Research at a university of applied sciences is mostly applied in nature. It is usually done in close collaboration with industry partners. I am currently involved in three major projects.

Software Analysis and Design

In my sabbatical semester I was involved in two projects relating to software analysis and design at Siemens Medical Solutions Erlangen.

Project number one is about designing from scratch a .NET application that controls a device to do DNA/PCR analysis on a chip. With the use of UML design tools, design patterns and heavy use of agile development techniques the project has been finished in record time.

The second project is about re-engineering and refactoring an existing C/C++ codebase that has been growing over decades and introducing agile development techniques. The project consists of almost 1000 classes, runs on embedded hardware and uses the latest QNX operating system.

World of Tourism

This is a project initiated by Z.I.E.L. GmbH a leading supplier of backoffice software for travel agencies. The aim is to build a web portal for specially tailored luxury travel. The University of Applied Sciences is involved in two aspects of this project: the development of a transactional object cache, and in the scalability measurements of the application. The project is funded through VDI/VDE by the Bavarian government for the period of one and a half years.

SPLICE

The SPLICE project is collaboration between Loewe AG and University of Applied Sciences Hof. Loewe AG is a major German manufacturer of high-end television sets. The collaboration is about the development of an automated test-engine for software that runs inside the TV set. The project is headed by Prof. Dr. Thomas Schaller and it is funded through VDI/VDE by the Bavarian government for the period of two and a half years.

Minor Projects:

The following lists some minor projects I am involved with. Some are projects with students or with partner universities.

• Laboratory for Scalable Webapplications: As part of the 'World of Tourism' project we have acquired the know-how on how to build and test large scale, distributed enterprise applications. It can be used to simulate web-farms for large scale business applications. Our students now can learn, play around and create enterprise applications. The lab is funded through student fees.

• Hofer Web Telescope: This is a student project: the idea is to take a telescope, add a CCD camera, and have it controllable through the internet. The project is sponsored by Gesellschaft der Freunde und Förderer der Fachhochschule Hof e.V.

• Distributed Database: As part of Alastair Monger's team from Southampton Solent University, UK, we operate one of the nodes that is part of a truely distributed database. This collaboration was established after our first international summerschool and is used to teach students about distributed databases.

• Incubator: This is a project in the making, an incubator in the incubation period, so to say. The idea is to support students that are interested in starting their own buisness.

Previous Projects:

Previously, I have been involved with two major industry projects.

• Residential HomeGateway Demonstrator: The project was about creating a prototype of a residential home-gateway, conforming to the OSGi standard. Based mostly on open-source solutions, the project used UPnP, Jini, H323, WAP and SMS technologies. The prototype was considered by the Siemens ICN nCubator for a possible product line.

• Internet Testing Portal: This project was a major undertaking. It included the design, development and deployment of a 3-tier, e-commerce internet application, supporting thousands of simultaneous users, based on J2EE technologies. It has been successfully in operation with continued improvements for over 5 years.