Wolfram Schiffmann

Background

About Wolfram Schiffmann

Wolfram Schiffmann studied electrical and computer engineering at the Universities of Kaiserslautern and Saarbrücken. From 1983 to he was a scientific assistant at computer science department of the University of Koblenz. He worked as a lecturer at the University of Saarbrücken (1983-1992). Since he holds a full professorship of Computer Engineering at Germany’s biggest University, the FernUniversität in Hagen. His current research interests are in the areas of Intelligent Flight Assistance Systems. In former times his research was focused on Artificial neural networks (habilitation thesis), Computer architectures for parallel processing, Cluster- and Gridcomputing, Scheduling Algorithms for task graphs, Energy-efficient computing and new unconventional computer architectures that use an neuromorphic and mixed-signal approach. Wolfram Schiffmann received a Diploma in Electrical Engineering in 1983, a Doctoral Engineer Degree (Dr-Ing.) both at the University of Saarbrücken, and a Habilitation Degree (comparable to a second Doctoral Degree) in computer engineering at the University of Koblenz in 1998. Currently I'm devising intelligent flight assistance systems mainly for the case of an emergency. It is important to distinguish two main causes for an emergency of an aircraft: 1. a pilots incapacitation and 2. a loss of thrust. The first cause is easier to recover from because we just have to conduct an automatic landing (e.g. GARMIN's Autoland system is an example for such an incapacitation-based emergency). The second cause is much more severe because our flexibility is limited due to the altitude remaining when the engine-out happened. In case of this kind of emergency the time to recover and the opportunities are highly restricted. Our research is focused on both kinds of emergencies and we could manage to find solutions even if both emergency situations happened simultaneously. In this case we conduct an autoland without any thrust.