HITeC is the research and technology transfer center of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Hamburg. Due to its independent status, HITeC offers flexible and professional cooperation opportunities. HITeC solutions are based on the latest research results and provide advantages through innovative technologies.
HITeC is a registered, non-profit association supported by members of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Hamburg. The association is linked to the University of Hamburg by an agreement.
HITeC sees its main tasks in the:
- Implementation of application-oriented research projects
- Dissemination of application-oriented research results
- Realization of seminars and workshops
- Mediation of contacts between companies and students
- Improvement of the practice-oriented education in the university
- Support for business start-ups from the university
- Education of students especially through including them in cooperation projects
In 2021 HITeC had five sponsoring members, these are companies and institutions that support HITeC. The number of active personal members of HITeC is more than 50.
HITeC’s project volume in 2021 was approximately 2.1 Million Euro.
HITeC conducts application-oriented research in the general field of Computer Science and research in the field of technology transfer. In contrast to basic research, application-oriented research is scientific Computer Science research whose results can be used directly in practice. On the one hand, the results of basic research are incorporated into cooperative projects; on the other hand, new questions for basic research arise through research on applications, which decisively further stimulate this research. Also known as Action Research, in which scientists go into the concrete, real conditions in practice in order to gain knowledge for further basic research this method. In addition, this way back into basic research (which essentially takes place at the university) is a very important part of the application-oriented research at HITeC, in order to fertilize this basic research in a completely new way, so that it can later find better application-relevant results for practice.
Hence, application-oriented research at HITeC takes up the results of basic research at the Department of Computer Science and explores their possible applications in special application projects typically with partners.
Some selected projects and activities in 2021:
- Several projects in the field of application of Artificial Intelligence methods:
- Develop an integrated process for 3D object determination using AI methods,
- Automatic transcription of spoken language data,
- AI systems for marketing content for the automobile industries.
- Analysis of images, videos and streams for the creation of situation and action descriptions (including sports, traffic, and landscape overflights), the retrieval of media content, and the extraction of components from technical drawings,
- New methods for explainable AI,
- Autonomous adaptive machines,
- Predicting processes in production machines,
- Continuation of the development of an Reinforcement Learning Framework,
- Co-development of a platform for the resilience of economic ecosystems,
- Co-development of a platform for the generation of synthetic data,
- Design of a platform for urban production and local value networks,
- RoboCup-AG – Hamburg Bit-Bots,
- Scientific consulting service collection of spoken language data,
- Continuation of the workshop series in cooperation with the Artificial Intelligence Center Hamburg e.V. (ARIC).
- Several projects in the field of eHumanities aiming at the dissemination, collection, presentation, and long-term archiving of cultural objects, besides others: Portal for Philosophical and Hebrew Terminology, matriculation portal.
- Projects in the area of software development and management, including distributed software development in heterogeneous groups and scientific support for the development of an online service.
- Several projects in the area of Digital Transformation and Digital Literacy as well as support in the organization of the ITMC Conference at the Faculty of Computer Science with approx. 150 participants.
- Many smaller projects, mainly with companies and research institutions from the Hamburg region, but also internationally.
- Participation in a working group of the founding initiatives of all Hamburg Universities as well as cooperation with ahoi.digital, ARIC, and Hamburg Innovation.