Research Area Digital Science Center (DiSC)

Please see the website of the Digital Science Center for more information: http://uibk.ac.at/disc/

Head

Univ.-Prof. Dr. Justus Piater (Institut für Informatik)

Coordinator

Carina König genannt Kersting (FSP DiSC)

Research Objectives

Digital procedures, methods, and media are transforming all aspects of our society including science, education, economy, and social relations, a process known as digitalization. Growing data processing capacities and progress in analytical methods and artificial intelligence are motivating entire branches of science to raise new questions and to develop new approaches. This transformation requires progressive, interdisciplinary synergies between computer science, mathematics, and statistics on the one hand and virtually all other scientific disciplines – from the humanities via the social sciences through to the natural and life sciences – on the other hand.

The Digital Science Center (DiSC) at the University of Innsbruck was founded in 2019 to meet this challenge. It integrates and promotes digitalization of scientific research, spearheading new research directions and supporting high-quality science. DiSC staff researchers represent diverse disciplines that, at first glance, have little in common. At the same time, they are experts in specific aspects of digital science. They are affiliated with their respective scientific departments where they contribute their expertise in digital science while forging new research synergies at the DiSC.

The DiSC also offers courses for students to promote competence in digital science, ranging from programming via data management and data analysis to non-technical aspects of digitalization. These courses are open to students from all scientific disciplines. In this way, the DiSC acts as a multiplier of methodological skills.

Currently, 11 faculties contribute to the DiSC, pursuing the following research agendas:

Digital Business - Information System Design and Economic Behavior (Faculty of Business and Management)
Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (Faculty of Biology)

Microbial Ecology, Environmental Genomics, and Bioinformatics (Faculty of Biology)
Data Science in Atmosphere Climate Research (Faculty of Geo- and Atmospheric Sciences / Faculty of Economics and Statistics)
Embodied Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (Faculty of Mathematics, Computer Science and Physics)
Natural Language Processing and Information Retrieval Methods (Faculty of Mathematics, Computer Science and Physics)
Artificial Neural Networks, Mathematical Optimization, and Dynamical Systems (Faculty of Mathematics, Computer Science and Physics)
Computational Neuroscience, Brain Networks, and Human Cognition (Faculty of Psychology and Sport Science)
Political Communication and Digital Complexity (Faculty of Social and Political Sciences)
Digital Methods in Indoor Environment and Building Energy Research (Faculty of Engineering Sciences)
Computational Linguistics with focus on Text Mining and Sentiment Analysis (Faculty of Language, Literature and Culture)
Text Modeling, Digital Editing, and Archival Science (Faculty of Language, Literature and Culture)
Semantic and Space-Oriented Information Technology in Archaeology (Faculty of Philosophy and History)
Law and Digital Technology (Faculty of Law)