The University of Stuttgart, founded in 1829, has around 24,000 students and 5,300 members of staff. Its vision of “Intelligent systems for a sustainable society” and its distinctive “Stuttgart Way” stand for consistent interdisciplinary networking of complimentary specialist disciplines as well as integrating engineering, science, humanities and social studies.  

Indicators of its excellent status as a globally active research university are reflected, among other things, by the two Clusters of Excellence “Data-integrated simulation science” and “Integrative Computational Design and Construction for Architecture”, the research campus ARENA2036, its participation in the “Cyber Valley” network as well as in numerous special research areas and graduate programs.  

Simulation science, production technologies, quantum technologies, digital humanities as well as the topic of adaptive building stand out as particular highlights in the University of Stuttgart’s research program.  

The University of Stuttgart is regularly among the top German higher education institutions with regard to third party funding. In 2019, the third party funding was EUR 233 Mio.  

Experience with EU research funding:  

The University of Stuttgart has extensive experience with the various funding programs of the European Commission. In FP7, it was among the most successful German universities with 246 projects funded and a total budget of EUR 94 Mio. In Horizon 2020, the University of Stuttgart participates in 173 projects so far and a total budget of EUR 92 Mio. Another sign of excellence is the award of 24 grants by the European Research Council (ERC) to top researchers of the University of Stuttgart.  

The Chair for distributed systems: 

The main focus of the chair of for distributed systems lies in concepts and algorithms for self-organizing and adaptive pervasive computing systems. These systems are dynamic, context-aware, heterogeneous and user-oriented. Special interest is on system support and middleware for adaptive applications, novel coordination mechanisms for peer-to-peer networks, and energy-efficient system adaptation strategies. There is a history of business collaborations with players like SAP, HPE and others as well as a strong record of EU projects as e.g. the involvement in the EU H2020 project ELECTRIFIC. 

Personnel:  

Christian Becker [male] has been a full professor at the chair for distributed systems at the University of Stuttgart since 2022. Prior to this he was a full professor at the chair of information systems II at the University of Mannheim for more than a decade and a visiting professor for distributed systems at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Spring Term 2006. He studied Computer Science at the Universities of Karlsruhe and Kaiserslautern where he received the Diploma in 1996. From 1997 till 2001 he was a researcher at the distributed systems and operating systems group at the University of Frankfurt where he received his PhD in 2001. After that he joined the distributed systems group at the University of Stuttgart as Post Doc. In 2004 he received the venia legendi (Habilitation) for Computer Science (Informatik). Christian’s interests are distributed systems and Context-Aware Computing with a special interest in architecture for adaptive systems.  

Sonja Klingert [female] has been with the University of Stuttgart as a senior researcher and group lead of adaptive energy systems since April 2022. Between 2010 and 2022 she worked as a researcher and project manager for European research projects (STREP) like FIT4Green, All4Green, and DC4Cities as well as the H2020 project ELECTRIFIC for the University of Mannheim. Before that, she was coordinator of the European research project (STREP) GridEcon at the International University in Germany. Prior to this, she worked as a researcher for the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, Germany. Her interest is in demand response and corresponding metrics, in green business models, eco- aware contracts as well as impact analysis, employing for instance simulation approaches. She has excellent experience in leading transdisciplinary working groups. As a support for the scientific community, among others, she was chair of the international workshop series Energy Efficient Data Centres (E2DC) (2012-2016) and was part of the organization team of the international conference ACM e-Energy (2015-2016, 2020-2022). S. Klingert received her PhD from the University of Mannheim.