The orientation week ended on a creative and team-spirited note for around 60 first-year students at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering: invited by our “Product Creation” workgroup, nine teams competed against each other in a crane-building competition in the foyer of the Heinz Nixdorf Institute. Equipped with cardboard, scissors, and glue, the task was to design the most stable and economical crane – and to actually build it. Amid delicious…
People exchange information via speech. The person speaking uses the mouth and vocal tract to generate a speech signal that consists of many superimposed vibrations. Depending on the linguistic content to be conveyed, the vocal tract is specifically adapted. As the vocal tract differs from person to person, the speech signals produced also differ, even if the spoken content is the same.
These individual differences are recorded in so-called…
ChatGPT, Dall-E and co. are already changing the way companies work. Generative and multimodal artificial intelligence will have an impact on almost every industry in the foreseeable future. The WestAI AI Service Centre, in which our "Communications Engineering" workgroup is involved, provides support for the use of artificial intelligence in practice. From the provision of AI expertise and initial advice on AI ideas and their feasibility testing…
Our researchers are unique. Here they introduce themselves and show their very personal side behind the scientific work.
Keno Pape:
"I studied industrial engineering at Paderborn University, specialising in mechanical engineering. A lot of things were still abstract back then. When I switched to the Master's degree programme in Mechanical Engineering, things became more concrete: more freedom in terms of specialisation, clear applications - and…
Designing processes and advance them by robotics: In the course “Applied Production Engineering,” students apply lean production in practice. Students gain experience in the Smart Innovation Laboratory of our “Product Creation” workgroup by systematically identifying losses, applying principles of Lean Thinking – and, at the same time, solving challenges of project management under time pressure. The results speak for themselves: The cobot…
The BCICTS took place from 12 to 15 October in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Our research associate Maxim Weizel from the "Circuit Technology" workgroup presented the paper "A 128GS/s 2x Time-Interleaved Track and Hold Amplifier in 130nm SiGe BiCMOS" on 14 October 2025.
The conference enabled experts to present and discuss the latest developments in 5G/6G, GaN, InP and THz circuits. Beginners' and intensive courses were also offered to accompany the…
Confident and secure data exchange is key to sustainable product development. The Manufacturing-X projects are creating individual data spaces that are being harmonised in terms of sustainability by the Decide4ECO cross-sectional project. At the 2nd Scale-MX Congress, Jan Luca Siewer, research associate at the Chair of Digital Engineering at Ruhr University Bochum, and Sven Rarbach, research associate in our “Product Creation” workgroup, provided…
How can the current challenges of sustainable development be realised in practice? One promising approach lies in Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) - a concept that has long been more than just a tool for product data management. PLM is increasingly becoming a key lever for enabling a circular economy. At the World Sustainability Forum 2025, Sven Rarbach, research associate in our “Product Creation” workgroup , presented results from the Decide4…
Our researchers are unique. Here they introduce themselves and show their very personal side behind the scientific work.
Stefan Schott:
"My name is Stefan Schott and I have been a research associate in the Secure Software Engineering workgroup at the Heinz Nixdorf Institute since 2021. I also started my degree in computer science at Paderborn University in 2015, where I discovered my passion for software engineering and cybersecurity early on.…
Our researchers are unique. Here they introduce themselves and show their very personal side behind the scientific work.
Louis Mozart Kamdem Teyou:
I am currently doing my PhD at the Heinz Nixdorf Institute in the field of Artificial Intelligence, specialising in knowledge representation and reasoning. My research focuses on learning concepts with multiple representations - in particular, developing and evaluating methods that combine symbolic…
Our researchers are unique. Here they introduce themselves and show their very personal side behind the scientific work.
Jan Pfeifer:
"I - Jan Pfeifer - have been employed at the Chair for Product Creation since March 2020 and have been researching in the field of systems engineering as a research assistant since January 2023. I come from Wetten, a small village on the Dutch border. I moved to the beautiful city of Paderborn to start my degree…
The pilot study “Community of Practice” has got off to a successful start as part of the KLUG project. Representatives from seven companies in the mechanical and plant engineering sector took part in the workshop at the Heinz Nixdorf Institute. The aim of the Community of Practice is to facilitate the exchange of experience across companies in the developing of digital business models. The pilot study enables companies to learn from each other…
A challenge in Life Cycle Assessment: Production data from LCA databases is available but inaccurate; data from real life is very costly to collect but accurate. Jens Pottebaum presented a promising compromise from the Decide4ECO project at IIC2025 in Chemnitz: The application of production simulation ema, PlantDesigner and WorkDesigner. Equally exciting for Michael Spitzhirn: the provision of data from ManufacturingX as a future possibility for…
Supervising student work “BeSsAr” (better), now also carrying out such work “BeSsAr”: The Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and our Product Creation workgroup have jointly launched the “BeSsAr 2.0 - students edition” project. Students now experienced for the first time the tips and tricks contained in the guidelines – and provided valuable feedback for further development. Building on this, the guide is now being finalized so that it will be made…
Sabrina Plaß successfully completed her doctorate on the topic of "Perspectives on Social Norms and Social Responsibility: Emerging Economic and Managerial Approaches" under Prof Dr René Fahr.
Summary of the doctoral dissertation:
Ecological crises, social unrest, and digital transformation have raised the need to rethink the economy. As such, digitalisation is transforming business operations and redefining their responsibilities towards…
