For the 
Institute of Databases and Information Systems (DBIS), 2015 was both an exciting and successful year. On the one hand, excellent research results, publications and grants could be achieved. On the other hand, new topics and courses were established in teaching.
Meanwhile the vacant professorship was filled giving DBIS a strong position in research as well as teaching with a focus on process and data science. With the grant for a Doctoral Research Program on Cognitive Computing, 午夜探花 will receive from the Federal State of Baden-W眉rttemberg in 2016, a good basis for 2016 has been established 鈥� both DBIS professors will be participating in this doctoral research program whose co-speaker is Manfred Reichert.
Personnel Changes: A New Database Professor, New Faces, Involvement in Faculty Issues
After the retirement of Peter Dadam in September 2014 and the management take-over by Manfred Reichert in October 2014, the vacant professorship at DBIS could be refilled quickly. , Prof. Dr. Martin Theobald has been appointed as second full professor in the institute. In his research, Martin is working with large data sets and advanced database technologies. Together with its already existing research areas, DBIS is well prepared for future research challenges in the process and data sciences.
At the staff level, there were personnel changes in 2015 as well. Altogether five PhD students successfully finished their PhD projects in 2015, four of them already started with their new jobs. Accordingly, new staff members entered the DBIS group and already started to contribute new additions in research and teaching. The members of the current DBIS team originate from four continents (i.e., America, Asia, Africa, and Europe), which demonstrates the increasing internationalisation of the group.
DBIS also played an important role in the Faculty for Engineering, Computer Science and Psychology. Currently, Prof. Reichert is member of the faculty board and faculty council. Furthermore, he is academic dean and program director for Computer Science as well as a member of the student and doctoral examination boards.
DBIS in Research: Chairs, Committees, Keynotes, PhD projects
Chairs and Committee Memberships at International Conferences and Workshops
After having organized the , DBIS researchers were actively involved in co-chairing international events in 2015 as well.
Together with , Manfred Reichert 
was General Co-Chair of the BPM 2015 Workshops, which took place in Innsbruck in September 2015. The BPM workshop post proceedings will appear in Springer鈥檚 LNBIP series in 2016. Manfred was also . Furthermore, he was Co-Chair of the , which took place in the context of the AIME 2015 conference in Pavia in June 2015. The workshop proceedings were published by Springer in its LNAI series in December 2015.
Dr. Jens Kolb was and in Adelaide, Australia. The workshop proceedings were published in the series and in respectively.
Both DBIS professors were members of the program committees of the most relevant conferences in their research area (e.g., ICDE, SIGMOD, BPM, CAiSE, CoopIS, EDOC, and ICWS).
In 2016, DBIS researchers will be involved in the organization of international conferences as well. Martin Theobald is , which will take place in San Francisco in June 2016. In turn, Manfred Reichert Tutorial & Panel Chair of the conference, which will take place in Rio de Janeiro after the Olympic Games September 2016.
Editorships, Keynotes, Publications
Since 2015, both Martin Theobald and Manfred Reichert have been Area Editors of the renowned , which emphasizes their leading roles in their respective area of research. Additionally, Manfred has been editor-in-chief of the and editorial board member of several international journals (e.g., , ). Together with , he was , which was published by Information Systems in December 2015.
In 2015, again DBIS researchers were invited for several talks at international conferences, workshops, and summer schools. Manfred Reichert was , which took place in Estonia in August 2015, and organized in the context of the BPM 2015 conference in Innsbruck in September 2015. Furthermore he provided colloquium presentations at several universities as well as an . Martin Theobald, in turn, bases in the context of the 25th International Summer School in Jyv盲skyl盲 (Finland).
In 2015, DBIS researchers and PhD students were very successful regarding scientific publications. This includes a number of accepted journal articles (e.g. Information Systems, Information & Software Technology, Software & Systems Modeling, and Systems & e-Business Management) as well as accepted full papers at top conferences (e.g., BPM 2015, CAiSE 2015, CoopIS 2015, EDOC 2015, ER 2015, SCC 2015, and CBMS 2015). Altogether, in 2015 DBIS published more than 30 refereed papers.
Concerning citations, DBIS papers were again ranked top by several journals. For example, out of more than 400 articles that had appeared during the last 5 years in the Computers & Industry journal, . Furthermore, DBIS articles published in other journals (e.g., Int J Coop Information Systems and Data & Knowledge Engineering) have been among the most cited ones as well.
Completed PhD Projects and Doctoral Thesis Award
In 2015, five PhD students who had been supervised by Manfred Reichert completed their PhD projects 鈥� a number that have not been reached yet. On 1 June 2015, Dr. Matthias Lohrmann successfully . He was followed on July 22, 2015 by Dr. Bernd Michelberger who finished . A special day for DBIS was July 29, 2015 鈥� with Dr. Jens Kolb () and Dr. Markus Hipp () two PhD students successfully defended their thesis at one and the same day. Finally, on 5 October 2015, Dr. R眉diger Pryss successfully completed . DBIS is proud of its young doctors and their excellent scientific contributions.
