For many years, Dr. Adam Widera has shaped the Department of Information Systems at the University of Münster with his dedication and expertise. His academic journey at the university began early: while studying political science, philosophy, and political economy, he worked as a student assistant at the Institute for Political Science from 2002 to 2005.

Afterwards, he worked initially as a research associate at the Chair of Political Science and International/Comparative Political Economy before joining the Department of Information Systems in 2006. There, he first served as a project coordinator in the BMBF-funded project “Computer-Assisted Higher Education”, at the Chair of Information Systems and Controlling. He later supported the Chair of Information Systems and Logistics as managing director and lecturer, where he discovered his passion for humanitarian logistics and crisis management and completed his doctorate in this field.

In December 2013, Adam Widera and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Bernd Hellingrath founded the ERCIS Competence Center Crisis Management (C³M). As Managing Director, he plays a key role in shaping the center’s work and future development. Over the past years, he has successfully acquired several national and international research projects, helping C³M become an important actor within various research and practice networks. In 2020, Adam Widera additionally took on the role of Deputy Managing Director of the department and, since this year, has joined the executive board of the ERCIS Flow Factory as managing director.

On the occasion of his 25th anniversary, we asked him a few questions:

You originally studied political science, philosophy, and economic policy – how did you end up at the Department of Information Systems?

After completing my magister degree, I contributed to a study and quickly realized that I was missing a stronger practical orientation and greater research impact. At the same time, I was involved in an EU project in which the Department of Information Systems was also participating through our current director, Prof. Dr. Jan vom Brocke. Through this, I came across the exciting project “Computer-Assisted Higher Education,” where a position as project coordinator had become available. I did not hesitate for long and applied immediately. Information Systems quickly became my new academic home.

You have been working at the department for many years – first as a project coordinator and later as a research associate at the Chair of Information Systems and Logistics, where you also completed your doctorate. Which projects or experiences were particularly formative for you during this time?

I could name many highlights here. However, if I had to emphasize one project, it would be DRIVER+, the largest EU-funded crisis management project to date, involving more than forty partners from across Europe. The project was not only interesting because, as the competence center, we were able to test and evaluate various research results together with crisis management practitioners under realistic conditions, but also because, as the only university institution in the consortium, we were able to develop and test a novel, practice-driven evaluation approach – the Trial Guidance Methodology (TGM) – in collaboration with the European Commission’s Joint Research Center. Unfortunately, the reality of research funding is often that project results are forgotten once a project ends. With TGM, however, things were very different. The methodology was adopted by many stakeholders in security research and applied in numerous initiatives and research projects. A particular highlight last year was certainly receiving the Security Innovation Award from the European Commission and DG HOME in the category “Best Open Source Innovation 2025.”

You have been Managing Director of the ERCIS Competence Center Crisis Management (C³M) since 2013. How have the center and your work there evolved over the past few years?

After initially focusing on logistical processes and information systems in international disaster management, we increasingly expanded our perspective toward European and regional challenges through successfully acquired research projects. Especially since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, our research has focused more strongly on national and municipal civil protection. Alongside this development, our stakeholder landscape has broadened significantly, so that in addition to international non-governmental organizations, various emergency response organizations and public authorities have become long-standing practice partners.

The entire department thanks Adam Widera for his excellent work, loyalty, and continued commitment. We look forward to many more years of successful collaboration.

In May, 38 participants took part in the windsurfing seminar in Hvide Sande, Denmark, in cooperation with the HSP Windsurf School (windsurf instructors: Jenny Weiß and Rolf Lexen). The seminar was organized by Janis Elmer and Tobias Zimmermann from the Institute for Information Systems.

Four courses participated in the seminar: the Bachelor’s course Urban Analytics and the Master’s courses Efficient Machine Learning, Flow Factory: TideStats, and Flow Factory: TideTalks.

As part of the bachelor’s seminar “Urban Analytics”, led by Ann-Kathrin Meyer and Johannes von Ivernois, students explored the fundamentals of location-based services and examined the intersection between spatial and content analysis. They worked with a large-scale dataset of georeferenced Twitter messages or with self-selected georeferenced datasets.

The master’s seminar “Efficient Machine Learning”, led by Nina Herrmann, Jorunn Mense, and Jan Pauls, provided students with an interest in machine learning with in-depth knowledge of advanced topics, particularly through the reproduction and summary of current scientific papers on topics such as efficient vision transformers, self-supervised learning, and related approaches.

