Doctoral School for Dependable Electronic-Based Systems

Electronic-based systems (EBS) make our world smart by combining advanced electronics and software, often in networked systems that interact with the physical world through sensors and actuators. Since most EBS in production, transportation and infrastructures are safety critical, EBS failures may cost human lives. The number of EBS is expected to increase from the currently estimated 50 billion to several trillion within the next decade. Hence, fundamental concepts and methods, as well as application-oriented tools are required to make EBS dependable, i.e., fostering peoples trust in the daily use of EBS. Dependability is indeed a cornerstone for widespread social acceptance of EBS. As EBS combine many heterogeneous aspects software, signals, electronics, networks, sensors, and actuators they are only as dependable as their weakest part. In the doctoral school for Dependable ElectroNIc-based SystEms (DENISE), we take an interdisciplinary approach to obtain EBS dependability for the entire data processing chain from sensors to networked embedded systems executing AI-based algorithms and back to actuators. In collaboration with leading international research partners (e.g., ETH, Weizman Institute) we will establish a uniquely integrated framework across current disciplinary boundaries. DENISE extends existing close ties between Graz University of Technology (TUG) and FH JOANNEUM University of Applied Sciences (FHJ) by creating a truly joint doctoral program introducing many novel elements (e.g., cross-institutional supervision teams, cross- institutional curriculum) based on the vast international experience of its faculty. Multi- disciplinary supervision teams link up the dissertation topics, where applications motivate the design of new fundamental methods, which lead to application-driven prototypes whose evaluation will feed back into the optimization of the methods, thus closing the circle between basic research and application-oriented research in an unprecedented way. Graz is an international EBS hotspot, thus existing strengths are strengthened, and critical mass is generated by bundling expertise of both institutions. Graz EBS R&D ecosystem demands for researchers dually trained both in basic and in application-oriented research. DENISE will lead therefore to sustainable improvements in research, education, and the economy in the EBS sector.