GR/AP Interactive Recommender Systems for Sustainability Goals

Recommender systems recommend movies, restaurants, or other items to an active user based on information about users and items. Research in this area must not only consider the underlying algorithms, but also how users interact with the system. Delivering accurate and timely information is particularly valuable in complex scenarios. A current research focus is to investigate responsible recommender systems, for example, systems contributing to the UN Sustainability Development Goals (http://sdgs.un.org/goals).

We offer topics as Guided Research in the Informatics (or related) Master’s program (IN2169), Application Project in the Master Data Engineering and Analytics program (IN2328), in the research area of human-centered interactive recommender systems. The goal is to identify a specific problem related to the mentioned UN Sustainability Development Goals, and develop and evaluate a focused solution for that. Example scenarios include (but are not limited to):

• Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages (goal 3), e.g. an app to encourage and recommend healthy behavior
• Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all (goal 4), e.g. recommending courses or further education
• Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all (goal 7), e.g. visualize energy consumption and recommend energy-saving options
• Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns (goal 12), e.g. recommend more sustainable tourism activities

The proposed course of action is in general:

• Overview of the state-of-the-art, both in existing applications and also research literature
• Designing a solution that can be very focused but should include some novel aspect(s)
• Implementing a prototype that allows test users to interact with the system
• Conducting a user-centered evaluation using an appropriate methodology

The prototype application can be developed on any platform, e.g., Web-based or as a mobile application. Prerequisites are high motivation and good enough programming skills in the selected platform. Please send your application (brief CV, transcript of records and short motivation statement) to Wolfgang Wörndl (woerndl@cit.tum.de) by March 20th, 2026, with a response and decision soon after. The actual start of the project is flexible, but a GR or AP module has to be registered by the first week of a semester.