The seminar “Flow Factory: TideStats”, led by Josephine Moritz, Phlipp Michels, and Tobias Zimmermann, focused on practically relevant research questions, in particular the investigation of the impact of artificial intelligence on employees. Master’s students learned and applied scientific methods, with a special focus on quantitative data analysis using R, and conducted their own research project on “AI & People”.

The master’s course “Flow Factory: TideTalks”, led by Fumi Kurihara, Paul Brützke, and Janis Elmer, addressed practically relevant research questions from the Flow Factory, in particular the investigation of the impact of artificial intelligence on users. Students learned and applied qualitative methods, with a special focus on conducting interviews, and carried out their own research project on human–AI interaction.

In addition to the final presentations, there was also time for a sports: with perfect weather, participants enjoyed windsurfing together and exchanging ideas along the Danish North Sea coast.

Jonathan Grundmann’s master’s thesis, titled “Decoding Bureaucracy: Towards a Process Mining Method for Public Administration,” has been awarded first place in the Materna Graduate Award. The Materna Graduate Award recognizes outstanding theses in the field of digitalization and supports young talents as well as innovative solutions for the digital transformation of public administration.

In his thesis, Jonathan Grundmann examines why process mining holds great potential for public administration but has rarely been used in a systematic way. The focus is organizational, technical, and structural challenges that hinder broader adoption. His analysis shows how data-driven process analysis can make administrative workflows more transparent, uncover optimization potentials, and thereby contribute to more efficient and modern administrative structures.

The thesis was supervised by Michael Räckers and Sandro Franzoi from the Department of Information Systems at the University of Münster.

Jonathan Grundmann is a graduate of the Erasmus Mundus Master of Science in Public Sector Innovation and eGovernance (PIONEER). This interdisciplinary program is a joint degree offered by KU Leuven (Belgium), Tallinn University of Technology (Estonia), and the University of Münster (Germany), and combines expertise in public administration, public management, information systems, and eGovernance.

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Materna Graduate Award

Master of Science PIONEER

The School of Business and Economics at the University of Münster is once again ranked among the leading institutions for Business and Management in Germany. In the latest “Best Business and Management Universities in Germany Ranking 2026” by Research.com, it ranks 5th nationwide and is thus among the top tier of German Business Schools, alongside other renowned institutions such as the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management.

Two professors from the Department of Information Systems are listed among the “Leading Scientists”: Prof. Jan vom Brocke and Prof. Jörg Becker rank 12th and 20th nationally and 348th and 585th globally. A total of 9,829 researchers specializing in business and management were analyzed for inclusion in the ranking. It is based on bibliometric data and takes into account the number of publications and citations by top researchers.

Further information on the methodology and all results of the ranking can be found here.

The latest CHE University Ranking shows that students at the School of Business and Economics are highly satisfied with the general conditions at the University of Münster. More than three quarters of the students rated their study experience with 4 or 5 out of 5 stars – in Information Systems, the figure is as high as 93.6 percent.

The School of Business and Economics performs particularly highly in supporting students at the beginning of their studies. A wide range of services specifically for prospective students and first-year students makes the transition to university life easier and places the School among the top performers in this category.

Students rated the Information Systems program with more than 4 out of 5 stars in the categories overall study situation, teaching quality, support from lecturers, academic support, library facilities, learning and working spaces, and digital learning. The program performed especially strongly in study organization, achieving a score of 4.6 out of 5 stars. In almost all categories, the program scores above the average of German universities.

The CHE University Ranking is the most comprehensive comparison of higher education institutions in the German-speaking world. This year, around 35,000 students at 265 universities and universities of applied sciences (HAW) provided feedback on their study conditions in the subjects of Law, Business Administration, economics, business studies, business informatics, industrial engineering, business psychology, business law and social work.

All the results of the ranking will be published in the ZEIT Study Guide 2026/27 and online at HeyStudium.

At this year’s Girls’Day on April 23, 2026, 19 schoolgirls gained exciting insights into the world of Information Systems. 

Staff members from various areas of the department put together an engaging program: Following an informal icebreaker game to get to know each other, participants were introduced to the field of Information Systems and potential career paths. They then experienced how software development works firsthand in a LEGO Scrum workshop. A rallye across the Leonardo Campus also gave them the opportunity to explore the surroundings. 

A particular highlight was the programming course, where participants were able to gain their first hands-on experience with Scratch. In the subsequent quiz, they had the opportunity to deepen their knowledge and discover further aspects of Information Systems. 

