University of Konstanz
Graduiertenkolleg / PhD Program
Computer and Information Science

Research

 

Explorative Data Management in Bioinformatics

 
Advisor Prof. Dr. Michael Berthold (07/2004 – 06/2014)
 
Project description Data analysis in bioinformatics requires new strategies to face the diversity and abundance of data. The existing data are often unreliable and not suitable for certain purposes. Models that help to extract information from unprecise data have to be found. The development of a platform to support the visual exploration and interpretation of the relevant information is central to the project.
 
Doctoral theses
  • Aktives Lernen zur Klassifikation mittels Exploration und Spezialisierung (April 2008)
  • Lernen in Parallelen Universen (November 2008)
  • Lernen hierarchischer Fuzzy-regelmodelle (June 2010)
  • Widening of data mining algorithms (ongoing)
  • Domains and bisociative connections in information networks (ongoing)
  • Column subset selection with applications to neuroimaging data (ongoing)
  • Classification with multiple data sources and taxonomies (ongoing)
 
 

Network Text Analysis and Visualization

 
Advisor Prof. Dr. Ulrik Brandes (07/2004 – 06/2014)
 
Project description The volume of electronically available text is increasing dramatically. Consequently, there is a growing demand for tools and methods to structure, filter, classify, browse or search large amounts of text. We are interested in exploring the use of network representations of text structure and text corpora, both for analysis and visual interaction.
 
Doctoral theses
  • Cost sharing and clustering under distributed competition (September 2007)
  • Applications of multidimensional scaling to graph drawing (July 2009)
  • Analysis of network ensembles (December 2011)
  • Extending the usability of multidimensional scaling for graph drawing (December 2012)
  • Drawing dynamic graphs by stress minimization (ongoing)
  • Spatially constrained network visualization (ongoing)
 
 

Efficient Rendering of Large 3D Geometry Models

 
AdvisorProf. Dr. Oliver Deussen (07/2004 – 06/2014)
 
Project description The complexity and size of geometric models used in computer graphics and CAD is constantly increasing.Specific techniques for efficient storage, representation and manipulation of these data have to be found.
 
Doctoral theses
  • Efficient synthesis of textures and image data (October 2008)
  • Efficient methods for tile-based synthesis and computational photography (October 2008)
  • Capacity-constrained Voronoi tessellations: computation and applications (August 2009)
  • Reproduction and application of stylistic means in non-photorealistic computer graphics (March 2010)
  • Complex-logarithmic views and map warping (December 2011)
  • Non-periodic corner tilings in computer graphics (November 2012)
  • Visualization of large document corpora (November 2012)
  • Efficient processing of plant life in computer graphic (October 2013)
  • Semantic based methods for abstract representations (ongoing)
  • Visualization and exploration of financial time series data (ongoing)
 
 

Databases and Information Systems

 
AdvisorProf. Dr. Torsten Grust (07/2004 – 02/2005)
 
Project description Compilation, optimization, and evaluation of a variety of database languages
 
Areas of research
  • Database query languages
  • Database-supported XML processing
  • Functional programming languages
  • Compiler construction
 
 

Efficient Transmission of Multimedia Data

 
AdvisorProf. Dr. Raouf Hamzaoui (07/2004 – 05/2008)
 
Project description We propose to develop algorithms that allow efficient transmission of large data sets (e.g., 3D graphics and visualization animations) over unreliable channels. We are particularly interested in fast algorithms that can be used in real-time applications. We consider error control strategies for both one-way and two-way systems.
 
Doctoral theses
  • Efficient rate-distortion optimized media streaming (July 2007)
  • Optimized network-adaptive multimedia transmission over packet erasure (May 2008)
 
 

Visual Data Mining

 
AdvisorProf. Dr. Daniel Keim (07/2004 – 06/2014)
 
Project description The abundance of electronic information from different sources makes it more and more difficult for the user to extract the relevant information. Our projects aim to develop computer aided support for data exploration. We plan to combine automatic and interactive methods for data exploration with visualization techniques in order to provide new tools for an efficient analysis of large data sets.
 
Doctoral theses
  • Visual analysis of network traffic interactive monitoring, detection, and interpretation of security threats (June 2008)
  • Visual document analysis: towards a semantic analysis of large document collections (July 2010)
  • Analysis of user generated spatio-temporal data: learning from collections of geotagged photos (March 2012)
  • Visual analytics of patterns in high-dimensional data (July 2013)
  • Document structure analysis for large electronic document collections (July 2013)
  • Visual analytics for large-scale analysis of information dynamics in news streams (ongoing)
  • Overlap-reduction techniques for visualizations of geospatial data (ongoing)
  • Perceptual artifacts in information visualization (ongoing)
 
 

Visualization of Error Traces in Large State Spaces

 
AdvisorProf. Dr. Stefan Leue (08/2004 – 06/2014)
 
Project description The complexity of the software systems that we use in daily life increases rapidly. These systems exhibit tremendous complexity both in terms of the services that they provide and in their internal software architecture. For example, the size of the state spaces of these systems can be enormous and easily reach 225 and more. Automated formal analysis of these software system is essential in ensuring safe operation, in particular for embedded software systems. The aim of this project is to reconcile formal software analysis methods, such as model checking, and software visualization in order to enhance understanding of the dynamic behaviour that these system exhibit.
 
