News

MindfulPacer: Living with Long Covid

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 13:32:31 GMT

The current Oec. Magazin features an article about MindfulPacer, the app developed by Dr. André Meyer and his team and 👉 announced in March.

MindfulPacer helps people with energy-limiting conditions (such as Long Covid) better understand and manage their energy using smartwatch data and personalized reminders.

👉 Article in Oec. Magazin

Societal Digitalization: News Insights from a Five-Year Research Project

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 12:06:46 GMT

The National Research Program “Digital Transformation“ (NRP 77), led by Abraham Bernstein, has successfully concluded. Highlighting the social impact of the project, Abraham Bernstein emphasizes a key takeaway: “Digitalization is a societal transformation in which everyone should play a part.“

Wiley High-Impact Recognition

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 08:00:37 GMT

Congratulations! The paper “PPSurf: Combining Patches and Point Convolutions for Detailed Surface Reconstruction” has been recognized by Wiley Online Library as one of the top 10% most-viewed papers in Computer Graphics Forum (2024). This was a joint work with the TU Vienna, led by the primary authors Philipp Erler (TU Vienna) and Lizeth Fuentes Perez (UZH).

ACM SIGMOD 2026 Service Awards for IfI Researchers

Fri, 22 May 2026 10:03:00 GMT

ACM SIGMOD is the flagship ACM conference on data management and a leading international forum for database researchers, practitioners, developers, and users to explore cutting-edge ideas and results, and to exchange techniques, tools, and experiences.

Promotion of Alberto Bacchelli

Mon, 18 May 2026 09:12:39 GMT

As of 1 April 2026, the Board of the University of Zurich has appointed Alberto Bacchelli as Full Professor ad personam of Empirical Software Engineering. Congratulations!

Double Honors for Sustainable HCI: CaseCompass wins Inspirational Research Award at ACM CHI 2026

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 14:30:16 GMT

Congratulations to the authors of “CaseCompass: Designing Sustainable, Community-Led Socio-Technical Systems for Gender-Based Violence Support Work”, whose work was recognized in Barcelona both for their outstanding research and their commitment to sustainable, practical outcomes.

Best Paper Honorable Mention Award for Nimra Ahmed, Angelika Strohmayer, and Elaine Huang

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 06:13:30 GMT

For their paper “Scattered Searches, Broken Apps, Quiet Repairs: A Feminist Autoethnographic Critique of Technology and Research on Gender-Based Violence” Nimra Ahmed, Angelika Strohmayer, and Elaine Huang received a Best Paper Honorable Mention Award at the CHI 2026 conference – congratulations!

In the media: The Impact of Prediction Markets on Democratic Processes

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 06:14:47 GMT

Burkhard Stiller, Professor of Communication Systems at the Department of Informatics, explores what happens when complex political decision-making processes are reduced to game-theoretic frameworks.

MindfulPacer: Smartwatch-based activity pacing support

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 17:50:23 GMT

MindfulPacer is a new smartwatch and smartphone app that helps people with Long COVID and ME/CFS pace their daily activities using personalized biometric limits, real-time notifications, and a reflection journal.

Celebrating Our Newest Doctoral Graduates

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 11:59:53 GMT

The Department of Informatics warmly congratulates nine PhD students who have successfully defended their dissertations.

Claudio Tessone: Indo-Swiss Blockchain Forum 2026

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 07:55:39 GMT

In collaboration with the University of Zurich (UZH), the Rashtriya Raksha University hosted an international conference bridging decentralized technology and national security. Claudio Tessone joined the opening panel and later delivered the opening lecture.

UZH-Kyoto University Symposium 2026

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 09:02:41 GMT

In early February, researchers from the University of Zurich (UZH) and Kyoto University met in Zurich. In their fourth joint symposium, they shared ideas from different fields. Abraham Bernstein and Claudio Tessone, both professors in the Department of Informatics (IfI), joined the workshops with postdoctoral researcher Patricia Kahr.

