Dr. Benjamin Erb

Post-Doctoral Researcher • Distributed Systems Therapist

Welcome! My name is Benjamin Erb and I am a computer scientist primarily working in the field of distributed systems and interdisciplinary projects, especially with researchers from psychology.

I am currently employed as a researcher at the Institute of Distributed Systems, Ulm University. I hold a Diploma degree in Computer Science in Media and a Bachelor degree in Psychology from Ulm University. In 2019, I received my doctoral degree for my work on a novel live graph computing approach that combines concepts of traditional graph computing with features from event-driven architectures.

Main Research Interests
  • I have a strong interest in the design and implementation of data-intensive architectures, in particular distributed platforms for data processing. This includes processing models and programming abstractions for special data (e.g., evolving graph structures) as well as underlying platform architectures that aim for proper performance and scalability. I take special interest in data-intensive systems that consume stream-based input data and provide temporal capabilities such as retrospection. Here, I am using techniques such as event sourcing to enable history-aware processing.
  • A second research interest addresses the interaction between data privacy and psychology. On the one hand, this includes the tension field between confidentiality, data protection, and empirical research in psychology. Here, I am exploring potential threats to privacy from public research data sets due to the open science movement, but also technical solutions and mitigations based on privacy-enhancing technologies. On the other hand, I am also interested in psychological aspects of privacy to better understand user behavior when it comes to privacy decisions.

Updates

Jun 20, 2022 I have been invited as a guest lecturer for the ReykjavĂ­k Summer School on Secure and Reliable Distributed Systems 2022 and gave a talk on Reliable Online Event Processing with Event Sourcing.
Apr 28, 2022 I have been awarded internal research start-up funding from Ulm University as part of the ProTrainU program for my work on privacy-enhanced empirical research platforms.
Jan 17, 2022 New personal website online.

Latest Publications

  1. Article Frontiers in Digi...
    A chatbot-based intervention with ELME to improve stress and health-related parameters in a stressed sample: Study protocol of a randomised controlled trial
    Schillings, Christine, MeiĂźner, Dominik, Erb, Benjamin, Schultchen, Dana, Bendig, Eileen, and Pollatos, Olga
    Frontiers in Digital Health 2023
  2. Springer Internat...
    Defining Privacy
    Kargl, Frank, Erb, Benjamin, and Bösch, Christoph
    2023
  3. Conference Paper ICPE ’23
    Methodology and Framework to Determine the Isolation Capabilities of Virtualisation Technologies
    Volpert, Simon, Erb, Benjamin, Eisenhart, Georg, Seybold, Daniel, Wesner, Stefan, and Domaschka, Jörg
    In Proceedings of the 2023 ACM/SPEC International Conference on Performance Engineering 2023
  4. Conference Paper ICPE ’22
    SPEC Research — Introducing the Predictive Data Analytics Working Group
    Bauer, André, Leznik, Mark, Iqbal, Md Shahriar, Seybold, Daniel, Trubin, Igor, Erb, Benjamin, Domaschka, Jörg, and Jamshidi, Pooyan
    In Companion of the 2022 ACM/SPEC International Conference on Performance Engineering 2022
  5. Article Frontiers in Big ...
    Are you willing to self-disclose for science? Effects of Privacy Awareness (PA) and Trust in Privacy (TIP) on self-disclosure of personal and health data in online scientific studies -an experimental study
    Herbert, Cornelia, Marschin, Verena, Erb, Benjamin, MeiĂźner, Dominik, Aufheimer, Maria, and Boesch, Christoph
    Frontiers in Big Data 2021