After seven years of successful research, the Christian Doppler Laboratory ATHENA is approaching its conclusion. We would like to celebrate this special milestone together with our colleagues, partners, and companions and warmly invite you to our closing event:

Wednesday, 7 October 2026, 14:00–17:00

University of Klagenfurt

Stiftungssaal, Room O.0.0.1

https://athena.itec.aau.at/2026/09/athena-closing-symposium/

During the event, we will look back at ATHENA’s key achievements and results. The program includes a keynote, an overview of seven years of research, selected technical talks on current developments in adaptive video streaming, and a panel discussion with representatives from academia and industry.

Afterwards, we invite you to join us for refreshments, networking, and informal conversation.

You will find the detailed program in the attached invitation. Attendance is free, but registration by email to itec-sek@itec.aau.at is required. We would be delighted to welcome many colleagues from our faculty to this special occasion.

Best regards, Christian Timmerer

Univ.-Prof. DI Dr. Christian Timmerer | ITEC, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt | Bitmovin

Business Card | christian.timmerer@aau.at | LinkedIn

Are you interested in video games, technology, and science?

Then come join us on September 2, 18:00, at the Nexus Coworking Space on AAU Campus, located in the side building near the main entrance, for a special event supported by the Förderverein Technische Fakultät.

The evening opens with guest presentations by Nick Markozov (Game Studies and Engineering Master’s Programme, University of Klagenfurt) and Domen Žalac (University of Ljubljana), showcasing how you can find your way into studying and/or working with video games.

From 19:30 to 22:00, you are kindly invited to stay for meeting like-minded people, networking, and snacks!

Wednesday, June 24, 2026 | 02:00 p.m. | Room: N.1.04 | University of Klagenfurt

Prof. Carsten Griwodz 

Networks and Distributed Systems | University of Oslo

MishMash role: Work Package Leader Group member

Abstract: This talk will introduce the research of SINLab, the Sustainable Immersive Networking Lab, at the University of Oslo. Our applications are diverse, and range from music making to working on assembly lines, and also our investigations range from the efficient parallelization of media-specific algorithms to quantitative user experiences. Through all of this, we explore how humans perceive audiovisual and tactile experiences. Our research questions are concerned with the disconnect between local environments and those that are remote in time and space. We answer questions like: „To which extent can Redirected Walking help you to experience unconstrained virtual worlds through natural movement?” and “How can we overcome the delay challenges when you act remotely in first person through a robot arm and hand?”. My talk will introduce these questions in some detail and give an overview of our findings so far.

Bio: Carsten Griwodz is a professor at the University of Oslo. He received his Diploma in Computer Science from the University of Paderborn, Germany, in 1993. He worked at the IBM European Networking Center in Heidelberg, Germany, before joining the Multimedia Communications Lab (KOM) at Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany. There, he obtained his doctoral degree in 2000 and joined the University of Oslo in the same year. He worked at Simula Research Laboratory from 2005 to 2018. He has been a member of ACM since 1996 and of IEEE since 2011. At the University of Oslo, he was previously group leader of “Networks and Distributed Systems” and, from 2020 to 2025, head of the section for Distributed Infrastructures and Security.

His research interest is the performance of interactive multimedia systems. He explores research advances in fields ranging from networks and operating systems to computer vision to understanding how humans reach the point of sufficient immersion. His goal is to understand how users can become sufficiently immersed in an experience depending on their goals and context. He belongs to the Sustainable Immersive Networking Lab, a diverse group of people who aim at the improvement of human experiences in immersive remote presence.  He is a work package leader of the AI Center „MishMash Centre for AI and Creativity”, the only Norwegian AI Center focussed on Creativity, leads MIRAGE (“Multimodal Immersive Interactions for Remote Education Across Geographically Distributed Sites”) and partner in DRIVE (“Brain-driven Remote Collaborative Physical Work”).

Video: https://youtu.be/jNF7ZiNtJ5I

Friday, June 12, 2026 | 10:00 a.m. | Room: V1.03 | University of Klagenfurt

Prof. Hui Yong Kim | Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering and Dept. of Artificial Intelligence | Kyung Hee University

Abstract: Up to now, video coding standards have been developed as a combinatory set of a large number of coding tools. Each tool was primarily based on signal-processing algorithms or experimental optimizations. Recently, a new paradigm called Learned Video Coding (LVC), a.k.a. Neural Network-based Video Coding (NNVC), has emerged. By exploiting the end-to-end training with a large number of video datasets, some representative models already outperform the latest video coding standard, VVC (Versatile Video Coding). In this talk, the LVC technology will be briefly outlined and then the opportunities and remaining challenges will be discussed.

Bio: Hui Yong Kim is a Professor in the School of Computing (Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering and Dept. of Artificial Intelligence) in Kyung Hee University, Yongin, Korea since Mar. 2020. He was also an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Electronics Engineering in Sookmyung Women’s University, Seoul, Korea. Prior to joining universities, he served as the Managing Director of Realistic Audio & Video Research Group of Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), Daejeon, Korea from 2005 to 2019. From 2003 to 2005, he worked for AddPac Technology Co. Ltd. as the Multimedia Research Team Leader.

