What is the Situation:
Companies are increasingly transitioning to cloud environments, attracted by the potential for enhanced operational efficiency, scalability, and adaptability (Shaw, 2014). Nonetheless, cloud service providers tend to overlook the impact of conventional ICT Financial Management practices on the dynamic pay-as-you-go cost model (Singh, 2023). As more business users handle money matters directly with cloud services, the finance department faces the risk to lose track of financial expenditures and thus making spending predictions less accurate (Suppala, 2022).

FinOps is an evolving cloud financial management discipline and enables organizations to maximize their business value by fostering collaboration among engineering, finance, technology, and business teams (Bryant, 2022). FinOps aim to improve data-driven spending decisions, and thus optimize cloud expenses and resource allocation (Shaw, 2014).

By choosing this topic for your master’s thesis, you will have the opportunity to explore the various facets of FinOps, including its principles, methodologies, tools, and its significance in today’s cloud and technology landscape.

What we offer you:

Mentorship from experts in the field.

Access to academic resources and research materials.

A chance to make an academic and practical impact on the FinOps discipline.

What we expect from you:

Enthusiasm for information systems and the discipline of FinOps.

Strong research and analytical skills.

Ability to work independently and meet deadlines.

Application:

If you are interested in this research opportunity, please apply with the following documents:

– CV
– Transcript of records
– An estimated timeline for the thesis
– Max. 300-word motivation

Sources:

Bryant, Jon. 2022. Driving into the Cloud: What is Finops?, ITNOW, Volume 64, Issue 3, Pages 54–55, https://doi.org/10.1093/combul/bwac097

Shaw, S. B., & Singh, A. K. 2014. A survey on cloud computing. In 2014 International conference on green computing communication and electrical engineering (ICGCCEE) (pp. 1-6). IEEE.

Singh, P., & Khatri, V. 2023. A Study On The Finops Framework For Sustainable Cloud Engineering. Elementary Education Online, 20(3), 4874-4874.

Suppala, P. (2022). FinOps in SaaS platform within hybrid, multi-cloud, multi-tenant, multi-region environments.

WHY?
Generative AI is expected to be increasingly used in white-collar work environments. Job crafting refers to activities of employees who voluntarily change their work environment for self-perceived positive benefits, including increased work engagement, motivation, well-being, or job satisfaction. Previous work found that employees can use of technology to craft jobs and tackle high job demands, as well as elevate employees’ occupational well-being. The objective of this research project is to understand how employees can use Generative AI to increase their work engagement and empowerment and investigate its effects on employees’ skill levels.

HOW?
-We plan to conduct an experiment with Generative AI in collaboration with the University of Kassel to analyze how people solve tasks with GenAI

YOU SHOULD…
– have a basic knowledge of/ strong interest in Generative AI
– have a basic understanding of/ strong willingness to work with quantitative research methods and an interest in experimental design
– have an interest in cognition research and neuroscience
– have scientific writing skills in English

– have scientific writing skills in English

WHY SHOULD YOU APPLY?
– Collaboration will take place in close supervision, with regular review meetings (biweekly), feedback sessions, etc.
– Work can be started immediately.
– Possibility of making a real impact through publishing in a scientific conference

If you are interested, please send your CV, transcript of records and a brief description of your motivation to Eva Ritz. I look forward hearing from you!

The Situation:
Are you intrigued by the potential of large language models in revolutionizing the way we manage and disseminate knowledge? Do you want to be at the forefront of combining knowledge graphs with AI to create a more democratic, transparent, and efficient knowledge management system? If so, this thesis on decentralized knowledge management using large language models is for you!

Objective of the Thesis:
The thesis could explore various facets of decentralized knowledge management systems, such as the architecture involving knowledge graphs, the role of large language models like GPT-4 in content curation, retrieval, and generation, and the community governance models that could be applied. Research fields could include the development of a proof-of-concept platform, or exploring ethical considerations in automated knowledge curation. You’ll have the opportunity to work with experienced researchers in the fields of Information Systems and AI. The thesis could involve qualitative research (expert interviews, case studies), quantitative research (surveys, experiments), or (preferred) the development of an application/PoC.

About You:
You should
– have a strong interest in AI, and (may be even distributed systems), and a desire to contribute to cutting-edge research in these fields.
– be a self-starter who can work independently.
– be a communicative and open person.
– work in an accurate way.
– have scientific writing skills in English.

Experience with programming languages such Python for machine learning, or JavaScript for web development could be advantageous depending on the field of research and/or research method.

About Me:
I will offer you
– close supervision, with regular review meetings, feedback discussions, etc.
– the opportunity to start immediately, but the thesis should be completed within +- 6 months.
– the possibility of publishing your thesis (e.g., European Conference on Information Systems) as long as the results are worth publishing

Application:
If you are interested in this opportunity, please apply with the following documents:
– CV
– Transcript of records
– An estimated timeline for the thesis
– Max. 150-word motivation

Contact:
Alexander Meier ()

If you want to learn more about knowledge graphsm decentralized systems and large language models:

https://neo4j.com/developer-blog/harness-large-language-models-neo4j/

Bridging Knowledge and Language: ArangoDB Empowers Large Language Models for Real-World Applications

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2306.08302.pdf
http://publications.rwth-aachen.de/record/861058/files/861058.pdf

Are you a Bachelor’s or Master’s student fascinated by the transformative realm of AI? We’re offering an opportunity to delve into the world of tool-augmented conversational agents. This is your chance to participate in a rapidly growing field and enhance your understanding of AI capabilities.

