From 14 to 18 March 2026, Cosima Pfannschmidt and Dr. Jonas Fegert (Digital Democracy and Participation) hosted the fourth TWON CitizenLab in Brussels, bringing together citizens from across Europe to engage directly with ongoing research on digital platforms and democratic discourse. The CitizenLabs are a central part of the EU-funded project “TWON – Twin of Online Social Networks”.The CitizenLab provided a unique space for exchange between researchers and a diverse group of European citizens. Under the theme *“Voices Rising: Rebuilding Bridges. Dialogue, Trust and Solidarity Post October 7th”*, participants discussed how digital platforms shape societal discourse and explored ways to foster more constructive and inclusive online environments despite societal polarization.

Dear students,

if you enjoyed our previous lectures and would like to further deepen your interest in current research topics, we would like to draw your attention to our seminars in the summer semester 2026 – you can apply until 22.03 through the Wiwi-Portal.This term, we are offering seminars on Applied Responsible AI, Positive Information Systems, and Smart Grids & Energy Markets. The seminars address timely and research-oriented topics at the intersection of AI, digital work, decision-making, human-centered systems, energy markets, open data, and information systems research. Depending on the topic, students will engage with conceptual, literature-based, empirical, or design-oriented work.

Last Monday, we took our students that take part in our eFinance Lecture on an excursion to Börse Stuttgart to complement the lecture content with first-hand insights from a real trading venue. Börse Stuttgart is a major German exchange organization serving retail and institutional investors across multiple asset classes.

We were warmly hosted by Dr. Martin Wagener, who is an alumni of WIN, contributes to the eFinance teaching as a lecturer and also works at Börse Stuttgart Group as Head of Group Regulatory Affairs, amongst other responsibilities. During a lecture session, Dr. Wagener connected key concepts from the course—such as market structures, liquidity, and the trading process—to how markets are organized and operated in practice.

The Hawaiian International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) 2026 took place from January 6 to 10 on Maui, Hawaii. The Chair of Information & Market Engineering was represented at the conference by Prof. Dr. Christof Weinhardt and Alexander Grote.

Alexander Grote presented the joint paper “Prompting for the Unknown: Leveraging In-Context-Learning for Few-Shot Open Set Classification” co-authored with Prof. Dr. Anuja Hariharan and Prof. Dr. Christof Weinhardt. In addition, Prof. Dr. Weinhardt served as a minitrack chair together with Prof. Dr. Stefan Stieglitz and Dr. Jonas Fegert.

The ASSUME consortium has successfully completed its latest development sprint, achieving several important advancements within the project’s open-source framework. ASSUME (“Agent-based Simulation of Sustainable Multi-Energy Systems”) is a research initiative funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK). The project develops a modular, scalable and transparent simulation environment designed to analyse future energy systems and market structures under uncertainty.

Our research team at WIN just hosted the 5th iteration of "Biosignals Connect" (BioCon) in the KD2Lab – an event series that brings together international researchers with shared interests in biosignals and adaptive systems.

On two days, we saw 14 presentations from KIT, Politecnico di Milano, University of Milano, University of Bremen, and SUPSI – covering research from information systems, industrial engineering, marketing, psychology and biomedical engineering.

We welcome Tom Weinhardt as a new team member and PhD student at the Chair of Prof. Weinhardt at WIN.

Tom holds a Master of Science in Information Systems from the University of Regensburg and a Bachelor of Arts in Digital Business Management from the Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University Stuttgart.

We welcome Marie Thederan as a new team member and PhD student at the Chair of Prof. Weinhardt at WIN.
 Marie completed her master’s thesis at our chair, where she explored possible impacts of grid fees on large-scale battery storage using multi-agent reinforcement learning. During her studies, she also contributed to the ASSUME project as a student researcher, gaining valuable experience in electricity market simulation and agent-based modeling with deep reinforcement learning.

In September 2025, our colleague Isabel Bezzaoui participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP), organized by the U.S. Department of State and supported by the US Embassy. The program included visits to Washington D.C., Minneapolis, Phoenix, Sacramento, and San Francisco. In the course of three weeks, participants explored topics including artificial intelligence, policy, innovation, and security.

On September 13, 2025, we had the great pleasure of celebrating 25 years of the Chair of Information & Market Engineering. The event brought together alumni, colleagues, and friends to mark a very special milestone: a quarter of a century since Prof. Dr. Christof Weinhardt established and has continuously led the chair.

On the occasion of the International Day of Democracy on September 15, the Triangel warmly invites you – now for the fourth year in a row – to join our Days of Democracy. Together, we want to work to keep democracy alive, stand up for democratic values, get involved, and have our say. From September 18 to 20, we are creating many opportunities to exchange ideas, discuss, and participate.

From August 3rd–13th, 2025, Oliver Resch from the Smart Grids and Energy Markets (SGEM) research group participated in the inaugural "Future Energy" Global Summer School at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.