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AutoGeri-Assist kicks off collaboration with DOKH Friesach

On October 21, 2026, the AutoGeri-Assist research project held its clinical kick-off meeting with the Deutsch Ordens Krankenhaus Friesach (DOKH). The meeting marked an important milestone in the collaboration between the University of Klagenfurt, Carinthia University of Applied Sciences, and the hospital’s clinical experts in geriatric care.

AutoGeri-Assist investigates how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can support healthcare professionals in processing and analyzing complex patient records. The project aims to develop a research prototype of an AI-based assistance system that automatically generates structured, clinically relevant summaries of geriatric patient histories. By integrating information from various sources, including medical reports, medication records, laboratory results, vital signs, and nursing documentation, the system will help physicians and nursing staff quickly identify relevant information and better understand a patient’s medical history. The project also explores the integration of data from extramural and home-care settings to provide a more comprehensive view of patient health.

A central research objective is to investigate whether AI-generated patient summaries can reduce the time and effort required to review medical records, improve the traceability of clinical decisions, and support more efficient treatment planning. Particular emphasis is placed on trustworthy and explainable AI, data privacy, and the evaluation of information quality, usability, and acceptance among healthcare professionals. The system is intended to assist clinical decision-making, not replace the expertise and responsibility of medical staff.

The project is also closely aligned with the objectives of the European Health Data Space (EHDS), which will require the cross-border exchange of electronic patient summaries across EU Member States starting in March 2029.

AutoGeri-Assist is led by Assoc. Prof. Klaus Schöffmann, together with Prof. Heather Foran, Prof. Ralf Terlutter, and Assoc. Prof. Agnes Turner. The research team also includes Lorenzo Bazzana and Lukas Kofler. The project is conducted in collaboration with Prof. Johannes Oberzaucher from Carinthia University of Applied Sciences (CU), combining expertise in AI, digital health, healthcare research, and clinical practice.

The project officially started on June 15, 2026 at AAU, and will run until December 31, 2028. It is funded by the Carinthian Economic Promotion Fund (KWF) and the IBW/EFRE & JTF programme (https://www.efre.gv.at) under grant KWF-2700-3585.

More information: https://autogeri.itec.aau.at/

40 years of Computer Science at the University of Klagenfurt

40 years of Computer Science at the University of Klagenfurt – a special occasion to celebrate four decades of research, education, and innovation, and to look ahead to the future.

We cordially invite you to join us for this celebration on 20 November 2026, starting at 2:00 p.m., at Lakeside Spitz in Klagenfurt, Austria.

Highlights of the ceremony include the presentation of the Faculty of Technical Sciences’ Honorary Award and the conferral of honorary doctorates upon Univ.-Prof. Dr. Nada Lavrač and Univ.-Prof. Dr. Ivan Bratko.

Journal publication accepted @ IEEE Internet Computing

Title: From Pixels to Semantics: Edge AI for UAV-Based Critical Infrastructure Inspection

Journal: IEEE Internet Computing

Authors: Reza Farahani(TU Wien), Naser Hossein Motlagh (University of Helsinki, Finland), Zoha Azimi (AAU), Christian Timmerer (AAU), Lorenzo Carnevale (University of Messina, Italy), Sasu Tarkoma (University of Helsinki, Finland), Schahram Dustdar(TU Wien)

Abstract: Critical infrastructure assets such as bridges, tunnels, dams, and power line networks require timely and scalable inspection. While conventional manual inspection remains costly and hazardous, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based inspection has emerged as an efficient alternative for monitoring difficult-to-access structures. Existing UAV inspection pipelines have evolved from cloud-centric offline processing toward edge-based perception using lightweight object detectors such as YOLO for real- time defect localization. This article explores the transition toward fully edge-native semantic inspection powered by lightweight vision language models (VLMs), where UAVs move beyond object detection toward contextual structural understanding. It categorizes existing UAV inspection architectures, identifies their key system challenges and architectural requirements, and experimentally assesses the feasibility of semantic edge intelligence on NVIDIA Jetson UAV-class hardware using the COCO-Bridge dataset. The evaluation integrates a fine-tuned YOLO-26M for object localization and a lightweight SmolVLM-256 for semantic reasoning. Finally, it outlines future directions toward agentic, autonomous, trustworthy, and collaborative semantic UAV inspection across the edge-cloud continuum.