After Vera K眉nzle who had received the doctoral thesis award granted by the Ulmer Universit盲tsgesellschaft in July 2014, granted by the division for Databases and Information Systems of the German Informatics Society.
Several of our PhD students introduced their PhD project in a colloquium presentation at the faculty level last year. Hence, it can be assumed that there will be reasons to celebrate in 2016 as well.
Current and Future Research Projects: A Broadly Diversified Portfolio
In 2015 DBIS was involved in a variety of national and international projects, which address both basic and applied research. The grants for these projects stem from various sources including the , the , the , and industrial partners.
At the beginning of the year, we . With a regional partner from industry has been involved in this project as well. Furthermore, DBIS was successful with . Finally, DBIS has been pleased about the continuation of .
Our EU FP7 project as well as two DFG projects were closed in 2015. With the aforementioned , which 午夜探花 will receive from the Federal State of Baden-W眉rttemberg, an excellent basis has been established for 2016 and the following years 鈥� both DBIS professors will be participating in this doctoral research program whose co-speaker will be Manfred Reichert. Additional research proposals are under preparation.
A Strong National and International Research Network
Both the national and international research network of the institute are excellent. As chairman and steering committee member of the , Prof. Reichert has been well connected to the German scientific community. Furthermore, he has been a member of the steering committee of the GI technical branch on Databases and Information Systems. Amongst others, national research collaborations exist with the Technical University of Munich as well as the Universities of Constance, Regensburg, Saarbr眉cken, and Magdeburg.
As in previous years, there has been , which resulted excellent joint publications. Additionally, the long-term strategic collaboration DBIS holds with was very productive regarding high-quality publications. The same applies to our collaborations with the Penn State University and the Universities of Antwerp, Verona, Rome and Valencia as well as the Universities of Applied Sciences from Ravensburg-Weingarten, Neu-Ulm, and Aalen. Altogether more than 15 of the papers we published in 2015 were co-authored by external partners.
Finally, DBIS has been a member of the European BPM Round Table, the , and, since 2015, the .
DBIS in Teaching: Strong Involvement, New Courses, and High Attendance Rates
Regarding the involvement of DBIS in teaching, important changes happened in 2015: First and foremost, DBIS increased its commitment for teaching Management Science students. For several years, DBIS has already offered relevant Master courses (e.g., Business Process Management, Business Process Intelligence) for them. Since this winter term, DBIS additionally teaches Bachelor courses (e.g. Introduction to Programming, Information Systems) in Management Science. Furthermore, Prof. Reichert will coordinate the teaching offers in the priority program on Computer Science for Management Science students. Due to his strong commitment, the board of the Faculty of Mathematics and Economic Sciences (午夜探花) decided .
With the start of Prof. Theobald as new database professor, DBIS teaching offers in the field of database management systems were renewed. In addition to the well-established course on database management systems, three new courses were designed: Information Retrieval & Web Mining (Master), Introduction to Data Science (Bachelor / Master), and Big Data Analytics (Master). These new courses are complemented by exciting projects and seminars related to database technology and non-traditional database architectures. Furthermore, DBIS continues its strong involvement in the Bachelor courses of the Computer Science programs. In the summer term, for the first time, Manfred Reichert taught the Bachelor course 鈥淚nformation Systems鈥�.
DBIS has been very involved in the design and structuring of the new international Masters in Cognitive Systems as well. On one hand, several DBIS courses (e.g. Introduction to Data Science, Big Data Analytics, Information Retrieval and Web Mining) are taught in English language. On the other, DBIS designed the interdisciplinary subject 鈥濩ognitive Agents, Companions, and Mobile Apps in Healthcare鈥�, which comprises several courses in English language. Finally, as academic dean Prof. Reichert actively supports the design and structuring of the Cognitive Systems Masters.
In 2015, attendance figures were very positive for the already established DBIS courses. About 150 students subscribed to the Business Process Management course this winter term. Our Master course Business Process Intelligence, in turn, was attended by more than 50 students. Besides lectures, exercises and laboratory hours, for both courses there are exciting guest lectures with speakers from industry. We were also happy about the positive feedback and high attendance figures we achieved in the courses taught by Marc Schickler in the context of the applied subjects Mobile Business Applications (Bachelor) und Advanced Mobile Application Engineering (Master). Both students and DBIS staff were enthusiastic about the outcomes of the 2015 edition of these courses. The DBIS lab as well as the DBIS courses on Database Management Systems, Information Systems and Service-Oriented Computing re-enjoyed a great popularity in 2015 as well. Finally, .
In general, DBIS aims at a close linkage of teaching and research. Accordingly, many of the results obtained in the context of Master and Bachelor theses could be directly transferred to successful publications. Remarkably, DBIS students won prestigious awards again. In May 2015, for his outstanding Master thesis on the development of a cloud platform for business process administration, modelling and execution. in November 2015 for her master thesis on tablet applications for the elderly.
DBIS students may be looking forward to exciting teaching offers in 2016. In addition to the already established DBIS lab, we will design a lab course related to business process modelling.
The DBIS team wishes its students, partners and friends a happy new year and is looking forward to successfully collaborating with them in 2016 as well.