An important goal of the University of Duisburg-Essen is to increase the number of startups that transform innovative research results into sustainable businesses. To reach this goal, it is necessary to connect researchers that have generated promising results with business advisors and innovation coaches of the university who help scientists successfully launch new businesses.

The goal of this project group is to design and implement a web-based tool that supports the advisors and coaches of the university in identifying research groups or researchers that are working on innovative topics. As basis for the project, the participants can apply and refine existing approaches to support innovation scouting that have been developed as part of the GUIDE project. The tool will encompass a web-crawler-based backend that extracts and organizes relevant information from the web pages of the university. On top of this backend, the tool will provide a rich visualization that enables coaches to generate overviews that enables them to drill down into details.

From a technical perspective, the project will cover modern web-based application development using Docker, Elasticsearch, Python (FastAPI) and Javascript (Angular). For the development process, the project group will follow an agile approach (SCRUM) where requirements are defined and implemented in short iterations. From a theoretical perspective, the project group will cover concepts from information retrieval, data mining, and natural language processing (NLP). Thereby, participants will prepare individual seminar presentations and papers on topics related to language models, topic modelling, semantic search, and related techniques that support intelligent information extraction and retrieval from unstructured web data.

This course gives you the chance to deepen your expertise in modern software engineering while collaborating with a real client from industry or another professional organization. Instead of working on a predefined task, you will take on a challenge directly provided by this external stakeholder. Throughout the semester, you will communicate with the client, gather requirements, clarify expectations, and incorporate feedback into your development process.

In the first two weeks, you will be introduced to advanced concepts in software engineering as well as the SCRUM framework. Together with your team, you will meet the client, explore their problem space, and translate their needs into concrete software requirements. Based on these insights, you will create a Product Backlog and outline the development roadmap for the semester.

The main part of the module consists of five SCRUM sprints, during which you will iteratively design, implement, and refine a functional prototype that addresses the client’s needs. Each sprint includes planning, effort estimation, development, testing, review, deployment, and retrospective phases. Regular SCRUM meetings will help you coordinate your progress, address technical or organizational challenges, and continuously improve both your collaboration and the product.

You will also practice applying industry-standard development techniques: writing maintainable code, adhering to coding guidelines, integrating new functionality incrementally, and performing systematic testing, including unit, integration, and acceptance tests. Documenting your process and artifacts is a key part of the project, ensuring transparency for both the teaching team and your client.

At the end of the semester, you will present your prototype to the client and reflect on the development approach, product quality, and team performance. Your final grade will be based on your project work and the concluding presentation.

We are excited to support you as you collaborate with a real-world partner and bring a meaningful software solution to life!

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Development of a VR-Game for gesture recording to research users' variances of gesture performance.