As Austria's largest research and technology organisation for applied research, we are dedicated to make substantial contributions to solving the major challenges of our time, climate change and digitisation. To achieve our goals, we rely on our specific research, development and technology competencies, which are the basis of our commitment to excellence in all areas. With our open culture of innovation and our motivated, international teams, we are working to position AIT as Austria's leading research institution at the highest international level and to make a positive contribution to the economy and society.

Our Center for Technology Experience located in Vienna, invites applications for Master Theses projects for several topics (see below). In our interdisciplinary team, we focus on future approaches in Human-Computer Interaction and Contextual User Experience. The Center for Technology Experience is acting in a variety of challenging application contexts. We are passionate about addressing the design and development of future human-centered systems to meet diverse needs by exploiting current and future technological building blocks as well as a wide set of human-centred approaches and technologies. By using prototypes, we generate creative concepts and ideas, which are turned into practical and tangible experiences. Subsequently, these experiences are thoroughly studied in terms of their acceptability and functionality.

The master theses projects will be part of the AIT Technology Experience Center´s Next Generation HCI Talents Programme, which offers dedicated skill developments as well as training sessions, collaborative work on shared research topics, and active exchange among students and experts. The programme is designed to foster interdisciplinary learning and support young talents in shaping the future of Human-Computer Interaction in an applied setting.

• Topic: Multi-Level Measurement of User Status and Detection of User Behaviour Patterns in challenging situations (e.g. stress optimization; AI-driven tool for real-time assessment of challenging training situations; visualization of data)
• Topic: Qualities and Future Forms of Human-AI Interaction (e.g. Virtual Agents for various application scenarios; AI-driven framework to develop Virtual Agents for varying contexts, frameworks for Human-AI quality assessments)
• Topic: Next Generation User-Centered Design and Development (e.g. exploring advanced methods for specific situations; AI as co-creator in specific phases of UCD)
• Topic: Novel approaches to Human-Data Interaction (e.g. sensemaking with interactivity; voice interaction for human-data interaction; multimodal interaction approaches)
• Topic: Multimodal Approaches for Industrial Human-Machine Interfaces (e.g. parameterisation; configuration; human in the loop; personalization; context awareness, situational awareness, multimodal input and output mechanisms)

• Topic: Development of multimodal and tangible XR interaction concepts for training and simulation (e.g. enhancing presence in XR; AI mechanisms in and for XR; XR scenario building; XR based training mechanisms; exploitation of Gaussian Splatting)
• Topic: Future approaches to Technology Enhanced Mechanisms to foster diversity thinking, togetherness and social co-experience (e.g. XR scenarios to foster diversity thinking and awareness; AI-supported tool for the interactive self-assessment and development of diversity and inclusion in organizations; understanding future factors of positive co-experience)
• Topic: New approaches to Technology Enabled Resilience (e.g. incentive approaches towards more recycling; digital interfaces that support mental wellbeing and resilience; behaviour change strategies towards resilience; AI-supported tools to foster resilience in work contexts).