DiBiHo in review: Design rationales and proof of concept
12-01, 14:30–15:30 (Europe/Berlin), Stage 1, Leibniz-Saal, BBAW

The session will review the research project "Digital Credentials for Higher Education Institutions" (DiBiHo) and present its findings and proof of concept.


During the past two years, the DiBiHo research project - comprising the Technical University of Munich (TUM), the Hasso-Plattner Institute for Digital Engineering (HPI) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) - has explored infrastructure standards for digital academic credentials for the German Higher Education landscape in an international setting. The research covers questions on trust anchoring through suitable technical solutions, the link between an issued credential and the natural identity of the learner, user consent, storage and revocation of credentials and lastly, their representation. The presented prototype relies on common technical components, based on open standards, to demonstrate the process of issuing, verifying and revoking digital credentials for the use cases final diploma, MOOC and scholarship.

DiBiHo is a joint undertaking between the Technical University of Munich (TUM), the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Engineering (HPI) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research under the funding code 534800. The responsibility for the content of this event lies with the organising institutions.

Felix Hoops is a research associate at the chair of Software Engineering for Business Information Systems at Technical University of Munich (TUM) since May 2021. He holds a master's degree in Informatics from TUM and wrote his thesis on "Threat Analysis, Evaluation, and Mitigation for Smart Contracts Endorsed by TLS/SSL Certificates". During his studies, Mr. Hoops spent a semester abroad at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Katja Assaf has finished her studies in mathematics at TU Berlin in 2017. She proceeded to work for Siemens Mobility as a Security Expert and Productmanager, before returning to academia in 2021. Since then she has been working as a researcher for the DiBiHo project with a focus on cryptography.

Daniel is pursuing his PhD research in the field of IT-Security education and awareness at the chair of Prof. Dr. Christoph Meinel at the Hasso-Plattner-Institute.

Alexander Mühle is a PhD student at the Hasso Plattner Institute in the department for internet systems and technologies. He completed his BSc and MSc in Computer Science at the Technical University Berlin with a focus on distributed systems and networks.

His research interests centre around aspects of security and privacy in peer-to-peer applications as well as self-sovereign identity management.

Prof. Dr. sc. nat. Dr. rer. nat. Christoph Meinel (1954) has been Director and CEO of the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Engineering gGmbH HPI since 2004 and was the founding Dean of the Digital Engineering Faculty at the University of Potsdam from 2017 - 2021. He is a C4 professor of computer science and heads the Department of Internet Technology and Systems.

Meinel is, among other things, a member of acatech, the National German Academy of Science and Engineering, Governor of the Technion in Haifa, member of various supervisory boards and advisory boards, visiting professor at various universities in Germany and abroad and was Programme Director of the HPI-Stanford Design Thinking Research Program from 2008 - 2022.

With his team, he developed the first European MOOC platform openHPI in 2012 and has since offered interactive online courses for many thousands of learners on the openHPI platform.