On the 06th of December 2016, the team of the project eCoInnovateIT was invited to present their work in the old townhall in Hannover to Gabriele Heinen-Kljajić, the minister of cultural and educational policy in Lower Saxony.

For more information visit: ecoinnovateit.de/

On the 02nd of December 2016, the second workshop of the innovation-network of sustainable Smartphones (INaS) took place. Members of the eCoInnovateIT project from the University of Oldenburg got in touch with practioners and other researchers to discuss new concepts and share ideas.

For more informations visit: ecoinnovateit.de/

This year our christmas party took place in the restaurant Glut & Wasser.

We wish everybody merry christmas and a happy new year!

On December 13th 2016 Lama Balloul successfully defended her doctoral thesis with the topic "Interface Lifecycle Management on Enterprise Landscape Level". The VLBA department congratulates warmly.

Mr. Edward Koomson joint the chair of Very Large Business Applications for 3 month. In order to wrap up his research stay, he gave a presentation in front of the members of the department. His presentation was entitled "Provision and management of ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes for climate change adaptation in semi arid Ghana". Edward gave a brief overview of the whole project and then concentrated on discussing the methodology he intends to employ.

The 05.12.2015 was a final day of the more then 1 year journey for 12 students from project group Data Analysis with Hadoop (DASH). The project was focused on performing a data analytical tasks on huge and semi-structured data with help of Apache Hadoop Ecosystem software stack for an real enterprise use case. In particular, students from project group targeted to build a complete analytical pipeline (ELT + Visualization + Machine Learning / Data Mining) on Apache Hadoop Ecosystem technology stack for processing of huge amounts of XML files generated daily by thousands of photo-printing machines, which are maintained by partner company. Besides then, students from project group took a part in conference "Forschen im Studium" and also published some of obtained results in "Predictive & Advanced Analytics" of BI-Spektrum's Online-Themenspecial. The university's supervisors team Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jorge Marx Gómez, Andreas Solsbach and Viktor Dmitriyev would like to thank Dipl.-Ing. Eugen Neigel and Fatih-Mehmet Inel from CEWE Stiftung & Co. KGaA (Oldenburg) for their outstanding and invaluable support during the whole period of the project.

The chair of Business Informatics at the University of Oldenburg hosted the close up meeting of the TEMPUS project MATRE. At the 31th of October 2016 we received our project partners from Spain, Lithuania, Lebanon and Syria. The main objective was to conclude all projects activities through every aspect and to close the project. Apart from this matter, future cooperation possibilities were also discussed.

On October 17th 2016, the third CENTOS postershow took place in the BIS hall of the Carl von Ossietzky University in Oldenburg. The meeting allowed students to get an in-depth look into the current research process of the universities susainability projects. During this event, the chair of Very Large Business Applications under the conduct of Prof. Jorge Marx Gómez presented two of their current research projects, namely NEMo and eCoInnovateIT and discussed the results of their research with interested students and fellow researchers.

For more information on CENTOS visit:
uol.de/forschung/centos/veranstaltungen/

The chair of Business Informatics at the University of Oldenburg organized the final meeting of the MSC.ESE project. From the 09th to the 12th of October 2016 we hosted our project partners from Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan and Syria. The main objective was to finalize all projects activities across all phases and to close the project. In addition, possibilities of future cooperation, bureaucratic and financial issues were also discussed.

In the frame of the final MSC.ESE workshop Prof. Dr. Dr Hans Michael Pieper Oldenburg University President) welcomed Prof. Dr. Mashoor Refai (University President) and Prof. Dr. Walid Salameh (Dean Faculty of Computing Science) of Princess Sumaya University for Technology (PSUT) in Amman (Jordan) and Prof. Dr. Jorge Marx Gómez (Chair Business Informatics, Oldenburg University).

The 6th meeting of the project ‘Sustainable Consumption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the Digital Society’ took place on the 7th of October 2016 at the University of Oldenburg. During the meeting, the current progress of the project was presented and the partial results from the different work packages were discussed. Furthermore, the concept of transdisciplinarity within the project’s context was discussed and possible transdisciplinarity approaches were suggested.

University of Lebanon organized on 08- 09 of September 2016 the International Conference "Modernizing Academic Teaching and Research in Business and Economics". The basic objective of the Conference to bring together researchers for a corporate discussion about the contemporary issues in research, academic teaching, and education in the context of globalization. This conference helded in parallel with the project steering committee and the quality control meeting activities.

From 1st to 3rd of September 2016 the DEMIS team met in Oldenburg for their annual workshop and doctoral colloquium. During the first day, project management issues were discussed and current research was presented to the African guests. A guided tour at CEWE Stiftung & Co. KGaA, a guided city tour and the dinner completed the first meeting day. The second day was structured in sessions, were each potential supervisor and doctoral student gave a presentation about his research. For the last day a team building event was organized - an excursion to the world heritage Wadden Sea.

The department Business Information Systems / Very Large Business Applications (VLBA) welcomes two guest researchers from the project "DEMIS - Doctoral Education in EMIS". Both researchers are briefly introduced below:

Kofi Sarpong Adu-Manu
Kofi Sarpong Adu-Manu is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Ghana. His research interests are in the area of Wireless Sensor Networks (Energy Harvesting WSNs) for environmental monitoring applications, Big Data, and IT and Society. He is currently studying into implementing EH-WSNs for Water Quality Monitoring (WQM). Focus areas for the WSN-based WQM research are:

• Designing energy efficient protocols for EH-WSNs for WSN-based WQM systems.
• Designing models that combines Underwater Communication and Terrestrial
  Communication standards (i.e., issues related to the channel, the protocol (e.g., MAC) and
  also issues that have to do with the node mobility.)
• Designing models (algorithms) and energy efficient techniques for data aggregation
• Designing a complete energy evaluation model that take into account the types of
  parameters that need to be sensed and the sensing frequency, the amount of energy to be
  harvested from the different harvesting sources, and the energy requirement of the
  protocols and services (such as routing protocols or localization)
• Designing systems to harvest energy from solar energy, water flow, and temperature
  gradient.

