News about Persons and Awards

Congratulations, Dr. Paul-Andrei Dragan!

People and Awards

Paul completed his doctorate in the Software Systems Engineering (SSE) group under Prof. Pohl. His dissertation focused on preventing data protection violations in self-adaptive systems.

Thesis Defense Xhujla Shahini

Congratulations to Dr. Xhulja Shahini on successfully completing her PhD!

People and Awards

Xhulja pursued her PhD in the Software Systems Engineering (SSE) research group with Prof. Pohl. In her work, she addressed the question of how AI-supported predictions in software quality assurance can be made more reliable and thus more suitable for practical use.

Prof. Dr. Lucas Davi

Lucas Davi Honored with ACM AsiaCCS Test of Time Award

People and Awards

Information and System Security

The paper “ROPdefender: A Detection Tool to Defend Against Return-Oriented Programming Attacks” has received the Test of Time Award from ACM AsiaCCS, one of the leading international conferences in cybersecurity. Published in 2011, the work originated from Lucas Davi’s master’s thesis, which he wrote under the supervision of Dr. Marcel Winandy and Prof. Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi. Today, Lucas Davi is a professor and director of paluno – The Ruhr Institute for Software Technology.

Inaugural Celebration: Academia Meets the Summer Sun

People and Awards

The Software Engineering department cordially invites you to the inaugural lectures of Prof. Vogelsang, Prof. Dmitrienko, and Prof. Sobania on June 23, 2026, at 2:00 PM. Following the talks, a summery get-together is planned from 4:00 PM onwards.

Andreas Vogelsang, Alexander Korn, Daniel Pöttgen, Max Unterbusch and Adrian Bajraktari at ICSE in Rio de Janeiro

paluno with a Strong Presence and an Award at ICSE 2026

People and Awards

The paluno research group Software Systems Engineering was represented at the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2026) with four contributions in the conference program and additionally received a Best Paper Award. This success highlights paluno’s research strength at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Software Engineering.

Award winner: Max Unterbusch at SE 2026

Max Unterbusch receives the Software Engineering Award of the German Informatics Society (GI)

People and Awards

Max Unterbusch, a PhD candidate in the Software Systems Engineering group at paluno, was honored with the Software Engineering Award of the German Informatics Society (Gesellschaft für Informatik, GI) at the GI Software Engineering Conference (SE) in Bern. The award recognizes his outstanding Master’s thesis, supervised by Prof. Dr. Andreas Vogelsang.

KI and Security in Focus

People and Awards

What are the technical foundations of reliable, secure, and transparent IT systems? And what role does Artificial Intelligence (AI) play in this context? These are the questions driving the research of Dr. Alexandra Dmitrienko, the new Professor for Trustworthy Systems at the University of Duisburg-Essen.

Sven Smolka receives award for his Master’s thesis

People and Awards

At the Dies academicus, UDE honors its best every year. On October 30, Sven Smolka was among those recognized – he wrote his Master’s thesis in the Software Systems Engineering group and received the award for the best Master’s thesis of the Faculty of Computer Science.

Grand Challenges of Computer Science 2025

People and Awards

An initiative by the German Informatics Society (GI) dares to look into the future: What are the major challenges the discipline will face in the coming years? From numerous submissions, the jury selected five. Prof. Dr. Michael Goedicke was one of the five jury members.