Your research will center around tool-augmented models, identifying their potential and the conditions that lead them to outperform regular models. A crucial part of your task will be to unearth situations where the effectiveness of these models depends on adapting the interaction. Essentially, you will be exploring the circumstances where these models work best, and how to optimize their efficiency through interaction design.

Here’s an outline of your research path and available options:

Research Options:

Qualitative Study of Tool-augmented Conversational Agents: Investigate how users engage with existing platforms that make use of tools (e.g., OpenAI Plug-ins, Bing, Bard, etc.). Open to all students, no coding skills required. You should bring an interesting initial hypothesis to our kick-off.

Review of Tool-augmented Conversational Agents: Survey the current landscape on tool-augmented language models. As this is an emerging field, you will need to combine a literature review with an analysis of the technology landscape. Suitable for Bachelor’s students.

Empirical Study of Existing Tool-augmented Conversational Agents: A deep dive into the performance of current AI agents. Ideal for Master’s students, may require basic coding skills.

Adapting Tool-augmented Conversational Agents: Modify existing AI agents, ideally for a novel use case. Open to both levels of students with coding skills (drag-and-drop alternatives exist but are not necessarily easier to use).

Designing your own Tool-augmented Conversational Agent: Build your own AI agent and deploy on a platform like Python-Anywhere. Ideal for Master’s students with advanced coding skills.

Research Journey:

Your journey begins with an online kick-off, a casual meeting to align research interests. Following this, we’ll move into a brainstorming phase where you’ll get the opportunity to develop your research ideas. Here, guidance on applying theories from fields like information systems and psychology will be provided to help shape your intuitions. You’ll then craft a research proposal, paving the way to the research and writing phases, where we will meet in regular feedback sessions, leading up to your thesis and presentation.

Joining this project means making a tangible contribution to our understanding of AI. You’ll uncover practical use cases, highlight potential improvements, and uncover challenges within the field. If your interest is peaked, don’t hesitate to apply with your transcript and short CV:

Relevant literature:
Göldi, Andreas; Rietsche, Roman (2023): Insert-expansions for Tool-enabled Conversational Agents.
Parisi, Aaron; Zhao, Yao; Fiedel, Noah (2022): TALM: Tool Augmented Language Models.
Wei, Jason; Wang, Xuezhi; Schuurmans, Dale; Bosma, Maarten; Ichter, Brian; Xia, Fei et al. (2022): Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models.

Analysing processes and digitalisation in the private equity industry.

Why

After an unprecedented period of growth in the last decade, today private equity funds hold more than 6.3 trillion dollars in assets under management and have become a staple in portfolios of institutional investors ([1] McKinsey, Global Private Markets Review, 2022). As this rise was fuelled by astonishing profitability (it consistently outperformed all other asset classes in the last decade ([1])), research in the last years has mainly focused on explaining the reasons for this outperformance ([2] Kaplan and Schoar, 2003; [3] Harris et Al, 2012; [4] Demaria, 2015). However, few studies look at the processes necessary to achieve this performance. The question becomes a multi-dimensional one when realizing that the processes of a fund are probably not only dependent on its type but also on its investment strategies and degree of technological maturity.

Scope

We at the IWI aim to combine sophisticated academia and practical insights. While building on profound research, your thesis should generate actionable insights with practical applicability. This can be done with a multitude of scientific methods such as desk research, reviewing scientific literature, and conducting hands-on case interviews.
However, to write an exceptional thesis it is necessary for you to find a topic, which excites you and fits your skills and interests. Therefore, the following topics are for inspiration only and I am looking forward to your ideas:

• Analysis of the impact of a private equity fund’s investment strategy on its internal processes and use of technology.
• Use and potential of new technologies in different stages of the private equity investment process.
• Examination of how target companies, general partners and limited partners interact with each other and which structures and technologies they are using for it.

While the questions mentioned above are more suited for qualitative research, I am happy to discuss more quantitatively focused theses as well, if they should better fit your skill profile.

What we expect

• You have an organized, conscientious and result-oriented working attitude
• You want to write a best-in-class master thesis which contributes to state-of-the-art research
• The thesis can start immediately but should be completed within the next ±6 months

What we offer

• Close supervision and support with regular review meetings, feedback sessions and discussions
• Access to experts in the field
• Possibility of making a real impact through publishing in a scientific journal

If you are interested just book a slot with me (https://calendly.com/fabian-karst/master-thesis-consultation) and I am looking forward to your thesis ideas.

Unfortunately…

… there are currently no published master thesis on ‘metaverse’ available. However, should you be interested and passionate about ‘metaverse’ and are keen to write your thesis with us, I still want to encourage you to reach out! If you and your topic-idea convince us, there is no reason why a thesis with us shouldn’t be possible! However, please already include a concrete research idea and methodology in your initial request.

Background

Technologic development is changing the World-Wide-Web as we know it. The current version of the “Internet of Information”, used primarily to seemingly exchange information, increasingly evolves to an “Internet of Value”, also called web3, which empowers people to transact items of value with one another. (Tapscott and Tapscott 2017) Indeed, there are key technologies to permit value creation and value exchange in an online setting like cryptocurrencies, NFTs, native coins, and self-sovereign interoperable identities. However, there needs to be a platform so that people can experience web3 and interact with one another. A platform that makes web3 ‘tangible’ is metaverse.