Prof Dr Sebastian Baltes takes over the professorship of Software Engineering

After completing his doctorate at the University of Trier, Prof Dr Sebastian Baltes moved to Australia. He worked as a lecturer at the University of Adelaide from 2019 until the pandemic brought him back to Germany. He began working in the software industry, gained practical experience and most recently worked at SAP. "There, I worked on innovation topics in the area of SAP's cloud platform and was also able to conduct in-house research," says Baltes. "My work has always been at the interface between research and practice."

He also chose the University of Bayreuth because of the city: "The campus university and the cityscape characterised by students is definitely a reason to come to Bayreuth," says Baltes. "But the generational change in software engineering and the associated opportunity to help shape change also prompted me to accept the offer."

In future, Baltes also wants to utilise his practical network and give students the opportunity to work on projects with local companies. "I'm looking forward to contributing my practical experience to research and teaching. I want to use my existing contacts in practice to advance relevant and at the same time scientifically challenging research topics."

The applicability of what he has learnt is always important to him. "I think if you have stories from the real world of work that underpin the theoretical knowledge, then you can get students even more enthusiastic about the subject."