The Research Program

While the study program gives an overview of the state of the art in electronic commerce and its enabling technologies, the graduates are supposed to work on specific aspects and new approaches to solutions in the research program and qualify themselves for scientific research.

The research program is aimed at providing the depth in specific areas, both technological and socio-economic. Of particular interest are solutions in the enabling technologies, such as architectures of distributed systems, their scalability, robustness, and reliability; new interaction paradigms, such as agent systems and the use of mobile clients; interoperability issues, such as context specifications and metadata management; electronic payment systems, the underlying cryptographic technology and operational procedures; database connectivity, data warehousing, and data mining; adaptive user interfaces and environments; software to support group work and multimedia document processing. Typical applications are electronic stock exchange, virtual supermarkets, and electronic publishing systems in co-operation with publishers.

Among the research topics covered in the socio-economic arena are economic impact simulations, the sociology and models of new man-machine and interpersonal interactions, the socio-economic impact of the new interaction paradigms and their effect on the workforce, the legality of electronic documents, copyright issues, and the legal ramifications of electronic commerce transactions.

The participants in the Ph.D. program are supposed to keep abreast of developments in a fast evolving area. Therefore, a lively exchange with other research groups is encouraged. This may happen either through direct exchanges, invited speakers or active participation in workshops and conferences. (Partial) funding for these exchanges can be arranged.