Last Week, our seminar participants presented their final papers, and the results were well worth the wait. Over drinks and ice cream, students showcased an impressive range of methods, from literature reviews and case studies to theoretical work and even a self-built prototype.

Just as rewarding was watching how much the students grew over the course of the semester.

Dr. Sonja Klingert joined ESIS on July 1st as a Senior Researcher. Trained as an economist, she has worked on load management and demand response in EU research projects since the 2010s, covering data centers, electro mobility, buildings and climate neutral districts. Her more recent focus: energy flexibility only works if the needs of the people expected to provide it are considered.

Halfway through the seminar "Sustainable Information Systems and Digital Energy Markets," our participants presented their mid-term research. Topics ranging from Digital Government to Open Source and Energy Markets sparked lively discussion across the group. What started as rough ideas at the kickoff has grown into solid research work, with everyone bringing their own perspective to the table.

We are pleased to welcome Finn as a new student assistant. He will be contributing to our work on the ÖPGV project. In addition to his studies, Finn has already co-founded a start-up in the public sector space, bringing practical entrepreneurial experience to the team. More information about the ÖPGV project is available at https://xn--pgv-rna.de/. We look forward to working with Finn and wish him a successful start.

GridKIT is here! Together with five motivated students, we are building an interactive simulation platform that turns real geographic areas into functional grid models. Users select a region, configure households with PV, heat pumps, storage, and EV charging, then run Multi Agent Reinforcement Learning simulations to explore curtailment strategies and grid expansion scenarios.

Our seminar “Sustainable Information Systems and Digital Energy Markets” has officially launched into the new semester. Seven Bachelor’s and Master’s students joined the opening session, which combined introductions with a discussion on good research practices. This year’s topics include Reinforcement Learning in energy markets, openCode as digital public infrastructure, and data literacy for sustainability. The seminar highlights interdisciplinary exchange and societal relevance.

We are pleased to announce that as of February 2, 2026, Prof. Dr. Philipp Staudt has started his position as Junior Professor and Head of the Research Group Information Systems II - Digital Energy Markets at the Institute for Information Systems (WIN) at KIT.