The day concluded with a joint lunch, where participants could also try out VR headsets. In this way, Information Systems was not only explained in an accessible way but also experienced firsthand. 

Girls’Day is a nationwide orientation day in Germany that enables girls from grade 5 onwards to explore professions and fields of study in which women are still underrepresented, particularly in technology, IT, skilled trades, and the natural sciences. The aim is to break down gender-based career stereotypes and open up new perspectives for the future. 

On March 26 and 27, the Department of Information Systems, together with the Professional School, participated in data:unplugged – Europe’s largest event dedicated to data and artificial intelligence.

The event provided a central platform for exchange between academia, industry, and society. The Department of Information Systems took the opportunity to present current research projects and engage with professionals, researchers, and data enthusiasts from a wide range of disciplines. The focus was particularly on innovative approaches at the intersection of data analytics, artificial intelligence, and practical application areas.

The numerous conversations at the booth highlighted the strong interest in applied research as well as in collaboration opportunities between research and practice. The open dialogue once again highlighted the importance of connecting cutting-edge research with practical applications to drive innovation forward.

The University of Münster has published its 2025 annual portrait series “Twelve Months, Twelve People”. With this publication, the Communications and Public Relations Office highlights the diversity of the university and presents several outstanding personalities from the past year.

Among them is Prof. Jan vom Brocke, Director of the Department of Information Systems, Chair of Information Systems and Business Process Management, and Director of the European Research Center for Information Systems (ERCIS). He is internationally active in the field of Information Systems and currently serves as President of the Association for Information Systems (AIS). In the annual portrait, he reflects on his journey from being a student in Münster to becoming an internationally connected researcher. He also discusses his research on business processes, artificial intelligence, and the responsible use of these technologies. The full portrait offers insights into his work and motivation.

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Portrait of Jan vom Brocke “Information systems: making the world a better place”

Read the other articles from the brochure “Twelve Months, Twelve People” here

Download the full brochure

In February, the DFG research unit “Future Digital Towns” at the Department of Information Systems welcomed its Mercator Fellow, Prof. Dorothea Kleine.

Dorothea Kleine is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Sheffield (UK), Director of the Institute for Global Sustainable Development (IGSD), and head of the research group “Digital Technologies, Data and Innovation”. Her research focuses on sustainable human development, global justice, and the role of digital technologies in advancing these goals.

Within the research unit, she contributes her expertise on the Capability Approach, which serves as a central theoretical framework for the group. In doing so, she provides important impulses for shaping digital measures in socially inclusive and public-interest-oriented ways.

Over the course of the year, Prof. Kleine will visit three times for one month each, working closely with the research unit on current and future topics.

Funded by the German Research Council (DFG), the research unit "Future Digital Towns" investigates how medium-sized towns can address the challenges of digitalization. Its aim is to develop digital tools that strengthen their liveability.

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Prof. Dorothea Kleine

Future Digital Towns

How do forests grow in different regions of the world? With ECHOSAT, this question can now be systematically answered on a global scale and over multiple years.

While previous tree height maps only represented individual years, ECHOSAT (Estimating Canopy Height Over Space and Time) tracks forest growth, disturbances, and regrowth over multiple years, providing important data for CO₂ monitoring and climate protection efforts.

Jan Pauls, Dr. Karsten Schrödter, Sven Ligensa, and Prof. Fabian Gieseke from the Chair of Machine Learning and Data Engineering at the Department of Information Systems develop ECHOSAT together with international partners: Martin Schwartz and Philippe Ciais (Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement (LSCE), France), Berkant Turan and Max Zimmer (Zuse Institute Berlin (ZIB)), Sassan Saatchi (Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California Institute of Technology, USA), and Sebastian Pokutta (Technical University of Berlin).

The research team combines multi-sensor satellite data with a specialized vision transformer model. A self-supervised growth regularization ensures that the estimated tree heights follow biologically plausible growth curves, including gradual increases as well as abrupt declines due to fire or deforestation.

For example, in Les Landes (France), ECHOSAT clearly reveals the cycles of logging and regrowth, while large parts of the Amazon rainforest remain stable over the observed period. Both patterns are detected automatically, without additional post-processing.

ECHOSAT is part of the AI4Forest project, a German-French research cooperation. Recognizing the critical importance of forest ecosystems for climate and biodiversity, the initiative investigates how state-of-the-art artificial intelligence methods can be used to better understand, monitor, and respond to climate-driven environmental changes.

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Access the full paper here.

The maps are publicly available here.

More information about the AI4Forest project can be found here.