His predecessor, Professor Rainer Malaka, stepped down after being elected dean of the Faculty of Mathematics / Computer Science at the University of Bremen.Professor Zachmann has been a professor within the Faculty of Mathematics / Computer Science at the University of Bremen since 2012 and works in the fields of visual computing, computer graphics, and virtual reality. Prior to this, he spent seven years as a professor at Clausthal University of Technology, where he established the Computer Graphics working group. During his doctoral studies at Darmstadt Technical University, he worked at the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research before moving to the University of Bonn as head of a DFG-funded junior research group for virtual prototyping.
In addition to his duties as dean, Professor Malaka will remain at the TZI as head of the Digital Media Lab. “We are extremely grateful to Professor Malaka for the extraordinary commitment with which he has driven forward the TZI’s further development over the past 16 years,” emphasizes Prof. Zachmann. “Under his leadership, third-party funding has risen steadily. The high number of doctorates and the successful acquisition of graduate schools also attest to the high quality of research and teaching during his tenure. Last but not least, the preliminary work from various projects is also feeding into the EASE Collaborative Research Center and the new "The Martian Mindset" Cluster of Excellence.”
From Basic Research to Start-Ups
With its research topics, the TZI is at the center of the ongoing digitization of all areas of life. On the one hand, this involves basic research: What questions need to be answered in order to constructively shape the information technologies of the next ten to twenty years? At the same time, however, the TZI also serves as a knowledge transfer partner for companies and organizations that want to tap into current research findings for their own areas of activity. The institute has already collaborated with a wide range of partners from sectors such as healthcare, IT, retail, logistics, and the creative industries. At the same time, numerous start-ups have emerged from the research projects, which now employ hundreds of highly qualified staff. In addition, the TZI trains many urgently needed specialists within the framework of its research-based teaching.
Professor Zachmann sees one of the TZI's key strengths in its ability to identify new topics that will be relevant in the future at an early stage. Intensive interdisciplinary cooperation plays an important role in this – the institute even spans two faculties, Mathematics / Computer Science and Physics / Electrical Engineering. “There is a culture of cooperation here. The TZI brings together researchers who work well together.” This enables the institute to continually generate innovations from within its structure and respond to new challenges in the extremely dynamic world of IT.
People at the Heart of Technology
Zachmann expects technologies such as extended reality (XR), everyday robotics, and artificial intelligence to become even more important in the coming years and to raise many new research questions. This could also open up opportunities for collaboration with other disciplines such as sports science, psychology, and health research. “We are looking for scientists who want to play an active role in shaping new technologies,” says Zachmann. “They can come from completely different faculties.”
A principle that applied under Professor Malaka's leadership will continue to apply: “People remain at the heart of everything we do. We investigate how technology can best support people, rather than restricting, manipulating, or replacing them.”
Further Information:
https://www.uni-bremen.de/en/tzi
Contact:
Professor Gabriel Zachmann
Phone: +49 421 218-63991
zach@cs.uni-bremen.de