He received his BS, MS, and Ph.D degrees from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in 1994, 1998, and 2004, respectively. He was also an affiliate professor in University of Science and Technology (UST) and was a visiting scholar in the Media Communications Lab. at University of Southern California (USC), USA. He has published more than 70 papers on international journals and conferences, and holds more than 500 registered patents over the world. He has been an active technology contributor, editor, and ad-hoc group chair in developing several international standards including MPEG Multimedia Application Format (MAF), ITU-T/ISO/IEC JCT-VC High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) and JVET Versatile Video Coding (VVC). His current research focus is neural-network based visual data compression, including learned video compression, digital hologram compression and deep feature compression for machine vision.

SLIDES: https://de.slideshare.net/slideshow/neural-network-based-video-coding-innovations-standards-and-challenges-in-visual-media-compression/288070227

VIDEO: https://youtu.be/_oAppelJmpE

Canceled until further notice!
We will be happy to let you know of any new dates as soon as possible.

Die Fakultät für Technische Wissenschaften lädt Sie zum Gastvortrag mit anschließender Diskussion ein!

Dr. Rudy Kuhn | Lead Evangelist at Celonis

Abstract: Künstliche Intelligenz ist gerade überall. Sie verspricht Effizienz, Automatisierung und die nächste große Revolution. Aber hier ist die unbequeme Wahrheit: Die meisten Unternehmen wissen gar nicht, wie ihre Prozesse wirklich funktionieren. Und genau deshalb scheitert KI häufiger, als wir zugeben. Denn KI ist nur so gut wie die Prozesse, auf denen sie aufsetzt. Wenn diese intransparent, ineffizient oder schlicht falsch verstanden sind, automatisieren wir vor allem eines: Chaos.

Genau hier kommt Process Mining & Intelligence ins Spiel. Die von Prof. Dr. Wil van der Aalst entwickelte Technologie macht sichtbar, was tatsächlich passiert – nicht das, was wir glauben oder dokumentiert haben. Unternehmen weltweit nutzen Process Intelligence, um Transparenz zu schaffen, bessere Entscheidungen zu treffen und echten Mehrwert zu generieren. Die Firma Celonis aus München gilt als Marktführer in diesem Bereich. Rudy Kuhn, einer ihrer erfahrensten Experten für Process Intelligence, Automatisierung und KI, lebt seit einigen Jahren in unmittelbarer Nähe der Universität Klagenfurt und wird in seinem Vortrag zeigen, warum es keine Künstliche Intelligenz ohne Process Intelligence gibt – und was das konkret für die Zukunft von Unternehmen bedeutet.

Bio: Als Lead Evangelist bei Celonis inspiriert Rudy Kuhn Kunden, Partner und Analysten dazu, ihre Geschäftsabläufe unter dem Gesichtspunkt von Process Intelligence, Automatisierung und Orchestrierung neu zu gestalten. Mit über 25 Jahren Erfahrung in der Prozessoptimierung und -transformation sowie 16 Jahren tiefgreifender Beschäftigung mit Process Mining hat er seine Karriere darauf ausgerichtet, Unternehmen dabei zu unterstützen, das volle Potenzial ihrer durchgängigen Prozesse auszuschöpfen. Vom Aufbau des ersten E-Business-Beratungsteams von IBM in Deutschland über die Gründung von ProcessGold und die Einführung von Process Mining bei UiPath bis hin zu seiner aktuellen Rolle bei Celonis – Rudy stand und steht weiterhin an der Spitze der digitalen Transformation.

Thursday, December 18, 2025 | 10:00 a.m. | Room: S.2.69 | University of Klagenfurt

Dr. Hadi Amirpourazarian | Department of Information Technology

Abstract: Video coding is the beating heart of multimedia communication, and despite decades of innovation, it remains a field full of challenges and opportunities. While much research continues to push codec-level efficiency, this talk shifts the perspective to video streaming: how smart decisions about encoding parameters can dramatically boost real-world delivery performance. We explore how content-adaptive bitrate ladders unlock substantial efficiency gains by tailoring encoding settings to each video’s unique characteristics, and how optimizing bitrate, resolution, and frame rate can balance conflicting goals such as visual quality, delivery cost, and energy consumption. We then dive into how these strategies can be brought to life in live streaming using powerful video-complexity analysis frameworks. Finally, we reveal how real-time quality measurement enables intelligent, responsive streaming systems that elevate video delivery and monitoring to a new level.

Bio: Hadi Amirpour is working on adaptive video streaming, image/video compression, QoE evaluation, 3D and immersive imaging, and machine-learning-based medical image analysis, with a focus on translating theory into next-generation multimedia systems. He has received multiple distinctions, including Best Paper Awards (PCS 2024, NAB 2025) and Grand Challenge wins at ICIP 2024 and VCIP 2025. He contributes to JPEG Pleno and MPEG standardization on light fields, point clouds, and immersive formats, and has co-chaired Qualinet Task Force 7 since 2021, advancing subjective and objective video quality assessment. He is an Associate Editor for IEEE TCSVT and holds key leadership roles such as TPC Co-Chair of VCIP 2025 and General Co-Chair of QoMEX 2026 and MMSP 2027. He is also active in organizing special sessions, workshops, and tutorials at major venues, including IEEE ICME, IEEE QoMEX, ACM Multimedia, VQEG, EUVIP, and ACM MobiSys.