IANUS stands for natural science and engineering–based peace and conflict research at the Technical University of Darmstadt, which is often interdisciplinary and includes the social sciences and humanities. The IANUS Prize (EUR 1,500) honors outstanding qualification theses from all disciplines at TU Darmstadt. The submission deadline was July 31, 2021. Eligible submissions included qualification works (in particular study papers, project reports, bachelor’s and master’s theses, publications, or dissertations) completed between August 2019 and July 2021 that address topics and research questions relevant to IANUS.

Numerous very strong submissions from various departments and disciplines at TU Darmstadt (history, political science, computer science, mechanical engineering) were shortlisted for the IANUS Prize 2021. For all submitted works, both the quality of the work and its relevance to the IANUS call were evaluated by all three members of the selection committee: Prof. Dr. Alfred Nordmann (Philosophy of Technoscience), Prof. Dr. Markus Lederer (International Politics), and Prof. Dr. Christian Reuter (Science and Technology for Peace and Security). In cases of conflict of interest, the respective member did not participate. After an initial selection of works deemed worthy of an award, a detailed evaluation and ranking was carried out, usually by two committee members.

One IANUS Prize 2021 is awarded to Jonas Franken for his research internship report “Assessing State Vulnerability to Submarine Communications Cable Failure in Global Comparison” in the master’s program International Studies / Peace and Conflict Research. The research report examines the availability of internet infrastructures after a submarine cable failure in an international comparison. Using a global network analysis, low levels of redundancy were identified in countries of the Global South, most notably in Pacific island states and sub-Saharan Africa. Based on this knowledge, the global gap in the reliability of national internet connections can be better reduced through targeted protection and support measures for critical communication infrastructures in affected countries. The work was supervised by Dipl.-Inf. Thomas Reinhold and Prof. Christian Reuter from the Chair of Science and Technology for Peace and Security (PEASEC) in the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Social and Historical Sciences.

Anna Maria Krebs receives an IANUS Prize 2021 for her academic term paper “Right-Wing Extremism and Right-Wing Populism: A Competence-Oriented Learning Environment for Civics Education in Grades 9 to 10,” completed as part of her teacher training studies for upper secondary schools (subject: Politics and Economics). The paper focuses on the design and implementation of various learning tasks addressing the social and political phenomena of right-wing extremism and right-wing populism. Addressing these topics in a school context is of exceptional relevance, as the spectrum of these phenomena relates to complex political and societal interconnections. The learning environment developed in the paper promotes essential competencies among learners through the acquisition of different types of knowledge, thereby creating a foundation for the prevention of right-wing extremism. The work was supervised by Dr. Andreas Füchter, lecturer in subject didactics at the Institute of Political Science, Department of Social and Historical Sciences (FB02).

Another IANUS Prize 2021 is awarded to Dr. Philipp Terhörst for his dissertation “Mitigating Soft-Biometric Driven Bias and Privacy Concerns in Face Recognition Systems.” The dissertation addresses issues of fairness and privacy in face recognition systems. These systems play an increasingly important role both in everyday life and in critical decision-making processes, such as in forensics and in court. In the first part of his work, Philipp Terhörst investigates how fairness and privacy issues arise in such systems. Based on these findings, he presents a variety of solution strategies in the second part and demonstrates their effectiveness compared to the current state of the art. His work not only contributes to enabling the next generation of face recognition algorithms to make fairer and more equitable decisions, but also shows that TU Darmstadt plays a central role in value-oriented security research in the field of face recognition. The dissertation was supervised by Prof. Arjan Kuijper, Chair of Mathematical and Applied Visual Computing (MAVC) in the Department of Computer Science (FB20), in cooperation with Fraunhofer IGD.

The award ceremony will take place on November 17 starting at 4:30 p.m. at the Lichtenberg House (Dieburger Str. 241, 64287 Darmstadt). All members of TU Darmstadt are invited. We would be very pleased to welcome you and to spend the evening together. Please let us know by November 5 (fif@fif.tu-darmstadt.de) so that we can organize the event in accordance with the current hygiene regulations. During the event, we will also provide information about the IANUS project calls. In addition, we would like to discuss possible future activities with you. A joint dinner will follow. The event will conclude by 8:00 p.m. at the latest.

An IANUS Prize is also planned for 2022 (submission deadline: July 31, 2022, for works completed since August 2020). Further information will be published at www.ianus.tu-darmstadt.de and www.peasec.de.