Honourable Mention award for Kseniia @ ACM CHI PLAY

Kseniia´s paper, “You have a long way to go”: Migrant and Displaced People as Authors in a Storytelling Game Jam, was selected as one of the Honourable Mention recipients for CHI PLAY 2026.

The Honourable Mention Award at ACM CHI PLAY (The Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play) is a prestigious distinction given to top-tier papers submitted to the conference.

 

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Felix @ Visuelle Kultur: Mensch – Bild – Maschine

On 7 October, Dr Felix Schniz participated in the opening panel discussion to this semester’s Ring Lecture Visuelle Kultur: Mensch – Bild – Maschine. The talk featured representatives of various AAU departments and academic traditions as it aimed to provide an overview of contemporary research perspectives on the relation of digital imagery, human creators and spectators, and the meaning of these relations. The panelists introduced augmented reality technologies for museums to the audience, dissected the challenges of working with AI, and questioned ownership and authenticity between social media, digital archives, and video games.

Hadi

Hadi is the finalist of CASS VSPC Rising Star 2026 Award

The Visual Signal Processing and Communications (VSPC) Rising Star Program was established in 2023 by the CAS Society VSPC Technical Committee (TC) to annually recognise an expert(s) in emerging domains of visual signal processing and communications for his/her accomplishments and vision.

This year, Hadi was nominated and will give a 30-minute presentation, followed by a Q&A session, at the upcoming VCIP 2026 Conference, to be held in Singapore from December 13-16, 2026.

 

Talk @ Annual Conference of the Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung

The Book, the Board, and the Lantern in the Dark
Violence, Vulnerability, and Intermedial Player Immersion in Kingdom Death: Monster

Where: Cologne University

Conference: Annual conference of the Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung, September 17-19

 

Immersion is often understood as an enthralling concept, reserved for complex virtual worlds that veil reality behind an integral mediated experience. I challenge this assumption and argue that analogue games can cultivate immersive experiences, even when they are played with clearly separable material components. Using the narrative boutique board game Kingdom Death: Monster (Poots 2015) as a case study, I demonstrate how the game fosters immersion across different analogue media components by the perpetual evocation of violence against a frail player community.

Relying on the theoretical observations of Paul Wake, who highlights the importance of a board game’s play-performance that fills all indeterminacy with player-created meaning (cf. 2023, 49) and by focusing on the game’s intermedial connotations (via Wolf 1999, Rajewski 2010, and Ellenström 2021), I portray how Kingdom Death: Monster creates immersion between different media artefacts in a reliance on violence. The game at first fosters intimacy through a shared reading moment that leads to a co-op bonding survival gameplay segment, then it effectively exploits both sensations by forcing players into violent discomfort to evoke vulnerability. Both rulebook and play-sequence interact with one another under this shared leitmotif, upheld across two different media artefacts and the metaphoric-aesthetic driving factors of Eros and Thanatos in the sense of a discomfort between deadly threats and uncomfortable intimacy (following Freud [1920] 1955). Ultimately, I thereby demonstrate how the game evokes immersive qualities typically not connected with the abstract, engaging-rather-than-affective, physical medium.

A concluding discussion of the presented findings questions the adequacy of common observations on immersive traits in specifically analogue game studies. By discussing opportunities for methodological finetuning, my presentation’s outlook, in turn, resonates with the idea of a ‘painful playthrough,’ as worked with by Blackburn and Timmell (cf. 2024, 113) and shows how self-experienced stress in a discomforting game moment must be endured for the sake of analysing violent play.

 

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5 Talks @ Replaying Japan 2026 – Kseniia,Tom

Kseniia & Tom gave talks at the Replaying Japan 2026 – August 2026

Replaying Japan 2026 also released “conference proceedings”, which include all extended abstracts of talks presented in the conference: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Rwx0uaOOsluPYUPUlin4Wa-ugW8yRnDW/view

 

