Universität Duisburg-Essen

The "Networked Embedded Systems" (NES) group was founded in 2009 with the change in position of Pedro Marrón, the head of the group, from the University of Bonn to the University of Duisburg-Essen. Scientists at NES have worked on research and development projects for government agencies, associations and industry (Siemens, ...). Examples of European projects, where current members of NES have worked on, are the Embedded WiSeNts coordination action and the CarTALK research project. While the overall objective of CarTALK was the development of driver assistance systems using ad-hoc communication between vehicles, the members of the group contributed routing protocols for ad-hoc networks. The goal of the Embedded WiSeNts coordination action was to formulate a common vision as well as a roadmap towards wireless sensor networks and cooperating embedded systems. The current members of NES were responsible for the development of the roadmap itself, interaction with the industry and dissemination activities related to the project. Currently NES is participating as a founding member in the AWARE project and the EMMA project, both funded by the EC. The goal of AWARE is to combine the capabilities of UAVs, robots, cameras and sensor networks to fight the spread of fire in indoor scenarios. The members of NES are responsible for the design and implementation of a publish/subscribe middleware that allows for the seamless communication of entities in the system. The goal of the EMMA project is the development of a novel embedded communication middleware for wireless cooperating objects in automotive applications.

Apart from these European projects, the NES group is also working on middleware systems that enable the efficient utilization of sensor networks in Ubiquitous Computing applications with a specific focus on home and office automation. Finally, NES has a bilateral project with Siemens AG for the development of robust self-management concepts for the operational maintenance in wireless sensor network deployments.

Prof. Dr. Pedro José Marrón received his bachelor and master's degree in computer engineering from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1996 and 1998 respectively. During his stay in Michigan, he worked as a teaching and research assistant in the areas of databases, compiler construction and distributed systems. At the end of 1999, he moved to the University of Freiburg in Germany to work on his Ph.D., which he received with honours in 2001. From 2003 until 2007, he worked at the University of Stuttgart as a senior researcher, leading  the mobile data management and sensor network group. In 2007 he left Stuttgart to become a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Bonn. In 2009 he became a Professore of Computer Science at the University of Duisburg-Essen were he is currently head of the "Networked Embedded Systems" group (NES), composed of 8 full time researchers working on various aspects of sensor and pervasive systems. At the time, he has published over 70 papers in international conferences and journals and is the main editor and a main author of the Embedded WiSeNts Roadmap written as part of the Embedded WiSeNts Coordination Action. His current research interests are distributed systems, mobile data management, location aware computing, sensor networks and pervasive computing. He is a member of the ACM and GI.