distributed, often due to digital transformation processes. Almost all business and application domains are undergoing an extensive digital transformation process – cars and homes become smart and interconnected; hospitals become e-health playgrounds; energy systems become (more) resilient and energy becomes tradable by utilizing smart grids; blockchain introduces decentralized control in finance and numerous other application domains.

In each of these transformation processes, IT is the key driver to interconnect previously independent and isolated software and hardware components. As a consequence, businesses and application domains are increasingly defined by their distributed IT systems. Designing and building large scale distributed systems that are able to cope with extensive numbers of system components and the gigantic amounts of data produced by them comes with many open quality challenges, ranging from performance, resilience, fault-tolerance, dependability to questions of privacy and security.  

In ISE, we do research on quality-driven distributed systems, with a focus on software system architecture in three main thematic areas: cloud services, blockchain systems, and information governance. We do fundamental research that is also of high practical relevance. We study and apply concepts, technologies, and concrete systems in different application domains, most notably, energy, mobility and circular economy.