On August 19th, our research group hosted the first session of the GenAI Talks series at the ITüpferl in the MI Building. The event aimed at fostering connections among students, researchers, and industry professionals interested in Generative AI. The evening featured six insightful lightning talks, each lasting around five minutes, followed by lively discussions and networking opportunities. The diversity of topics covered—from biases in Generative AI to the intricacies of multimodal LLMs—sparked rich exchanges of ideas and set the tone for future sessions.

IRIS, the intelligent virtual tutor integrated into Artemis and based on Generative AI and Large Language Models, was recently featured in an article published by the Süddeutsche Zeitung and in the 8.th edition of the Mindshift Magazine. The articles present the concept behind the development of IRIS and highlight the capability of IRIS to be a virtual tutor for university courses. The Süddeutsche Zeitung published an article titled “Hilfe ja - Lösung nein” about the challenges that the development of a learning chatbot like IRIS poses.

Are you passionate about education and eager to make a difference in the academic journey of students? We invite motivated students like you to join our team as a tutor for Introduction to Programming and play a key role in shaping the learning experience. This is a unique opportunity to deepen your software engineering and programming skills while helping your peers. Join us and become a valuable member of our highly motivated, international student team!

The International Conference on Intelligent Environments (IE) is held annually at different locations around the world, and focuses on research in the field of interactive spaces made possible by the use of different technologies. Artificial intelligence, communication technologies, and sensing interfaces, along with more contributions from multiple disciplines, allow for the design of intelligent environments that can enrich users’ activities and interactions. The 20th edition of the conference was held during June in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and awarded distinctions to the best papers and presentations.

We are pleased to announce that Felix T.J. Dietrich has earned a spot in the Swift Student Challenge 2024. This competition, part of Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), recognizes innovative projects by student developers worldwide. Felix’s project, an iPad app designed to improve financial health, secured him one of the 350 scholarships. The Swift Student Challenge allows students to showcase their coding skills by creating a Swift Playgrounds project. Winners this receive a year of free access to the Apple Developer Program and Apple AirPods Max.