Lloyd Larbi
Lloyd Larbi is currently a Guest Researcher under “DEMIS – Doctoral Education in EMIS” project at the Department of Computer Science at University of Oldenburg to conduct research and attending colloquiums organized by the DEMIS.

He is a PhD Candidate of the Institute for Environment and Sanitation Studies (IESS), University of Ghana. His research interests lies in the area of Coastal Zone Management (Climate Change Risk Reduction and Improving Ecosystem Health).

His current research largely focuses on providing information on the ecological state of the Eastern Coast of Ghana and also strengthening community stewardship of Coastal ecosystems within the area.

He is presently working as a Guest researcher under the Doctoral Education in Environmental Management Information Systems (DEMIS) project to complete his data analysis at the University of Oldenburg. PUBLICATION (2011) Impacts of Coastal Inundation Due to Climate Change in a CLUSTER of Urban Coastal Communities in Ghana, West Africa (Remote Sensing).

University of Oldenburg organized on 09-10 of August 2016 a workshop with the Syrian Partners from MSC.ESE. President of Damascus University and three other colleagues attended workshop, which this time took place in Oldenburg, Germany. The main aims of this workshop were to discuss the long-term perspectives of the project and implementation of it’s outcomes at Damascus University. Besides that, topics such as project remaining activities,  financial issues and the possibility of any future cooperation plans were in focus of workshop.

The 5th meeting of the project ‘Sustainable Consumption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the Digital Society’ took place on the 24th of June 2016. At the Leuphana University of Lüneburg the current progress of the project was presented and the partial results from the different work packages were discussed.

On April 15th 2016 the research project "Growi" was successfully completed within the frame of a final presentation at practice partner Growe Rollladen GmbH. In addition to the delivery of the developed software system and related documentation possible future project proposals were discussed.

The kickoff of the new project group of the VLBA department took place on the 04.04.2016 in the rooms of the abat AG in Bremen. The goal of the project group is using a demo system landscape to implement various applications for SAP S / 4 Hana and evaluate their usefulness.
More information about the topics presented and used technologies can be found in a timely manner on the website of Project Group (link coming soon).

Under the motto "where problems become solutions" presented the project group IMPACT the results of their twelve-month project on this year's CeBIT in Hanover, Germany. The exhibit was part of the joint stand "innovation in Lower Saxony" on which exhibitors from universities, research institutions and enterprises presented their research and the latest developments. The project group is supported by the Department of Business Information Systems / Very Large Business Applications (VLBA) under the direction of Prof. Dr.-ing. Jorge Marx Gómez.
In addition, the CvO Oldenburg University has conducted an interview with the project group which can be viewed here.

The scientific partner of the project "NEMo - Nachhaltige Erfüllung von Mobilitätsbedürfnissen im ländlichen Raum" met on the 11.03.2016 for the kick-off meeting in the CvO University of Oldenburg. The representatives of the interdisciplinary consortium, in which in addtion to the University of Oldenburg also the Leuphana University of Lüneburg and the Technical University of Braunschweig are involded, spoke together about possibilities of ICT driven establishment of sustainable mobility concepts for rural areas. Here in particular the citizens should be involved in the design of services. Among others topics, possible applications and objectives were discussed within the meeting. On the 04.05.2016, the first meeting with the pilot region Wesermarsch - Oldenburg and the involved partners will take place.
For more information, see "Projects" and soon here: www.nemo-mobilitaet.de

The 4th meeting of the project ‘Sustainable Consumption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the Digital Society’ took place on the 29th of January 2016 at the University of Osnabrück. The interdisciplinary team comprises researchers from the University of Oldenburg, Osnabrück and Lüneburg and covers a broad spectrum of research backgrounds. During the meeting, the participants presented their research and their current/planned work progress. In addition, the results of the constellation analysis from the staff meeting on the 14th of January 2016 have been presented and discussed. In a subsequent workshop, the participants engaged in a deeper discussion about the field of ‘Open Innovation’

Further information: www.ecoinnovateit.de

The project NEMo deals with the sustainable satisfaction of mobility demands in rural regions. It starts at the 1st March 2016 and is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation with about 1.53 million euros. Project Participants are from the University of Oldenburg Prof. Dr. Jorge Marx Gómez (project coordinator), Prof. Dr. Axel Hahn, Prof. Dr. Anna Henkel, Prof. Dr. Frank Köster, Prof. Dr. Jürgen Taeger, Prof. Dr. Andreas Winter, from the Leuphana University Lüneburg Prof. Dr. Jantje Halberstadt and from the Technical University of Braunschweig Prof. Dr. David M. Woisetschläger. You will find more information here.

On January 14th 2016, the employees of the project ‘Sustainable Consumption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the Digital Society’ met at the guesthouse of the Carl von Ossietzky University in Oldenburg. In the context of the meeting, a constellation analysis was realized. During the meeting, a common understanding of the topic have been defined and interfaces for the work packages of the project were realized.

From the 31st of December 2015 till the 30th of June 2016 we have the pleasure to have an exchange researcher from the Electra Erasmus Mundus Project. Her name is Gohar Navoyan and she is from the Republic of Armenia. She is the head of the staff service at UNICORN TRADE Closed Joint-Stock Company in Armenia, has an MBA from the Armenian State Agrarian University and currently she is conducting her PhD research on Renewable Energy.