Florian Jungwirth was presented with a first place award for his Master’s thesis titled “EyeMazing - Das Auge als Interaktionsmöglichkeit der Zukunft”. The jury was, as always, made up of upper level school students from throughout Upper Austria.

The finalists presented their academic work in front of over 400 school students. The students then voted for the winner, selecting Florian Jungwirth (Institute for Pervasive Computing) with the award for his graduate work. The award winner was pleased and remarked, “Our environment is becoming increasingly interconnected and needs new ways to interact with a multitude of ‘smart’ devices – my graduate thesis looks at using your eyes to control everyday things.”

Runners-up include Florian Henkel (Mensch versus Maschine - Kann ein Computer wie ein Mensch lernen? - Institute for Computational Perception), Lukas Ehrenfellner (Semicolon – Programme spielen oder spielend programmieren? - Institute for Systems Software) and Philipp Renz (Automatic Drug Design - Wer entdeckt die Medikamente der Zukunft? - Institute for Machine Learning).

Impressive Quality and Variety
Graduates of the JKU’s Master’s degree program in Computer Science and Bioinformatics can apply for the award. The applicant’s graduate thesis must have been completed in the past academic year and received a grade of “1” (Very Good). An expert jury reviews all of the submissions and selects the top four papers. Univ. Prof. Gabriele Anderst-Kotsis was impressed by the quality and variety of submitted papers and added, “The quality of work submitted by the finalists’ was not only high, they were also able to present their work in a very exciting way.”

About the Award and Award's Namesake
The computer science award is endowed with €1,500 in prize money and is awarded together with the support of Primetals (main sponsor), the Austrian Computer Society, the “IT Rocks” initiative, and the Austrian Society for Computer Science. The award is named after Univ. Prof. Adolf Adam (1918-2004), an Austrian statistician and computer scientist. In 1966 he was appointed a faculty member in Linz at the newly established College for Social Sciences and Business Administration and created the “Linzer Informationswissenschaftliche Programm (LIP)” which ultimately led to establishing a recognized academic degree program in Computer Sciences in Linz. The university in Linz was the first Austrian university to establish an academic degree program in Computer Science in 1969. Prof. Adam also played a key role in the process to change the university’s name. In 1971, the former College for Social Sciences and Business Administration was changed to Johannes Kepler University Linz.