The second day continued with presentations from the Digital Democracy and Participation and Smart Grids for Energy Markets groups. The retreat offered a valuable opportunity for each researcher to present their ongoing projects, receive constructive feedback, and refine their ideas and methodologies. The team explored the exquisite technology-inspired art exhibits at ZKM Karlsruhe, with engaging discussions on digital art, evolution of humans with technology, and its subtle roles in shaping society.

Leo Semmelmann successfully defended his PhD thesis titled “Dynamic Tariff Adoption in Electricity Markets: Bridging Policy, Technology and Behavior“ on April 17th 2025.

Am Montag, 14.04.25 ist das Konsortium des Forschungsprojekts D²HeaTEC zum ersten Mal in Präsenz zusammengekommen – bei unserer Projektpartnerin RheinEnergie in Köln.
Mit dabei waren Oliver Resch, Laura Selgrad und Christof Weinhardt von dem Institut für Wirtschaftsinformatik (WIN) und das Institut für Regelungs- und Steuerungssysteme (IRS) des KITs, die Aachener Wohnungsbaugesellschaft, RheinEnergie und die ASEW.

Carolin Stein successfully defended her PhD thesis titled “Designing Digital Involvement in a Datafied Society“ on April 1st 2025. Her work advances the fields of crowdsourcing, e-participation, and citizen science by analyzing and structuring design knowledge for digital participation projects across domains. Her findings offer valuable insights for researchers and practitioners, helping them shape participatory practices and better address citizens' data-related needs in participation formats and tools.  

Just ahead of the 2025 federal elections, the Tagesspiegel is once again publishing exclusive insights into the research data from SOSEC. In the interactive article, readers can scroll through the analyses independently and are also offered exciting visualizations. This allows the scientific data from SOSEC to be experienced directly and the controversial political issues in the election campaign to be seen from new perspectives.

The Institute for Information Systems (WIN) will be present with four full papers and three late-breaking work papers at the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. CHI is the premier international conference of Human-Computer Interaction and will be held from April 26th to May 1st in Yokohama, Japan (https://chi2025.acm.org/). 

We had the fantastic opportunity to connect with energy industry experts and explore the latest innovations at E-world energy & water 2025.

The hot topics:

Flexibility Management – From battery storage and dynamic electricity tariffs to the implementation of § 14a EnWG.

Digital Twins – Enabling smarter municipal heat planning and industrial energy management.

E-Mobility Charging & Home Energy Management Systems (HEMS) – Bridging the gap between the energy and mobility transition.
 

Last week, we reported on the interview with Minister of State and KIT alumnus Dr. Tobias Lindner, conducted in October 2024 by Prof. Dr. Christof Weinhardt and Dr. Jonas Fegert. This conversation was also recorded as an episode of the “House of Participation’s” own “HOPCAST” and is now available to everyone.

Among other topics, Dr. Lindner provides fascinating insights into the connection between his academic background and his political career. So, if you prefer listening over reading—or German over English—be sure to check out Episode 6 of the Hopcast!

Minister of State at the German Federal Foreign Office, Dr. Tobias Lindner, was available for an exciting interview with Prof. Dr. Christof Weinhardt and Dr. Jonas Fegert for the Business & Information Systems Engineering journal (BISE). The interview took place in Berlin on October 16, 2024. It offers thoughtful insights from Dr. Lindner on the interplay between academic education and politics and was published this week, on February 18.

In the concluding case study presentation of the Business Data Strategy lecture on 07.02.2025, Master’s students from business & information systems showcased innovative case study projects on Gen AI-based products, including online retail recommenders, AI-empowered learning platforms, smart systems for reducing household waste, intelligent logistics, and streaming experiences.

The RBB produced a video article on the differences and similarities of AfD and BSW – Dr. Jonas Fegert was part of it. Sharing results from the ongoing SOSEC project, he analyses their voter’s opinions.

Everyone knows that migration plays an important role in the upcoming election. What else do voters care about? Or what is even more important to them? In an article of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Dr. Jonas Fegert is consulted to answer those questions. His SOSEC-data reveals that generational justice, health and climate politics are prominent causes of worry amongst people.