Hasso Plattner Institute Newsletter
Winter Semester Issue 2014
Dear Friends of Hasso Plattner Institute,
The weeks before the start of the winter semester are an eventful time at HPI. No sooner have we said goodbye to our graduates when we are already welcoming our new students, who are about to embark on their Bachelor’s/Master’s degree programs in IT Systems Engineering at the HPI campus in Potsdam. We are happy to report an increasing popularity not only in our teaching program but also in our research projects. This popularity has particularly been reflected in the HPI Identity Leak Checker, which allows you to check the security of your personal data. Since October the HPI School of Design Thinking has also launched a new offer for companies. You can read about that and much more in this newsletter.
Many of these topics have also been captured in film. We would like to invite you to watch them on HPI-TV, unserer Kurzvideosammlung, können Sie sich Filme zu Veranstaltungen und Aktivitäten des HPI ansehen. Alle Neuigkeiten finden Sie auch auf unserer Webseite, on Facebook and Twitter.
We hope you have fun reading and watching!
News in this issue:
 The free HPI-Service „Identity Leak Checker“ gives Internet users the opportunity to search the Internet for stolen personal data. This security check, carried out with the user’s own e-mail address, searches for stolen identity data, such as name, passwords, account information and other personal information. Since May, this service has already been used more than 1.5 million times worldwide. More than 150,000 warnings have been issued. If personal data is circulating in the Internet, the service informs the user about it via e-mail and also gives advice on how to react. Currently, the HPI database contains 182 million different pieces of identity information.
The HPI Identity Leak Checker was developed by the Chair of Internet Technologies & Systems and is available at https://sec.hpi.de. Starting on October 27, HPI will also offer a six-week free online course on the subject of “Security in the Internet”. The course will be held in German.
At the graduation ceremony on October 2 the graduating class was awarded their diplomas in IT Systems Engineering. A total of 81 aspiring IT engineers received a Master’s degree, 71 students a Bachelor’s degree and 18 a PhD. Fifteen Master’s candidates and two Bachelor’s candidates completed their studies with the perfect grade of 1.0. The CEO of Axel Springer SE publishing house, Mathias Döpfner, gave the opening speech at the ceremony, which was attended by 350 guests.
The graduation ceremony heralds a new beginning at HPI. In the coming winter semester The graduation ceremony heralds a new beginning at HPI. In the coming winter semester In a three-day orientation organized by the student council, around 40 mentors from the student body welcomed first semester students. The student mentors make it their responsibility to see to it that new students quickly feel at home in HPI student family.
 Since October 8, the HPI School of Design Thinking has been helping executives, dem wachsenden Veränderungsdruck mit vernetztem Denken und Handeln begegnen zu können. Unter dem Titel „Komplexität managen mit Design Thinking“ haben 22 internationale Innovationstreiber und Entscheider aus Unternehmen verschiedener Branchen den „Design Thinking Professional Track“ entitled “Managing Complexity with Design Thinking.” The three-month intensive training complements the education for students in the Basic Track and the Advanced Track as an offer for managers.
Developed in collaboration with industry partners, the program consists of three modules each with three days of attendance in Potsdam. In small groups the principles of Design Thinking are experienced and applied in real projects introduced by the participants and transferred with the required, concrete solutions to their own companies. The next “Design Thinking Professional Track” is scheduled for early next year.
 During the openHPI workshop on September 19 all interested parties could learn about the range of possibilities offered by the award-winning HPI online educational platform. With offers from openHPI and openSAP, the learning platform currently provides a virtual learning experience in a wide variety of IT areas for more than 200,000 users, with 500,000 courses enrollments.
Based on the experience of HPI, the participants learned at the event what advantages their own Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) can offer companies, associations and educational institutions. Besides sharing reports about their daily experience with online courses, the participants tried their hand at practical implementation. They gained inspiration for the technical design and application of MOOCs and set up their own open online course with videos and contents of their own.
 For the first time, two female students travelled with a team from HPI to the USAto take part in the international fair for women in computer science - the “Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.” The two computer science students were each awarded a travel grant covering the complete costs of their fair visit. The Bachelor student Maren Sindlinger (24), who comes from the town of Herrenberg in Baden-Württemberg, studies corporate and IT security at the University of Applied Science Offenburg. Lisa Pfisterer (25), from Berlin, is completing her Master’s degree at the HPI Chair Human Computer Interaction. The fair took place from 8-10 October in Phoenix (Arizona). Women scientists from HPI represented their institute for the fourth year with a booth at the fair. Besides travels grants, HPI supports women in IT by other means.
