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At the beginning of June, the German Weather Service counted 177,000 lightning bolts in the night sky within a few days. The natural spectacle had consequences:  Several people were injured by gusts of wind, hail and rain. Together with Germany’s National Meteorological Service, the Deutscher Wetterdienst, computer science professor Jens Dittrich and his doctoral student Christian Schön from Saarland University are now working on a system that is supposed to predict local thunderstorms more precisely than before. It is based on satellite images and artificial intelligence. In order to investigate this approach in more detail, the researchers will receive 270,000 euros from the Federal Ministry of Transport.

The Department of Computer Science at Saarland University turned 50 years old as of a few days ago. While Günter Hotz was the first professor of computer science in 1969, there are now 1900 students enrolled in computer science, and around 800 scientists conduct research at the six world-renowned research institutes, which jointly operate as the "Saarland Informatics Campus" (SIC). During the last weekend in May, the Department of Computer Science celebrated its birthday with several events.

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