Director Prof. Dr.-Ing. Peter Liggesmeyer

Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Peter Liggesmeyer is the Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering IESE in Kaiserslautern and holds the chair of Software Engineering in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU). From 2014 to 2017, he managed the affairs of the Gesellschaft für Informatik (GI e.V., German Informatics Society) as its President. He is the scientific spokesperson of the “Research Council Industrie 4.0”, In 2022, he was elected to the Board of Directors of the “Society of German Natural Scientists and Physicians GDNAE” as the representative for mathematics/computer science. The “Feldafinger Kreis” welcomed him as a member in 2022. In 2023, he received the “German Award for Software Quality” for his research work.

Prof. Liggesmeyer studied Electrical Engineering with an emphasis on Data Technology at the University of Paderborn and obtained his doctorate with honors from Ruhr University Bochum in 1992, where he also completed his habilitation thesis on “Quality Assurance of Software-Intensive Technical Systems” in 2000. From 2000 to 2004, he was Professor for Software Engineering and Quality Management at the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) at the University of Potsdam.

Further stages of his career included setting up a competence center on “Safety Analysis and Risk Management” in the Central Department of Research and Development of Siemens AG, Munich (1993 to 2000). From 1988 to 1993, he was a researcher at the Chair of Software Technology in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Ruhr University Bochum, where he held regular teaching assignments from 1993 to 2000. Other teaching assignments took him to the Technical Universities of Munich and Ilmenau, and to Friedrich Schiller University Jena.

Prior to being elected President of the Gesellschaft für Informatik, Prof. Liggesmeyer had already been its vice-president and long-time spokesman of both the expert group “Software Technology” and the Division of Software Technology and Information Systems. In the latter capacity, he was a member of the Advisory Board. Prof. Liggesmeyer is a co-founder of the Working Group “Test, Analysis, and Verification of Software” of the GI. He is also a member of the IEEE Computer Society as well as of the Münchener Kreis. Prof. Liggesmeyer has received several scientific awards, including the Software Engineering Award of the Ernst Denert Foundation in 1993. In the context of the Science Year 2014, he was chairman of the jury that selected “Germany’s Digital Minds” on behalf of the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

Prof. Liggesmeyer is the author of numerous scientific articles and popular books, particularly the standard reference work “Software Quality” (2002, 2nd edition 2009). He also participates regularly in many national and international program committees. He was or is co-editor of various professional journals, including “Informatik-Spektrum”, “Informatik Forschung & Entwicklung” (both Springer-Verlag), “information technology” (Oldenbourg-Verlag), and “Lecture Notes in Informatics” (GI).

Prof. Liggesmeyer is a member of the advisory board of the BMBF program “Future of Value Creation – Research on Production, Services and Work”, of the expert advisory board of the quality seal “Software made in Germany”, and of the competence network “Digitalization in Agriculture” of the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL). As a member of the platform “Security, Protection and Trust for the Society and the Economy” of the German Federal Ministry of the Interior as well as a member of the platform “Digitization in Education and Science” of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, he has collaborated on contributions to the German National IT Summit, resp. the Digital Summit.

He is a member of the scientific advisory board of Software AG, Darmstadt and of Vicomtech, San Sebastian, Spain. He is also a member of the Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC) for Fraunhofer USA, and deputy spokesperson of the Fraunhofer Strategic Research Field “Intelligent Medicine”. From 2018 to 2023, he was the chairman of the Governing Council of the “Assuring Autonomy International Programme (AAIP)”, a partnership between the Lloyd’s Register Foundation, London, and the University of York (United Kingdom).

In 2015, he was appointed by the Bavarian parliament as chairman of the Commission of Experts for the Bavarian Center for Digitalization (ZD.B). Furthermore, he was a liaison officer for the German National Academic Foundation (2009 – 2014).

Prof. Liggesmeyer has been advising many leading companies in matters of technology issues. He is a member of the Center for Digital Commercial Vehicle Technology (ZNT) and of the university priority areas “Construction Site of the Future” and “Region and City” at TU Kaiserslautern. His research interests are safety and dependability analysis techniques as well as comprehensive security and safety analysis processes for Digital Ecosystems, primarily in the application fields of digital commercial vehicle technology, Industry 4.0, medicine, and “Smart Rural Areas”.