 Two HPI student teams have won seed capital and tangible support in the sum of 100,000 Euros each in the Business Plan Competition. The two innovative projects honored for their growth potential were: the Internet market place www.rooming.eu, which facilitates locating or subletting furnished accommodations internationally, and the new tools developed for qualitative marketing and opinion research. Hasso Plattner Institute CEO, Prof. Christoph Meinel and Hasso Plattner Ventures CFO, Dr. Rouven Westphal congratulated the winners of the final round. Three of the initial 18 teams reached the finals.
 More than 7,400 young people took part in the first online course at openHPI that began on September 22. Pupils learned the foundations of programming in this course. The offer at HPI’s interactive educational platform gave young people, as well as adults, the chance to catch a glimpse of the world of software. The initiative was praised by Minister of Education and Research, Johanna Wanka, Minister of Economy, Sigmar Gabriel, and Gesche Joost, Germany’s representative in “Digital Champions” – an EU Commission expert group. The free online course, taught by Prof. Martin von Löwis, can now be taken individually at any time after its conclusion.
Other HPI activities for high school students:
The Ecuadorian Minister of Knowledge and Human Talent, Guillaume Long, visited HPI on September 19, 2014. He received first-hand information on the IT Systems Engineering and Design Thinking educations at HPI.
On July 15, 2014, Parliamentary State Secretary in the Ministry of Economics and Energy, Brigitte Zypries visited Hasso Plattner Institute. In a discussion with the HPI Director, Prof. Christoph Meinel, Ms. Zypries expressed how impressed she was by the wide spectrum of research being conducted in the ten HPI research areas.
On July 8, 2014, State Secretary of the Foreign Office, Stephan Steinlein visited Hasso Plattner Institute in the context of cyber security. Mr. Steinlein also had an opportunity to tour the institute and view selected projects.
The British Ambassador to Germany, Simon McDonald, visited HPI on May 8, 2014. After an introduction to the institute, the diplomat learned about various the research projects being carried out at HPI.
Interviews with guests at Hasso Plattner Institute or at external events can be found at the IT-Gipfelblog, (IT summit blog) maintained by HPI students.
Recent Publications
Since the release of the last HPI newsletter, the following new books and technical reports have been published:
Books
Hasso Plattner, Christoph Meinel, Larry Leifer (Hrsg.)
Design Thinking Research. Building Innovators
Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg New York, 2014
Christoph Meinel, Harald Sack
Sicherheit und Vertrauen im Internet
Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg New York, 2014
Hasso Plattner, Matthieu-P. Schapranow
High-Performance In-Memory Genome Data Analysis
Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg New York, 2014
Hasso Plattner, Christoph Meinel, Larry Leifer
Technical Reports
openHPI - 哈索•普拉特纳研究院的 MOOC（大规模公开在线课）计划
Christoph Meinel, Christian Willems
Band 89 (2014), ISBN 978-3-86956-291-9
Cloud Security Mechanisms
Christian Neuhaus, Andreas Polze (Hrsg.)
Band 87 (2014), ISBN 978-3-86956-281-0
Batch Regions: Process Instance Synchronization based on Data
Luise Pufahl, Andreas Meyer, Mathias Weske
Band 86 (2014), ISBN 978-3-86956-280-3
Anbieter von Cloud Speicherdiensten im Überblick
Christoph Meinel, Maxim Schnjakin, Tobias Metzke, Markus Freitag
Band 84 (2014), ISBN 978-3-86956-274-2
Extending a Java Virtual Machine to Dynamic Object-oriented Languages
Tobias Pape, Arian Treffer, Robert Hirschfeld, Michael Haupt
Band 82 (2013), ISBN 978-3-86956-266-7
Awards
 HPI scientist emeritus, Professor Werner Zorn was honored by the Chinese government as recipient of the Friendship Award at the end of September 2014. Thus the People’s Republic recognizes the merits of the computer scientist in connecting China to the Internet. This is the highest award in China for foreign experts.
 HPI benefactor, Professor Hasso Plattner was honored in October with the Leonardo European Corporate Learning Award in the category "Tought Leadership.” The Leonardo Award is traditionally presented to the winners at a ceremony in the former Federal Government guest house in Petersberg near Bonn.
Further Links
Upcoming Events
November
December
January
| 1/23-25/2015 |
BWInf Camp |
| 1/29/2015 |
Industry 4.0 Research Forum |
February
| 2/12-13/2015 |
MINT400 |
| 2/19/2015 |
openHPI Forum |
March
| 3/16-20/2015 |
HPI as exhibitor at CeBIT (Hannover) |
April
You can find more information at our website: www.hpi.de.
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Editorial close: October 22, 2014 | 
