Potsdam. The Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) has officially announced that it will be awarding grants for its international Research School to ten young scientists. Beginning in the coming winter semester, the junior researchers will reinforce the team of the Potsdam Research School, which currently consists of 24 members. Suitable candidates who are working towards their PhD or who already hold a doctorate are invited to submit their application to the HPI Research School (www.hpi.de/research-school). The deadline is August 15^th.

With its branches at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, (10 scholarship holders), the Technion in Haifa, Israel (13 scholarship holders), and the Nanjing University in China (8 scholarship holders) the Potsdam Graduate School has dedicated itself to the field of "Service-Oriented Systems Engineering". Scholars investigate the current overarching questions from different perspectives in their own research areas. This model, introduced at HPI in 2005, calls for junior researchers to be jointly mentored by their professors rather than only on an individual basis.

“Each of our PhD candidates consequently also learns the questions, theoretical models and practical approaches of other disciplines”, said HPI director Prof. Christoph Meinel describing the significant advantage. This facilitates a mutual understanding of content and supports fruitful collaborative work with other scientists and specialists.

The Research School, “Service Oriented Systems Engineering,” focuses on – to put it very simply – service programs to facilitate a standardized form for the exchange of loosely coupled programs and data. Such programs are increasingly superseding the intermeshed software applications and processes used up to now. “In case of reconfiguration, this allows for the flexibility to make changes and saves the needs for basic, expensive reprogramming”, said Prof. Andreas Polze, spokesman of the Research School.

The work of the PhD students at the HPI Research School involves research questions on architecture, modeling and the security engineering of service-oriented systems. Additional areas address fundamental issues such as: the self-adaptive administration of services at the operating system level, questions concerning the application of services in the fields of adaptive process management, service composition and process design. 3D computer graphics, geoinformatics, and human computer interaction are further challenging service-oriented system application topics investigated at the HPI Research School.

Applications to the HPI Research School must be submitted by August 15^th of the respective year, with research positions normally available each October. Please send applications to the following e-mail address: research-school-application(at)hpi.de. HPI Research School spokesman is Prof. Dr. Andreas Polze, and the acting coordinator is Prof. Dr. Robert Hirschfeld.

The Hasso Plattner Institute for Software Systems Engineering GmbH (HPI) in Potsdam is Germany’s university excellence center for IT Systems Engineering. It is the only university institution in Germany offering the bachelor and master program in “IT Systems Engineering” – a practical and engineering-oriented study program in computer science, in which 470 students are presently enrolled. The HPI School of Design Thinking is Europe’s first innovation school and modeled on the Stanford University d.school. It offers 240 places yearly for a supplementary study. There are a total of ten HPI professors and over 50 guest professors, lecturers and contracted teachers at the Institute. HPI carries out research noted for its high standard of excellence in its nine topic areas, as well as at the HPI Research School for PhD candidates, with its further branches in Cape Town, Haifa and Nanjing. HPI teaching and research focuses on the foundation and application of large-scale, highly complex and networked IT systems. The development and exploration of user-driven innovations for all areas of life is an additional field of importance. HPI always earns the highest positions in the CHE university ranking. Since the beginning of September 2012, HPI has offered openhpi.de, an interactive Internet educational platform. Its free online courses are open to everyone.