Rico Sennrich takes over dual Professorship

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 09:35:47 GMT

Rico Sennrich, Head of Text Technology at the Institute for Computational Linguistics (CL), will be offering his lectures in both the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics from the spring semester of 2026. Warmly welcome, Rico!

Eva Bittner becomes Full Professor of Information Systems

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 09:29:54 GMT

As of 1 February 2026, Eva Bittner joins the Department of Informatics as Full Professor of Information Systems. Warmly welcome, Eva!

Semester Award for Natasha Obukhova

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 15:33:07 GMT

Congratulations! Natasha Obukhova has been awarded a Semester Award for her outstanding Master’s thesis, entitled “Because I can promise you: if you’re studying people with lived experience of trauma, secondary trauma will happen”.

UZH joins Hugging Face’s Academia Hub

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 13:56:36 GMT

Giorgia Ramponi, Assistant Professor at the Department of Informatics, brings her Reinforcement Learning courses to the one-year pilot of the Academia Hub.

Dan Olteanu named 2025 ACM Distinguished Member

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 11:51:28 GMT

Great news: The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has named Prof. Dr. Dan Olteanu, who leads the Data Systems and Theory (DaST) group at IfI, a Distinguished Member in recognition of his contributions to data management theory and systems.

Congratulations!

Dan Stokesberry Award for Burkhard Stiller

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 10:21:32 GMT

Prof. Dr. Burkhard Stiller has been awarded the “Dan Stokesberry Award” in May 2025 during the closing Ceremony of the IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS 2025) (https://noms2025.ieee-noms.org/).

Database Theory Test of Time Award

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 10:03:03 GMT

The International Conference on Database Theory (ICDT) presented the Test of Time Award 2026 to work co-authored by IfI professor Dan Olteanu. The award recognizes the paper «Declarative Probabilistic Programming with Datalog» by Vince Bárány, Balder ten Cate, Benny Kimelfeld, Dan Olteanu, Zografoula Vagena.

Congratulations!

In the media: Blockchain – from hype to design

Fri, 28 Nov 2025 10:55:16 GMT

Claudio Tessone shares insights on how the future of blockchain and crypto will rely on economic design, education, and integration.

SNSF Starting Grant for Giorgia Ramponi

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 09:58:06 GMT

Giorgia Ramponi, Assistant Professor at the Department of Informatics since 2024, has received a Starting Grant for her project “Multi-agent learning from demonstrations and human feedback”. Congratulations!

The impact of open access publishing

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 13:36:53 GMT

André Meyer reflects with UZH Bibliothek on the practical impact of archiving research articles on ZORA.

EU HORIZON Grant for “CRYPTOACTION”

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 10:21:48 GMT

Claudio Tessone, as part of a consortium with 16 partners and 2 associated organizations, has received funding from EU HORIZON for the project “Combating CRYPTO-currency-Facilitated Crime and Terrorism with Interoperable, Trustworthy, AI Enhanced, Collaborative Tools, Improved Information Sharing, Operations and Training for LEAs”. Congratulations!

Semester Award for Tarek Alakmeh

Mon, 10 Nov 2025 10:15:35 GMT

Tarek Alakmeh has been awarded a Semester Award for his outstanding Master’s Thesis “Decoding a Developer’s Mind: Multimodal Approaches to Code Comprehension” (Fall 2024). Congratulations!

Pooja Rani appointed to Professorship in Mannheim

Fri, 07 Nov 2025 13:23:25 GMT

We are delighted to congratulate our IfI postdoc Pooja Rani on her next career step.

Semester Award for Kevin Bründler

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 14:18:22 GMT

Kevin Bründler has been awarded a Semester Award for his outstanding Master’s Thesis “Exploring Text Mining Applications in Financial Negotiations; A Case Study on Synthetic Data”. Congratulations!

