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 field of technology transfer for the Department of Computer Science at the University of Hamburg in the:
- Conducting application-oriented research projects
- Disseminating application-oriented research results
- Holding seminars and workshops
- Arranging contacts between companies and students
- Improving practice-oriented education at the university
- Supporting start-ups from the university
- Training students, including through collaboration in cooperation projects.
In 2024, the University of Hamburg, the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce and four supporting members – companies and institutions – supported HITeC.
The number of active personal members of HITeC is more than 50 people.
The project volume of HITeC in 2024 amounted to approx. 4.6 million euros.
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 concerned with scientific computer science research, the results of which can be used directly in practice. On the one hand, the results of basic research are incorporated into collaborative projects; on the other hand, however, research on applications also gives rise to new questions for basic research, which provide further inspiration for the latter. This is a method also known as action research, in which scientists go into concrete, real-life situations in order to gain insights for further basic research. And this return to basic research (which essentially takes place at university) is a very important part of application-oriented research at HITeC, in order to enrich this basic research in a completely new way so that it can later find better application-relevant results for practice. Another method used at HITeC is design science, which looks at problem solving in real application-oriented settings through the development of artifacts such as prototypes or concepts.
Application-oriented research at HITeC thus takes up the results of basic research at the Department of Computer Science and explores their possible applications in special application projects, usually with partners.
In addition to conducting application-oriented research projects, HITeC carries out activities for the University of Hamburg (UHH) and the Department of Computer Science in particular:
- Supporting the development of technology transfer at UHH (e.g. the transfer agency) and also in other departments by participating in internal workshops and meetings.
- Participation, networking and representation of technology transfer in the field of information and communication sciences at events of actors from public administration (e.g. Urban Data Hub) and business, including the Chamber of Commerce, Chamber of Crafts, Digital Logistic Hub as well as close cooperation with other associations (e.g. the Artificial Intelligence Center e.V. (ARIC)) and universities (e.g. Helmut Schmidt University (HSU, Hafencity University (HCU), Nordakademie, University of Applied Sciences (HAW)).
- Provision of computing capacity from HITeC (e.g. GPU server for AI applications) for students at the University of Hamburg for the preparation of Bachelor’s and Master’s theses.
Some selected projects and activities in 2024:
- Projects in the field of cheminformatics, which examine the development of active ingredients and drugs in pharmaceutical research.
- Projects in the area of optimization and monitoring:
- Performance monitoring for data-intensive software
- Code optimization for memory hierarchies
- Several projects in the field of application of artificial intelligence methods:
- Analysis of images, videos and streams for the creation of situation and action descriptions (e.g. in sports, including actions in training, traffic and landscape overflights) and the retrieval of media content,
- new methods for explainable AI,
- Planning systems for the stacking of goods using reinforcement learning.
- Projects in the area of platform development:
- 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 creation networks,
- Coordination of a European Digital Innovation Hub, for the targeted support of small and medium-sized enterprises, start-ups and public administration,
- Start of the development of a platform for the support of building modernization,
- Co-development of a platform for the support of rescue forces in the event of severe weather using AI methods.
- Several projects in the field of eHumanities aimed at the dissemination, collection, presentation and long-term archiving of cultural objects, including Portal for philosophical and Hebrew terminology, matriculation portal.
- Several projects in the area of digital transformation and digital literacy:
- Scientific support for the digital transformation of the re-registration service/electronic residence registration,
- Exploring AI benefits in organizations and bringing them into use,
- Long-term collaborations that develop scientific results, in particular data and findings in the areas of AI benefits in organizations and AI solutions for local public transport through collaboration with several individual partners.
- Other smaller projects:
- with companies and research institutions from the Hamburg region and internationally,
- with schools to teach software development methods at an early stage.
- Participation in a working group of the start-up initiatives of all Hamburg universities as well as cooperation with ahoi.digital, Innovations Kontaktstelle Hamburg (IKS), ARIC and the Hub for Computing and Data Science at the University of Hamburg (HCDS).
Publications by HITeC are listed on the university websites of the respective professors and project members.