University of Zurich, Department of Informatics

14/10/2026

Are We Automating Our Own Future Away?

We are pleased to welcome Dr. Igor Wiese, Full Professor of Computer Science at the Federal Technological University of Paraná, Brazil, for our upcoming colloquium.

In this talk, he will reflect on whether AI agents signify the peak of software engineering efficiency, or whether we are quietly automating a sense of belonging that keeps our communities alive, exploring the interplay between human motivations and the rise of agentic automation.

Talk: "Are We Automating Our Own Future Away? The Socio-Technical Cost of AI Agents in Open Source Ecosystems"
Date: Thursday, 22.10.2026
Time: 17:15 to 18:30
Location: BIM 4-033, Binzmühlestrasse 11, 8050 Zürich

13/10/2026

Congratulations to Joel Barmettler, Abraham Bernstein, and Luca Rossetto!

Their paper “ConceptFormer: Towards Graph-Native Grounding of Large Language Models via Latent Concept Injection” received the Best Paper Award at the GLOW workshop, held as part of The ACM Web Conference (WWW 2026).

Originating as a Master's thesis at the University of Zurich, ConceptFormer addresses the challenge that incorporating highly connected nodes using traditional graph RAG methods can quickly consume many tokens and fill the available context.

ConceptFormer instead learns fixed-length concepts that represent the 1-hop neighborhoods of nodes. This drastically reduces token consumption while matching the performance of traditional methods.

Read more in the IfI news post: https://www.ifi.uzh.ch/en/news/conceptformer-best-paper-award-glow-www-2026.html

09/10/2026

Research meets legal practice: Prof. Dr. Dan Olteanu and PhD student Christoph Mayer from the Department of Informatics are collaborating with legal-tech start-up Herald AI to explore how large language models can reliably support professional legal workflows. Their hybrid approach combines deterministic reasoning with LLM capabilities while keeping legal experts in control of the final assessment.

Find out more:
https://www.ifi.uzh.ch/en/news/research-meets-legal-practice-herald-ai.html

08/10/2026

Celebrating 10 years of the Digital Society Initiative!

What began in 2016 as a bottom-up initiative at the University of Zurich has grown into a university-wide network of more than 1,600 researchers, including over 300 professors. The DSI connects disciplines to explore the opportunities and challenges of digital transformation. A central idea behind the initiative was that digital transformation cannot be understood from the perspective of informatics alone.

Abraham Bernstein was one of the driving forces behind the DSI's creation and serves as its Director today. The Department of Informatics has been closely involved through research projects, participation in DSI Communities, and doctoral researchers taking part in the DSI Excellence Program.

To mark the anniversary, Abraham reflects on the DSI’s journey and the rapidly changing digital landscape in a UZH News interview. The anniversary series "Decade of Impact" also highlights what the initiative has built and enabled over the past decade.

Congratulations to the DSI on this milestone! 🎉

Read the full story and find all links in the IfI News: https://www.ifi.uzh.ch/en/news/10-years-digital-society-initiative0.html

15/09/2026

We have moved into our new building 🏢

On September 10, 2026, the new BIM building at Binzmühlestrasse 11 was officially opened. The building is now home to the Department of Informatics and the University Library.

The new spaces bring research, learning, work and exchange together under one roof. Alongside spaces for students, researchers, staff and visitors, BIM features a newly designed canteen area and an open courtyard that offers another place to meet and connect.

14/09/2026

Where people and ideas shape the digital future.💡

We are excited to start the new semester in our unique and modern BIM building at Binzmühlestrasse 11 and to welcome three talented new professors to our department this year.

Julia Dätwyler, Managing Director, is pleased to see so many engaged students choosing to study Informatics: "I wish all students, staff, and faculty an inspiring and successful semester."

25/08/2026

Just started working at UZH and still finding your way around? 👋 UZH invites all new staff members to the UZH Welcome Day!

👥 Get useful information about the university and your employment, explore the Info Market, and meet new colleagues over refreshments.

🗓 Date & Time: 9 September 2026, 8:30–11:30
📍 Location: UZH Irchel, Y03-G-95
🗣️ Language: English
⏰ Registration deadline: 1 September 2026

👉 Register here: https://pa-training.pa.uzh.ch/en/anmeldung/233723/wd-uzh260909

27/07/2026

Would you trust an artificial pancreas?

Around 30 researchers, healthcare professionals and members of the diabetes community came together at a symposium hosted by the Digital Society Initiative at the University of Zurich.

Organised by Clara-Maria Barth from the Department of Informatics and Federica Zavattaro from the Institute for Implementation Science in Health Care, the event explored how communication shapes trust in digital health technologies.

Discussions covered supportive communication in chronic care, visual storytelling about experiences with diabetes, and the role of transparency and personalisation in open-source artificial pancreas systems. An interactive panel also examined digital health adoption, artificial intelligence and future research priorities.

Read more in the IfI News: https://www.ifi.uzh.ch/en/news/would-you-trust-an-artificial-pancreas.html

03/07/2026

Artificial intelligence and algorithms are playing a growing role in everyday life, including how we search for information.

As part of the RAISD research project, AlgorithmWatch CH and the Department of Informatics investigated how Google and Bing’s AI-generated answers present the debate around the «10-Millionen-Initiative» and which sources they use.

The results show that AI-generated search summaries increasingly influence which information and sources are seen as relevant.

Read more in the IfI News:

Im Rahmen des Forschungsprojekts RAISD (Researching AI, Society & Democracy in Switzerland) untersuchten AlgorithmWatch CH und das Institut für Informatik, wie die KI-generierten Antworten von Google und Bing die Debatte um die «10-Millionen-Initiative» wiedergeben und welche Quellen sie nutzen.

23/06/2026

Congratulations to Clara-Maria Barth, Anton Fedosov, Chat Wacharamanotham, Jürgen Bernard and Elaine M. Huang.

They received the Honorable Mention Award at the Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2026 for their paper “How Do I Want to Live with Type 1 Diabetes? Understanding Self-Management Styles to Inform the Design of T1D Technologies”.

The paper looks at how health technologies can better support people living with Type 1 Diabetes. It shows that “doing well” can mean more than clinical metrics such as blood glucose values and time in range. Personal priorities, daily routines and individual definitions of success matter too.

Read the full news on our website: https://www.ifi.uzh.ch/en/news/acm-dis-2026-honorable-mention-award.html