AI in Focus: From trust to the future of work

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 08:38:14 GMT

Abraham Bernstein researches with both a technical and a social science approach to understand the interaction between humans and computers.

Women in Informatics Network Zurich founded

Fri, 10 Oct 2025 14:29:26 GMT

The →Women in Informatics Network Zurich (WINZ) ACM-W Student Chapter was founded on 29 September 2025 at the Department of Informatics. This initiative is dedicated to advancing the role of women in computing and aims to foster greater awareness of women’s contributions across all areas of computer science, from design and development to management and application.

Killer-Drohnen sollten jetzt schon verboten werden

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 14:51:29 GMT

In diesem Interview mit dem Tages-Anzeiger warnt Davide Scaramuzza, Leiter der Robotics and Perception Group am Institut für Informatik, vor den Gefahren autonomer Waffensystemen (Killer-Drohnen). Er fordert ein sofortiges Verbot von derartigen Systemen und verweist auf die Dringlichkeit internationaler Regulierungen. Gleichzeitig betont er, dass Drohnentechnologie auch positive Anwendungen hat, beispielsweise in Such- und Rettungssystemen.

Giorgia Ramponi: Top 100+ Women in AI & Data – Switzerland 2025

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 12:24:12 GMT

Congratulations! Giorgia Ramponi, Assistant Professor at the Department of Informatics, has been named one of the Top 100+ Women in AI & Data – Switzerland 2025.

In the media: "A picture says more than a thousand words"

Wed, 17 Sep 2025 22:00:00 GMT

With numbers and algorithms, Renato Pajarola creates impressive visualizations that reveal hidden patterns in data. His research shows how computer science can unlock new insights across disciplines.

OCAM – Runner-up Best Paper Award at Eurographics Computer Graphics & Visual Computing Conference

Wed, 17 Sep 2025 12:17:45 GMT

Congratulations! The paper “OCAM: Occlusion-aware Completeness via Coverage Analysis with Monte Carlo Sampling”, authored by Lizeth Joseline Fuentes Perez, Luciano Arnaldo Romero Calla, Renato Pajarola, and Javier Turek, won the Runner-up Best Paper Award at Eurographics Computer Graphics and Visual Computing (CGVC) 2025 conference in Liverpool.

Tülin Kaman: Verena Meyer Visiting Professor at the Department of Informatics (Fall 2025 – Spring 2026)

Tue, 16 Sep 2025 08:44:02 GMT

We warmly welcome Tülin Kaman, who will be offering her lectures at the Department of Informatics starting in the fall semester of 2025.

TrailView – Best Paper Award at Web3D 2025

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 14:37:34 GMT

Congratulations! The paper "TrailView: An Interactive 3D Hike Planning Tool" by Julian A. Croci, Christian Skorski, Julius Rauscher, Renato Pajarola, and Alexandra Diehl, won the best paper award at the Web3D 2025 Conference in Siena.

Promotion of Prof. Anikó Hannák

Mon, 08 Sep 2025 12:12:16 GMT

As of 1 September 2025, Prof. Anikó Hannák has taken up the position as associate professor of social computing at the Department of Informatics, following her service as an assistant professor at the Department of Informatics of the University of Zurich.

UZH Innovation Grant awarded for GeoFoundation Startup Initiative

Tue, 02 Sep 2025 10:38:17 GMT

Congratulations to Kilian Sprenkamp, PhD student at the Information Management Research Group and DSI researcher. GeoFoundation has been selected for the UZH Innovation Grant.

HEC Lausanne (UNIL), the University of Zurich (UZH) and UNHCR join forces to meet the needs of refugees

Wed, 27 Aug 2025 06:50:32 GMT

As soon as they arrive in a host country, refugees face urgent questions: how to access healthcare, get social assistance, enroll children in school, or understand administrative procedures. But how can we provide them with clear, rapid answers, without overburdening already strained systems? Where can digital technology make a real difference? And how do we ensure these tools respect privacy, safety, and dignity?

