The SINDABUS project aimed to improve the security of IT infrastructure found in industrial automation and field bus systems.
The Consortium, consisting of the University Rostock together with two corporations SKM Informatik and Logic Way, developed individual moduls that put together a construction kit to enhance the cyber security of thos systems. The results helped to enhance protection of heterogeneous network infrastructures within production plants and building automation systems - across protocol boundaries - against malicious attacks from the inside as well as from the outside.

SINDABUS was part of the greater SIINDUS network and was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy via the ZIM program (Central Innovation Programme for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises).

SilentRadio aims to provide an indoor positioning service for smartphones for shopping malls. The project is funded as an EXIST stipend which is itself a program of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi).

VestiFi is a startup that helps to solve WLAN problems in corporate environments. The service offered by VestiFi is based on an innovative device which was developed as part of a PhD thesis at the Department of Information and Communication Services, University of Rostock. Companies that are interested in the service please contact Christoph Müller by e-mail (christoph.mueller(at)vestifi.de) or telephone (0381 498 7507) for further information.

As of 2016, the startup is funded by an EXIST Business Start-up Grant from the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi) and co-financed by the European Social Fund (ESF).

The project Mathepitorium aims to support students of various subjects with insufficient mathematical knowledge by providing collections of exercises. The project is funded by grant awarded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

The cooperative research project WaveHopper was awarded a grant funded by the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern ministry for economic development. In cooperation with Logic Way GmbH from Schwerin we investigate possibilities to deliver network traffic in a hop-by-hop manner from harvesting machines on a farm to food processing facilities. 

Technologically, this implies researching radio transmission protocols on different layers, delay tolerant routing schemes, and hardware design. The project originated from the networking project “hisfood.net”. The project started in early 2014 and is estimated to run one year.

Tweedback is an innovative project which aims to improve communication and feedback in lessons with large audiences. Forms of feedback that work perfectly in seminars, as teachers want to proof the level of understanding for example, are not applicable in large lessons. At this point Tweedback provides a solution.

Tweedback is  partly funded by BMBF and the Institute of Computer Science, University of Rostock. More information in German language can be found on the Tweedback website.

The project multiscript offers students the possibility to make annotations and remarks into the lecture materials of the docent. The student can share the remarks with other students as well as with the docent. The goal is to let the lecturer see where students have problems with understanding and to engage the students, even across cohorts, in a debate about the topic they want to learn. From a pedagogic point of view the student is actively working, commenting and restructuring material and discussing comments with colleagues–which leads to a better overall learning effect than solitary learning.

This projects researches methods to proof someone's position over a network connection. The entire process from position determination to location dependent rights management is studied.

Project Details “Authenticated Positioning”

This internal project researches possibilities to provide location information in an authenticated way. This means, for instance, a position information can be transmitted via e-mail and the receiver will be able to determine whether the provided information is trustworthy.

Aspects under research are methods to determine a subject's position, trust in position information, transport of authenticated position information, and applications.

Applications are entertainment systems (limiting broadcasts to certain areas) and protection of sensitive materials.

In this project, we aim to improve the process of content delivery in a lecture. We provide an interface for the audience to interact with taught content during a lecture. Using the information from these interactions we enrich current slide shows with crowd sourced semantic information. These information help the individual of the audience to identify issues in comprehension and the lecturer to get a feedback on overall comprehension. Furthermore, information are used to enable topic and issue based discussions after a lecture. The final step aims for automatic assistance during a lecture based on individual needs and available semantical enhanced lecture material.

This work is supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of the research training group MuSAMA (grant no. GRK 1424/1).

This PhD research project aims to improve the accessibility and usability of Online Social Networks. These networks are an example of highly complex websites with as much information as possible on one single page in order to find  the desired information with as few clicks as possible. Due to the complexity, such websites are difficult to access for blind users surfing the web with a screen reader.

If provided, blind users often rely on the mobile website, since its structure usually is clear, simple and straightforward and consequently easier to access for a screen reader. However, mobile websites often do not offer the same amount of information and functionalities as the corresponding regular website does. Therefore, when using the mobile website only, users are excluded from certain information and functionalities.

To improve the accessibility and usability of Online Social Networks by providing a user centered solution, first a structural equation model will be developed to explain the differences in the intention to use as well as in the actual use of Online Social Networks between sighted and blind users. Those differences then lead to design recommendetions for web developers to make Online Social Networks more accessible and usable for blind users.

Over the last couple of years, network neutrality has become an interesting research topic. Typically, questions regarding different handling of data packets during their transport are discussed. The issue of network neutrality usually leads to binary answers. Either a network is neutral – or not: There are no nuances of network neutrality. In a world in which network applications relying on a certain level of network quality (e.g. television over Internet (IPTV) or voice over IP (VoIP)) are available to the public, those definitions hardly comply with reality. Not the knowledge, whether a network is neutral but the knowledge which measures are applied to traffic should be considered.

This work was support by a two-year scholarship of Landesgraduiertenförderung Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

Social Implications of Digitally Sctructured Spaces

The increasing digitalization of social life, defined as a relocation of social action from the “primordial” environment of men into digital space, indicates radical changes of the social itself. It is presumed that the distinct constitutions of analogue and digital space cause profound changes in the social life of human beings. These changes are not (exclusively) the result of obvious, „superficial“ phenomena of the digital world, such as space-time-compression, multioptionality, changes in temporal structures or permanent availability, but rather the direct, basic consequence of the digitality of the new environment itself. It is assumed that it is the basic structure of the digital space which leads to massive changes of sociality and society. Some of these consequences, as symptoms of the underlying process of digitization itself, are already visible today because of their efficacy: The possibility of comprehensive detection (and therefore surveillance) of digital human action, the increasing use of algorithms to solve problems or the rise of automated decisions, that do not depend upon human beings. The main objective of this dissertation project is the disclosure of the genuinely different structures of analogue and digital environment. The significant differences in the constitution of analogue and digital space will not only be elaborated in a descriptive way, on an abstract and theoretical level, but also on the basis of current „symptoms“ such as the comprehensive monitoring of human action or the increasing importance of algorithms in the context of automated evaluation of human action and the resulting shift of power of interpretation away from human beings towards algorithms.

Robert Brumme is fellow of the graduate school "Deutungsmacht" funded by the DFG and scholarship holder of the "Landesgraduiertenförderung". He studies the social implications of digitally sctructured spaces. Prof. Peter A. Berger and Prof. Clemens H. Cap are his supervisors

Referring to latest revelations, disclosed by the former NSA-Member Edward Snowden, Surveillance has become a buzzword in general public and one of the main topics in politics of western democratic countries. In oder to cope with these political challenges concerning the individual liberty, which are caused by social change and technical progress, there is an ever-extending need for academic examination of Surveillance and its consequences for Modern Society.

To reclaim the contemporary issue within an interdisciplinary and structured manner, we collaborate with the Department Knowledge–Culture–Transformation, one of the four profiling fields of the Faculty of Interdisciplinary Research.

In this context research assistant Christin Schumacher works on the junction of multidisciplinary expertise based on current sociological discussion and informatic research on the technical conditions and opportunities of Digital Surveillance.

Intelligent buildings require networks that interconnect sensors, actuators, controllers, and management systems. Fundamental security and privacy aspects that have been developed for computer networks are not commonly established and accepted for building automation networks. We provide research to help overcoming this unsatisfying situation. Please contact Thomas Mundt for further information

The research group supports the Rostock-based wireless community network Opennet beginning from its launch in 2005 in various ways.