Doctoral theses
  • Incomplete property checking for asynchronous reactive systems (April 2008)
  • Directed diagnostics of system dependability models (November 2009)
  • Fault localization in software systems
 
 

Social Network Analysis

 
AdvisorJun.-Prof. Dr. Steffen Rendle (10/2011 – 10/2013)
 
Areas of research
  • Machine learning
  • Data mining
 
 

VisMeb - A Visual Metadata Browser for Visual Data and Text Mining

 
AdvisorProf. Dr. Harald Reiterer (07/2004 – 06/2014)
 
Project description The main object of research is the design of the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) using a variety of new visualizations and interaction techniques to support the information retrieval process for huge databases, such as digital libraries, the internet, data warehouses, or product databases. Considering the status quo in HCI research, the challenge is first and foremost on providing completely new forms of HCI by developing interactive visual artifacts not yet available as well as new techniques of interaction. At this point the realm of traditional GUI design is left for completely new ways of visual interaction with the medium computer. One objective is finding suitable visual metaphors for abstract data; usually metadata of a certain object are visualized, as for instance specific attributes of a web document (e.g. title, date of creation, size, language, relevance). A similar challenge is the design of intuitive ways of interaction (e.g. by making use of the different sense modalities, such as visual perception, speech, gesture, touch) that can be employed with a variety of hardware (e.g. wall-sized displays, PCs, PDAs). Still another challenge has to do with so called mobile devices that are becoming more and more integrated in work routine and the resulting ubiquitous computing. One emphasis will be on extensively evaluating all research prototypes by methods of usability engineering. For this purpose several mock-ups and prototypes are to be designed and then evaluated concerning feasibility ("proof of concepts") as well as utility and usability.
 
Doctoral theses
  • Zoomable user interfaces on small screens (July 2007)
  • Design and evaluation of novel input devices and interaction techniques for large, high- resolution displays (September 2010)
  • Longitudinal research in human- computer interaction (November 2011)
  • Exploring reality-based user interfaces for collaborative information seeking (June 2012)
  • Primitive interaction tasks for multi-display environments (December 2011)
  • Design and implementation of post-WIMP interactive spaces with the ZOIL paradigm (April 2013)
  • Design and evaluation of proxemics-aware environments to support epistemic activities (ongoing)
 
 

Geometry-based 3D Signal Processing

 
AdvisorProf. Dr. Dietmar Saupe (07/2004 – 06/2014)
 
Project description The goal of our projects is to develop and extend signal processing methods for three dimensional scenarios, like filtering, resampling, compression, transformation and visualization.
A special project is the data acquisition, analysis, visualization and evaluation of performance parameters in race bike training. For a detailed Project description refer to our Powerbike webpage.
 
Doctoral theses
  • Geodesics for point based model processing (July 2007)
  • Surface approximation with elevation maps and observations thinning in numerical weather prediction (July 2007)
  • Texture registration for 3D models (July 2008)
  • Thinning algorithms in data assimilation
  • Generating natural reflectance spectra and its applications (ongoing)
  • Simulation and optimization of race-bike training on realistic tracks (ongoing)
  • Linear and non-linear methods to analyze variability and asymmetry in pedaling motion (ongoing)
  • Detection of archaeological sites in high resolution remotely sensed imagery (ongoing)
 
 

Intelligent Management of very large Structured and Semi-Structured Data

 
AdvisorProf. Dr. Marc Scholl (07/2004 – 06/2014)
 
Project description Algorithms for querying or storing datasets reach their bounds when the amount of data is large or very large. Filesystems with OS support offer one single alternative for structuring the data: sequential aggregation of bytes. This solution does not seem applicable when hierarchies, relations and semantic relations between the data become important for efficient methods of data exploration.
 
Doctoral theses
  • Extending the OLAP technology to handle non-Conventional and complex data (September 2008)
  • Storing and querying large XML instances (December 2010)
  • Pathfinder - full text or extending a purely relational XQuery compiler with a scoring infrastructure for XQuery full text (December 2010)
  • Declarative access to filesystem data : new application domains for XML database management systems (July 2012)
  • Extending the OLAP technology for social media analysis (ongoing)
 
 

Visual Search and Analysis Methods for Complex Data

 
AdvisorJun.-Prof. Dr. Tobias Schreck (10/2011 – 06/2014)
 
Project description Today in many domains, archives with valuable information are compiled, curated and preserved. Examples include Digital Libraries of data from scientific experimentation, or the social sciences. Multimedia archives compiled by public broadcast institutions are another example. Understanding about the contents of these archives, and finding of interesting content, are important tasks to make use of such data. In this project we want to develop new methods for retrieval and analysis in data repositories of complex and heterogeneous data. Key research questions are how combined queries for complex data including multiple different data types can be visually specified, and how respective results can be effectively visualized.
 
Doctoral theses
  • Quality aware visual analysis of spatio-temporal data (ongoing)
 
 

Medical Image Processing and Visualization

 
AdvisorJun.-Prof. Dorit Merhof (04/2010 – 06/2013)
 
Project description Reconstruction and visualization of neuronal Pathways
 
Doctoral theses
  • Extraction of anatomical biomarkers and high-dimensional methods for dementia analysis (ongoing)
 
 

High-speed Networking, Mobile Networks and Distributed Storage

 
AdvisorProf. Dr. Marcel Waldvogel (01/2009 – 06/2014)
 
Project description Privacy and distributed storage
 
Doctoral theses
  • Privacy enhancements for discovery protocols (ongoing)
  • Space-efficient temporal storage manager for tree-based data structures (ongoing)