Research

Across all its faculties, the University of Passau is working intensively on the technological foundations and societal impact of digitalisation. To this end, it pools its expertise in several interdisciplinary research centres and clusters. The cross-faculty research institute KINECT provides impetus in the field of AI, while the Digitalisation Hub and its associated research forum bundle interdisciplinary research on digitalisation and serve as an exchange platform with the aim of promoting collaborative research at the University of Passau.

Find out more about our digitalisation focus in our Digital Research Magazine.

At the Passau Institute of Digital Security (PIDS) and the Institute for the Law of the Digital Society (IRDG), academics from the fields of mathematics, computer science, law and the humanities are conducting joint research into IT security and data protection. Together, they are establishing a new Bavarian security research network and developing technological, business-related and legal solutions for cybersecurity.

Cybersecurity and data protection

The eHumanities connect the humanities and social sciences with computer science. Projects carried out in this area serve to support and advance research and teaching in the humanities using digital methods and technologies.

eHumanities

The University's DFG Research Training Group “Digital Platform Ecosystems” carries out research on the core phenomenon of the digital economy and society using interdisciplinary approaches. In this RTG, doctoral candidates and professors from the fields of business, economics, social sciences and law are investigating the impact of digital platforms on companies, work and society.

The platform economy

Large language models such as ChatGPT have developed impressive language-comprehension capabilities, which has disruptive implications for both software development and scientific discovery. To investigate the technical, societal, ethical and legal consequences of this development, researchers from various disciplines such as computer science, linguistics and law are working together on an interdisciplinary basis at the University of Passau.

Generative language models

The University of Passau's Faculty of Law is leading the way in research on the legal effects of digitalisation. At the Institute for Law and Digital Society (IRDG), researchers interdisciplinarily work on core legal issues in connection with the digitalisation of society. The institute has completed a number of research projects on topics such as IT security, algorithmic systems, data protection and digital platforms. The results of these projects will inform and shape future legislative proposals and regulatory approaches. Moreover, numerous chairs conduct research in the area of new technologies, digitalisation as well as information and IT law in accordance with their chair designation. The topics they work on include data law, data protection law, IT security law, software and database copyright law, patent law, digital platform law, media law and the regulation of AI systems. Overall, Passau's Faculty of Law is breaking new ground in legal digitalisation research in a variety of ways, thereby making an important contribution to shaping the digital transformation.

The University of Passau also conducts research in other areas of digitalisation, such as the development of innovative services to render visible hidden murals in historical architecture, the standardisation of language data or analysing in what ways data-protection decisions are influenced by the exchange of data in corporate networks. Overall, the University of Passau pools its digital expertise in numerous institutes and centres such as FORWISS, IRIXYS, CAROLL and FREDI. This interdisciplinary orientation gives us the ability to drive digitalisation in research, teaching and praxis.