April 22, 2021

At the Senate meeting on Tuesday, April 20, 2021, of Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences, Prof. Dr. Angelika Altmann-Dieses was confirmed in the office of Vice-President for Academic and International Affairs with an overwhelming majority. This marks the beginning of her second term of four years. She was first elected as the university's Vice-President in May 2018 and took up her new post on September 1, 2018.

Professor Altmann-Dieses thanked the electoral body for the trust placed in her: "I am pleased that I will have the opportunity in the coming years to further contribute my experience in the stra­tegic orientation and interna­tionalization of our university and also about the acknowledgement of what Senior Management, my staff and I have achieved in the past years."

"We are currently in the third Corona semester, so that a significant part of my tenure was and is dedicated to the goal of making it possible for our students to attend all lectures and laboratory courses as well as to complete all their studies and examinations despite these adverse conditions, some of which change on a weekly basis," said the Vice-President. "An evaluation shows that together we have largely achieved this goal, thanks in particular to the tireless commitment of our professors. The Corona pandemic has massively accelerated the digitization of teaching by throwing all of us – teachers, students, and the university as a whole – into the deep end overnight. While things were understandably still a bit bumpy in some places during the last summer semester, the evaluations show that we have already succeeded in developing our teaching from emergency remote teaching to didactically sophisticated, competency-oriented digital and hybrid teaching and learning formats." 

Internationalization also experienced particular constraints due to the Corona pandemic. Student exchanges were and are limited due to visa issues, changing risk area assessments and quarantine regulations. "We were all the more pleased that our two major DAAD applications 'BA.International' and 'IngEnium', amounting to approximately 1.5 million euros, were approved at the end of last year," emphasizes Dr. Altmann-Dieses, "thus enabling us to have options in the future in the expansion of our internationalization activities to an unprecedented extent."

"I am delighted to be able to continue representing Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences as Vice-President," concludes Prof. Dr. Angelika Altmann-Dieses. "The greatest challenge ­for the next few years is and will remain the recruitment of suitable applicants, especially for our technical degree programs. The goal is also to promptly address future topics such as artificial intelligence in new study programs and, on the other hand, to integrate digital competencies for the world of work 4.0 into all of our existing study programs."

Angelika Altmann-Dieses studied mathematics at the University of Heidelberg and the University of Oxford, England. She conducted her doctorate at the Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing (IWR) at the University of Heidelberg in close cooperation with BASF SE, graduating with honors at the end of 2000. She started her professional career in 2001 at BASF SE in Ludwigshafen, where she held various positions until 2008. After joining Corporate Research as Head of the "Scientific Computing" laboratory, she moved to Central Strategic Planning in 2003, where she was responsible for various projects of the Board of Directors. Most recently, she was responsible in Marketing for the product management of a major product in the petrochemicals sector.

Dr. Altmann-Dieses joined Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences in 2008. As a professor of mathematics, she has since taught at the Faculty of Management Science and Engineering and, as a member of the university's own Institute for Air-Conditioning, Refrigeration and Environmental Technology, she conducts research in the field of mixed-integer nonlinear optimal control and model-predictive control of energy systems. She is active as a reviewer in national and international accreditation procedures and funding programs, including for the German Science Council. From 2012 on she served as Vice-Dean of the Faculty as well as Dean of Studies for the Bachelor's program in Business Administration and Engineering. During this time, she made a particular contribution to the intensive expansion of the internationalization of the faculty and the introduction of the new degree program "Business Administration and Engineering International". She also played a leading role in establishing a double degree program with the Universidad Nacional del Litoral in Santa Fe, Argentina, for the Bachelor's degree program in Business Administration and Engineering, which she still heads today. In December 2020, she was appointed as one of two Vice-Presidents to the Corona Task Force of the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts of the state of Baden-Württemberg (MWK). For the summer semester of 2021, the MWK appointed her as the sole representative for the state's universities of applied sciences on the MWK's scientific advisory board "Suitability and Selection."