Endowed professorships at Bundesdruckerei

With its endowed professorships, Bundesdruckerei aims to make a key contribution to the development of secure identities and data, thus helping to drive forward the key technologies of the future. “A clear investment in the future” is how Bundesdruckerei CEO Stefan Hofschen summed up his company’s commitment to science. 

„Deutschland besetzt im internationalen Wettbewerb bei den Hochsicherheitstechnologien einen vorderen Rang, aber wir dürfen nicht warten, bis andere uns einholen. Unsere Aufgabe ist es, in die Zukunft zu schauen und diese Zukunft im Sinne der Gesellschaft mitzugestalten“, so Hofschen. Die interdisziplinären Ansätze in der wissenschaftlichen Arbeit bieten laut Hofschen die Chance, über den eigenen Tellerrand hinauszublicken und das Wissen und die Erfahrungen anderer Disziplinen zu nutzen und neue Lösungen zu erschaffen.

In order to continue the scientific work after the agreed five-year term of the endowed professorship, Bundesdruckerei funded another professorship at the start of the 2014/2015 winter semester. It was established in the "Identity Management" department at FU Berlin and staffed by guest professor Dr Marian Margraf. The professorship has been extended twice since then and is now scheduled to continue until March 2021. 

Bundesdruckerei is fully satisfied with the results of the work. “It was a real success story”, said Dr. Manfred Paeschke, Chief Visionary Officer at Bundesdruckerei, summarising the last six-and-a-half years. It just worked, in terms of both content and people. “With the help of Prof. Dr. Marian Margraf we were able to clearly evaluate whether things we were already doing made technological sense. He has started several projects which Bundesdruckerei was able to benefit from and which he also used to grow his own body of research. It was a win-win situation”, said Paeschke. Margraf pushes modern topics and technologies and thus also puts Bundesdruckerei under a certain amount of pressure to explore new territory. Paeschke feels that this has always been a great relationship. 

Margraf's conclusion is also positive: “We have achieved a lot.” Together with his team, he has conducted a wide range of research. Three main topics had emerged: usable security and data protection, post-quantum cryptography and, as a fairly new topic, cryptanalysis using quantum computers. "The endowed professorship gave us the opportunity to work on topics and try out many things without having to apply for projects straight away. Bundesdruckerei gave us a lot of time to develop topics. It was a great partnership”, said Margraf. The goal of being there as a contact partner for industry in order to bring research topics into business has also been achieved very well. 

In addition, it was possible to acquire some public projects together with Bundesdruckerei. These include projects on attack detection using artificial intelligence, the projects OPTIMOS 2.0 and ONCE as well as others on post-quantum cryptography for sovereign documents. Margraf has also provided significant support for industrial projects, such as the security concept of the Verimi platform or the Bundesdruckerei product Bdrive.

In addition to the guest professorship, Bundesdruckerei's endowment also included funding for positions for two research fellows, two student associates and one assistant. “We were able to expand the working group, which now has 24 employees”, Margraf explained. 

The endowed professorship will now go on until the end of March 2021 and will be made permanent as a full professorship at Fraunhofer AISEC. “This further demonstrates the success of Margraf’s work” said Paeschke. “In this guest professorship, I especially enjoyed conducting research and working on topics with a social impact. This would not have been possible without this professorship and the highly cooperative and trusting relationship with Bundesdruckerei”, Margraf reflected. Margraf and Bundesdruckerei will continue to maintain close contact and conduct joint projects in the future.

Bundesdruckerei wants to remain involved in science in the future and is therefore endowing the next professorship from April 2021. It will once again be established at FU Berlin and led by Prof. Dr Gerhard Wunder. The new professorship "Cybersecurity with AI" will also involve the appointment of two research fellows, two students and an assistant. In terms of content, this professorship will focus on researching artificial intelligence (AI) technologies for cyber security. According to Paeschke, this involves mathematically comprehensible, provable AI to increase cyber security - in close cooperation with other institutions, such as the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI). 

Wunder is a Heisenberg fellow of the German Research Foundation (DFG) and was the first ever communications engineer to receive this highly prestigious award. At FU Berlin, he has already opened the door to combining the topics of AI and cybersecurity with information-theory foundations and application-related issues. He now wants to continue this work in the endowed professorship. “This professorship is a godsend,” Wunder said. "Here I get to select issues that I initiated early on for research over the long term." The focus is clearly on AI, but there are also topics such as data protection, smart homes, the next mobile phone generation 6G, the Internet of Things and detection of “fake news”. There is a great need to research the fundamentals of AI in the context of security and make them available for applications. This has not yet been established at FU Berlin or on a national level, but will become very important in the future. Wunder will also offer lectures on this subject from summer 2021.

He is particularly looking forward to the planned cooperation with Bundesdruckerei, FU Berlin, Fraunhofer AISEC and the new Dahlem Centre for Interdisciplinary Privacy and Security Research (DIPS). DIPS is a very broadly based Institute for Computer Science at FU Berlin, where all aspects of information security and data protection are considered holistically. Wunder places a lot of emphasis on this interdisciplinary approach. For example, he is also involved with the DFG in two interdisciplinary priority programmes on mathematical data structures in AI and on security in cyber-physical systems. 

Bundesdruckerei not only invests in endowed professorships as a flagship of the company's scientific commitment, but also operates a large research network. For many years, this has included cooperation with the Fraunhofer Institutes in Berlin and Brandenburg, but there are also several innovation partnerships, for example with the famous CERN in Geneva, the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam and the European School of Management and Technology (ESMT) in Berlin. The company also supports various committees and associations, such as the Secure Digital Identity Association. (VSDI). Paeschke added: “Our aim is to involve a large number of players in the market. This is a new form of cooperation from which all parties can benefit and ensures exponential growth of our network. With this work, we contribute greatly to being considered the leading security company in Germany within the scope of our potential as a medium-sized company."