PEASEC 2024: A Year in Review: 4 completed PhDs, 9 awards, 1 new lecture

Dear Members and Friends of PEASEC,

As 2024 comes to a close, we sincerely thank you for your support and contributions. Wishing you a joyful holiday season and a successful New Year!

• Teaching and Staff: We introduced the new course Computer Science and Society and supervised nearly 30 theses. We welcomed new colleagues, including Frank Nelles, Timon Dörnfeld, and Franziska Schneider, and celebrated the successful doctorates of Sebastian Linsner, Katrin Hartwig, Steffen Haesler, and Markus Bayer.
• Publications and Awards: Our team published over 60 papers, including 15 in top-tier venues, and received multiple prestigious awards, such as the CHI and CSCW Best Paper Awards.
• Projects and Outreach: We concluded key projects and initiated new ones, such as ATHENE-SecFOCI, while organizing impactful events and contributing to media discussions.

Thank you for being part of our journey in 2024. We look forward to 2025!

Warm regards,
The PEASEC Team

Teaching

• We have introduced the new course ‘Computer Science and Society’ (Informatik und Gesellschaft) as a compulsory course for all Bachelor’s students of Computer Science. Furthermore we supervised around 30 successfully completed Bachelor’s and Master’s theses.
• For the winter semester 2024/2025 (1.10.2024-31.3.2025) Dr. Marc-André Kaufhold as been appointed as deputy professor (Vertretungsprofessor) to represent the W3 professorship ‘Knoweldge Engineering’ at the Department of Computer Science at TU Darmstadt.
• We published the second edition of our textbook “Information Technology for Peace and Security“, used as a basis for our lecture next summer semester.

Staff Developments

• We welcomed new staff, especially our new research associates and doctoral candidates Frank Nelles, M.Sc. and Timon Dörnfeld, M.Sc. as well as Franziska Schneider, M.A., who will start soon. We also welcomed numerous new student assistants over the course of the year.
• In 2024 four doctoral candidates successfully completed their doctorates in our group:
  • #6: Dr.-Ing. Sebastian Linsner on Privacy Preserving Data Management,
  • #7: Dr.-Ing. Katrin Hartwig on Navigating Misinformation,
  • #8: Dr. rer. nat. Steffen Haesler on Citizens in Crises, and
  • #9: Dr. rer. nat. Markus Bayer on Deep Learning in Textual Low-Data Regimes for Cybersecurity.
• With the end of this year, Dr. Jasmin Haunschild, Dr. Franz Kuntke and Dr. Steffen Haesler will have sucessfully competed their work with us and will move on. Dr. Thomas Reinhold will also move on, but be connected as an associate postdoctoral researcher in our joined project CNTR.
• Furthermore many former student assistants graduated. We like to thank them for their achivements and commitment!

Publications and Awards

• During 2024 we have published over 50 scientific publications – including over 15 so-called ‘A-Papers’ (CORE-A*/A or high impact factor) (you can access these below).
• We are very grateful to have been selected for some prestigious awards:
  • the CHI Best Paper Award 2024 for ‘Cyber Threat Observatory’ (by Vertr.-Prof. Dr. Marc-André Kaufhold, Dr. Thea Riebe, Dr. Markus Bayer, Prof. Dr. Dr. Christian Reuter) (like last year: CHI Best Paper Award 2023);
  • the CSCW Best Paper Award 2024 for ‘Fast and Secure Contact Exchange in Groups’ (e.g. by Dr. Steffen Haesler),
  • the ISCRAM Best Paper Award 2024 for ‘Understanding Crisis Preparedness’ (Dr. Jasmin Haunschild, Felix Burger, Prof. Dr. Dr. Christian Reuter);
  • 2x the FIfF Weizenbaum Study Prize 2024 (Dr. Thea Riebe and Dr. Thomas Reinhold),
  • the IANUS Award 2024 (Dr. Thomas Reinhold and Philipp Rall),
  • the CROSSING Collaboration Award (Dr. Sebastian Linsner, Kilian Demuth, Prof. Dr. Dr. Christian Reuter)
  • and the emergenCITY Collaboration Award (Dr. Steffen Haesler)

Projects, Events and Outreach

• We successfully completed some projects (the GRK Privacy and Trust, the BMEL project AgriRegio and FIF NetzGeschichte) and launched new projects in early 2024 (ATHENE-SecFOCI).
• We (co-)organised events, above all the AFK-Colloquium on peace and conflict studies, the as well as the departmental colloquia and were involved in visible media contributions, e.g. in hessenschau, HiTechCampus