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In their daily lives, individuals leave digital footprints that can provide invaluable insights into societal patterns. Although digital technologies are ubiquitous, governments, companies, and NGOs are often unprepared to harness the potential of available data. Through our research, we help overcome these hurdles and achieve effective and sustainable digital transformation while impacting society by key informatics mechanisms.
Learn more about recent research projects with significant societal impact in this Thought Leadership Area.
The Power of the Search Bar
Search engines hold immense power as trusted information gatekeepers, yet they can amplify bias and misinformation. A research project by Prof. Anikó Hannák examines how AI- driven changes in search results impact user trust, behavior and the accuracy of information.
IT Skills, Occupation Specificity and Job Separations (Prof. Uschi Backes-Gellner and co-authors)
Impact: This paper shows that workers’ earnings change after involuntary job separations depending on the workers’ acquired IT skills and the specificity of their occupational training. Workers with specific skill bundles have in general higher wages, but after involuntary separations they also have the largest earnings losses. To reduce such wage losses it is essential to have generic IT skills in their specific skill bundle because the generic IT skills reduce earnings losses. In contrast, expert IT skills increase earnings losses for workers with specific skill. The situation is different for workers with general skill bundles: they generally have lower wages but after involuntary separations they also have lower problems of finding a new job with equal wages. For them neither generic nor expert IT skills have much effect on adaptability.
Proxying economic activity with daytime satellite imagery: Filling data gaps across time and space. (Patrick Lehnert, Uschi Backes-Gellner and co-authors)
Impact: This paper develops a new proxy to measure regional economic activity at very small regional levels and across historical time spans for which reliable data are non-existent. The new proxy based on daytime satellite imagery more precisely predicts economic activity at very small regional levels than other common proxies (e.g. based on nighttime satellite imagery). The data are open access and publicly available to the scientific community for basically all countries and regions across the world starting in 1984. This study provides an important data bases for policy makers aiming at improving regional developments in either developed or developing countries.
IRVINE: A Design Study on Analyzing Correlation Patterns of Electrical Engines (Jürgen Bernard and co-authors)
Impact: The Interactive Visual Data Analysis System is running productively at BMW, enabling engineers to identify errors in electrical engines early in the manufacturing process, to reduce waste of materials, the overload of production lines, and production costs.
Decision problems in blockchain governance: Old wine in new bottles or walking in someone else’s shoes? (Gerd Schwabe and co-authors)
Impact: Wird von Startup-Unternehmen zum Design der eigenen Blockchain-Governance verwendet.
A Legal Framework for Artificial Intelligence (Abraham Bernstein and co-authors)
Impact: Is currently being used to shape Swiss policy making for AI. Has been presented to federal parliaments and cited in parliamentary motions.
Governance Mechanisms for Access and Use of Data in Public Health Crises: Call for Action (Abraham Bernstein and co-authors)
Impact: Read by a plethora of Swiss Lawyers. Were invited by the EDI/BAG to a hearing about it.
Design and Implementation of the LogicBlox System (Dan Olteanu and co-authors)
Impact: This is the main publication overviewing the LogicBlox system. LogicBlox was acquired in 2016 by Infor.
Parallel Materialisation of Datalog Programs in Centralised, Main-Memory RDF Systems. (Dan Olteanu and co-authors)
Impact: This work introduces the RDFox semantic reasoning engine that is now commercialised by Oxford Semantic Technologies and has many real-world use-cases.
Probabilistic Databases. Synthesis Lectures on Data Management (Dan Olteanu and co-authors)
Impact: This research monograph describes probabilistic data models and inference techniques for probabilistic databases that are used in several startups acquired by Apple, including: DeepDive and Inductiv.
Size Bounds for Factorised Representations of Query Results. (Dan Olteanu and co-authors)
Impact: Used by the RelationalAI software system for efficient computation of database queries.
In-Database Learning with Sparse Tensors. (Dan Olteanu and co-authors)
Impact: Used by the RelationalAI software system for training machine learning models inside the database.
Incremental View Maintenance with Triple Lock Factorization Benefits. (Dan Olteanu and co-authors)
Impact: Used by the RelationalAI software system for incremental maintenance of queries over changing databases.
Blockchain-based Voting Considered Harmful? (Burkhard Stiller and co-authors)
Impact: The paper impact(ed) the Swiss eVoting scene, including governmental commissions.
The Swiss Postal Voting Process and its System and Security Analysis. (Burkhard Stiller and co-authors)
Impact: The paper impact(ed) the Swiss eVoting scene, including governmental commissions. The public and experts now understand which security threats exist in the Swiss paper-based voting scheme.
Market Design for Drone Traffic Management. (Sven Seuken and co-authors)
Impact: This paper has been presented to multiple policy makers involved in Europe’s future traffic management system, including the Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation (FOCA). The paper has also been cited in the “U-space ConOps (edition 3.10)”, written by a consortium of European partners who are involved in the design and regulation of urban air mobility systems in Europe.