  • The Character and the Card: Affective Database Consumption and Ludology in the Japanese TCG Market
    • by Tom Tucek and Shivi Vats
    • August 20, 2026
    • This talk explains the structural differences between the Japanese Trading Card Game market, which heavily relies on transmedia intellectual properties, and the Western market, which is traditionally more focused on game mechanics. Drawing on theories of the Japanese Media Mix and affective database consumption, the presentation explores how franchises like Pokémon and Weiß Schwarz monetise player attachment to characters rather than competitive utility. It then contrasts this character-driven trend with the game Flesh and Blood, demonstrating how a mechanics-focused title can carve out a space in Japan by focusing on in-person community building within local game stores.
  • Recontextualizing the King: Gender-Bending and Transmedia Storytelling in Japanese Video Games
    • by Tom Tucek
    • August 20, 2026
    • This talk explores how Japanese video games often happen to use a form of “reverse exoticism” and gender-bending to transform Western mythological figures, such as King Arthur, into female heroines. Using the Fate franchise as a case study, the talk argues that this reimagining can simultaneously deconstruct traditional patriarchal historical narratives and optimise the character for commercial database consumption. By removing these figures from their historical context and repackaging them as aggregate character tropes, Japanese creators turn Western myths into fluid, interactive transmedia assets.
  • I Pose, Therefore I Man: How JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R Challenges the Myth of Masculine Neutrality
    • by Kseniia Harshina
    • August 20, 2026
    • This talk explains how the fighting game JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R challenges the assumption that masculinity in video games is a natural, neutral default. By analysing the title’s stylised combat, fashion, and integrated posing mechanics through the comparative lenses of professional wrestling and drag king theory, this analysis demonstrates how masculinity is actively staged as a visible, assembled performance. Focus is placed on how the game transforms virtual combat into a theatrical spectacle in which masculine power is communicated through aesthetic excess and constant self-display.
  • “For Me, It’s Always Like This”: Gendered Catharsis in Silent Hill Across Game and Film
    • by Kseniia Harshina
    • August 20, 2026
    • This talk explains how the Silent Hill franchise externalises the trauma of female characters by physically manifesting their suffering into the environmental design of the games and film adaptations. By comparing the original 1999 game, its 2006 cinematic adaptation, and Silent Hill 2, this talk analyses how narrative perspective dictates whether protagonists can fully witness or comprehend these materialised spaces of abuse, using feminist game studies to consider whose viewpoint guides players in a horror world based on women’s pain.
  • The Gacha Paradox: Gambling Awareness and Regulation Attitudes Among Japanese University Students
    • by Tom Tucek
    • August 21, 2026
    • This lightning talk presents findings from a mixed-methods study exploring how Japanese university students perceive the gambling elements of gacha systems in mobile games. The results reveal a contradiction where nearly 70% of surveyed students recognise gacha as a form of gambling, yet the majority simultaneously oppose legal regulations or age restrictions. Qualitative follow-up interviews suggest that the cultural normalisation of quasi-gambling institutions, such as Pachinko, frames such spending as a matter of personal freedom rather than a consumer-protection issue.
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Video Game Cultures 2026 Talks

Four Talks Presented at This Year’s VGC in Klagenfurt, 3–5 September 2026

  • Demystifying the Black Box: Teaching Generative AI Literacy Through Interactive Prototypes
    • by Tom Tucek
    • September 3, 2026
    • This talk explains the black-box system of generative AI, argues for the need for genAI literacy education, and shows various prototype video game implementations that aim to increase genAI literacy. A self-made prototype demonstrates how the ludic and interactive nature of video games is uniquely suited to explaining generative AI mechanisms.
  • Building Energy Literacy Through Minecraft
    • by Mathias Lux
    • September 3, 2026
  • Lab Hazards
    • by Felix Schniz and Sabrina Größing
    • September 5, 2026
  • Ludic Autoethnography
    • by Kseniia Harshina
    • September 5, 2026

 

 

Hadi

4 papers accepted @ VCIP 2026

4 papers got accepted for VCIP 2026, Singapore, December 13-16, 2026

 

  1. 3D Gaussian Splatting Rendering Performance Trade-offs on the Meta Quest 3 – Authors: Milad Ghanbari, Hadi Amirpourazarian, Christian Timmerer
  2. Bitrate Ladder Analysis for UHD Adaptive Streaming: From AVC to AV2 – Authors: Kamran Qureshi, Hadi Amirpourazarian, Christian Timmerer
  3. Efficient Quality Controller for Video Encoding – Authors: Yiying Wei, Hadi Amirpourazarian, Christian Timmerer
  4. Spatial Resampling of V-PCC Maps for Improved Low-Bitrate Point Cloud Compression – Authors: Mykyta Skipenko, Hadi Amirpourazarian

Singapore Skyline

 

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