Lena Jäger takes over dual Professorship

Mon, 18 Aug 2025 13:02:58 GMT

Lena Jäger, Head of Digital Linguistics at the Department of Computational Linguistics (CL), will continue to offer her lecture on Advanced Machine Learning in both the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics. Moreover, she will offer a more specialized seminar around the topic of AI and human cognition soon. Warmly welcome, Lena!

SDG Impact Award 2025 for Maya Guido

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 11:54:03 GMT

Congratulations! Maya Guido was awarded the SDG Impact Award at the Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics’ graduation ceremony.

SDG Impact Award 2025 for Dario Stähelin

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 11:45:35 GMT

Dario Stähelin was honored with the SDG Impact Award at the Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics’ graduation ceremony. Congratulations!

Adaptive political questionnaires for voting advice applications

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 22:00:00 GMT

In collaboration with Smartvote, Abraham Bernstein and his PhD student Fynn Bachmann have developed a new algorithm that improves the quality of voting advice.

Best Paper Award for IVDA at EuroVA 2025

Thu, 12 Jun 2025 07:52:41 GMT

The paper “A Design Space for the Critical Validation of LLM-Generated Tabular Data” by Madhav Sachdeva, Christopher Narayanan, Marvin Wiedenkeller, Jana Sedlakova, and Jürgen Bernard has been honored by the Best Paper Award at EuroVA 2025 in Luxembourg.

EuroVA is the largest workshop at the EuroVis Conference, Europe’s largest conference for interactive visual data visualization, hosted by the Eurographics Association.

Congratulations to the IVDA team!

ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award for Pavlina Wurzel Gonçalves, Pooja Rani and Alberto Bacchelli

Mon, 26 May 2025 08:29:32 GMT

Congratulations! The paper «Code Review Comprehension: Reviewing Strategies Seen Through Code Comprehension Theories» by Pavlína Wurzel Gonçalves, Pooja Rani, and Alberto Bacchelli and their co-authors from Greece and Canada won the Distinguished Paper Award at the International Conference on Program Comprehension 2025 (ICPC).

Sven Seuken: new journey

Thu, 15 May 2025 06:12:36 GMT

Sven Seuken, Head of the Computation and Economics Research Group, leaves the Department of Informatics.

New podcast episode: Flow instead of frustration

Mon, 12 May 2025 09:37:25 GMT

In this DIZH-podcast episode, André Meyer talks about how we get into flow – a state of deep concentration – and why it is so difficult to stay there.

SIGMOD Research Awards for Project on Cardinality Estimation

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 08:44:52 GMT

A recent breakthrough on the longstanding problem of cardinality estimation in database systems brought the DaST team and collaborators two major awards in data management research.

Alexandra Diehl becomes Associate Professor

Tue, 15 Apr 2025 08:51:20 GMT

We are delighted to congratulate our IfI postdoc Alexandra Diehl on her next career step.

Best Paper Award (2nd Runner Up) for Aleksandra Garazha, Cédric Merz, Gerhard Schwabe and Liudmila Zavolokina at ICIS 2024

Tue, 04 Mar 2025 14:51:37 GMT

Congratulations! The paper «Resilience in Times of Crisis: Empowering Refugees with Self-Sovereign Identity» by Aleksandra Garazha, Cédric Merz, Gerhard Schwabe and Liudmila Zavolokina received the 2nd runner up for the best overall conference complete paper award at the International Conference on Information Systems 2024 in Bangkok.

FAN Award for Stefania Ionescu

Tue, 18 Feb 2025 14:57:27 GMT

Stefania Ionescu receives one of this year’s FAN Awards for her dissertation «Society as a Stakeholder: Understanding the Societal Impact of Systems Allocating Visibility Algorithmically». Congratulations!

UZH Mentoring Award for Anikó Hannák

Tue, 18 Feb 2025 14:40:37 GMT

Anikó Hannák receives one of this year’s UZH Mentoring Awards. Congratulations!