We are happy to announce that our proposal for a new M.Sc. titled “Research Course: Virtual Human-AI Collaboration” received funding by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) and the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Science as part of the Excellence Strategy of the German Federal and State Governments from the KIT  ”Research Infrastructures in Research-Oriented Teaching (RIRO)“ initiative. The course will be offered in the next winter semester by Dr. Julia Seitz Sänger and Prof. Dr. Alexander Maedche from WIN (h-lab) in collaboration with Dr. Leon Houf and Prof. Dr. Petra Nieken from IBU. It will leverage the KD2Lab as underlying research infrastructure and the associated Human Subject Research Hub.

On February 18th, Prof. Mädche gave a lecture at the Research Group in Information Systems (GReSI) at HEC Montreal, Canada. In his talk he presented insights from current research focusing on multitasking in remote meetings done in collaboration with Dr. Julia Seitz and Chiara Krisam in the context of the DFG-funded KD2School.

Multitasking during remote meetings is highly prevalent, as meeting participants frequently divide their attention between meeting-related and -unrelated activities, such as responding to emails. 

The advertised doctoral student position at the human-centered systems lab (https://h-lab.win.kit.edu/) headed by Prof. Mädche focuses on designing AI-based learning companions that promote skill development for an effective collaboration between humans and agentic artificial intelligence (AI). In particular, new approaches will be conceived and evaluated that support the development of interpersonal and social skills, as well as critical reflection skills, when using agentic AI. The research project will consider both students and employees in companies. The team projects in the B.Sc. programs in Industrial Engineering & Management, Digital Economics and Information Systems serve as concrete research cases within the curriculum. Further information is available here. 

On February 10, 2026,

 students participating in the M.Sc. lecture Engineering Interactive Systems: AI & Wearables offered by Dr. Martin Feick and Dr. Felix Kretzer from the human-centered systems lab presented the results of their capstone projects projects in the KD2Lab. The capstone project was carried out in cooperation with Visualvest GmbH, a fintech subsidiary of the Union Investment Group. Students leveraged Polar H10 wearable chest strep to capture heart activity in the form of heart rate variability features, analyze and recognize stress levels and on this basis design an biosignal-adaptive investment banking app prototype extending the existing Visualvest mobile app.

Last week marked a major milestone for our EU-funded project “TWON – Twin of Online Social Networks”: consortium members from across Europe gathered in Berlin for three intensive and inspiring days for what was the final consortium meeting before the project concludes. With the project entering its final phase, the meeting provided an important opportunity to take stock, reflect, look ahead, and engage with policymakers. The meeting was organized by our team members Cosima Pfannschmidt and Dr. Jonas Fegert.

We are pleased to announce that as of February 2, 2026, Prof. Dr. Philipp Staudt has started his position as Junior Professor and Head of the Research Group Information Systems II - Digital Energy Markets at the Institute for Information Systems (WIN) at KIT. Prof. Staudt's research focuses on the digitalization of energy systems and sustainable digitalization more broadly, with particular emphasis on digitalized energy systems, agent-based modeling, data management and sustainable information systems.

Dr. Rainer Hoffmann

from EnBW gave an industry talk in our bachelor lecture “BWL | Information Systems” 

on February 2nd, 2026. In his talk, he gave deep insights into the data and AI strategy of EnBW including the building blocks of vision, use cases, data & infrastructure, compliance & governance, upskilling, and strategic partnerships. EnBW (Energie Baden-Württemberg AG) is one of the largest energy supply companies in Europe, headquartered in Karlsruhe.

In this CHI 2026 workshop we bring together researchers from different sub-disciplines of HCI and adjacent fields (ML, CV, NLP, Software Engineering) to discuss how multimodal UI design can support AI as collaborative partners, and how these interfaces must evolve to facilitate human-AI interaction across diverse modalities. The workshop is co-organized by Felix Kretzer and Alexander Maedche from the human-centered systems lab with colleagues from University of Utah, Carnegie Mellon University, Apple, and University of Bath.

KIT hosted the 1st “Human Subject Research for Impact” Symposium, bringing together researchers from across disciplines to discuss how human subject research can be advanced responsibly and with impact.The event marked the launch of the Human Subject Research Hub (HSR Hub), which will serve as the academic backbone at KIT for advancing knowledge and processes in human subject research, as well as the conclusion of the Future Field III project on Decision-Making in Hybrid Adaptive Systems.

The end of the winter semester 2025/26 also marks the successful end of this year’s Business Intelligence Systems (BIS) capstone project, which is an integral element of the BIS master lecture held by Prof. Dr. Alexander Mädche  and Niklas Wagner. 46 students worked in 10 teams on a retail banking business intelligence & analytics case provided by our industry partner Atruvia, the IT service provider for Germany’s cooperative banks. The capstone project empowers students in collecting hands-on experiences in using and applying state-of-the-art Business Intelligence & Analytics (BI&A) technologies such as the Databricks platform and in parallel build up transferable skills (e.g., communication, team collaboration, etc.).

On January 12th 2026, Ekta Narang from SAP SE Supply Chain Management gave an industry talk in our bachelor lecture “BWL | Information Systems”. In her talk, she highlighted the current "value gap" in AI adoption, where significant investment often yields low returns due to disjointed data, siloed solutions, and organizational complexity. As a response, she presented the concept of “SAP Business AI" that integrates context-rich data, provides unified user experiences, and role-aware AI assistants integrated into business processes.

The INFORTE.fi programme is hosting an "Advanced Laddering Interviews and Analysis" course from March 10 to March 12, 2026, at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. This specialized training introduces participants to the laddering interview technique, an advanced qualitative method used to uncover complex user behaviors and deep-seated values in information systems and service research. The course will be taught by Prof. Tuure Tuunanen and Dr. Juuli Lumivalo from the University of Jyväskylä, along with Prof. Alexander Maedche and Mr. Leon Hanschmann from the human-centered systems lab of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).