1st International Workshop on Teaching the Internet of Things (Teach-IoT)

Program

Monday, September 22nd, 2025

10:30 am – 10:50 am

Snack-o-Mation: A Sweet Introduction to Industrial Automation and the Internet of Things

Marco Beck (University of Freiburg), Philipp Sommer (ABB Research Switzerland), Philipp Scholl (ABB Research Switzerland), Balz Maag (ABB Research Switzerland), Sandro Schönborn (ABB Research Switzerland)
PDF

10:50 am – 11:10 am

Taming the Challenges of Teaching the IoT

Bernd-Christian Renner (Hamburg University of Technology), Peter Oppermann (Hamburg University of Technology), Fabian Steinmetz (Hamburg University of Technology)
PDF

11:10 am – 11:30 am

Wireless Networking-Lab – A Project-Based Approach for Teaching WSN Fundamentals

Leonard Zurek (TU Braunschweig), Jan Schlichter (TU Braunschweig), Sven Pullwitt (TU Braunschweig), Felix Büsching (Ostfalia – University of Applied Sciences), Lars Wolf (TU Braunschweig)
PDF​

11:30 am – 11:50 am

Do cool stuff! – The Incredible Charm of Open-Ended Tasks

Felix Büsching (Ostfalia – University of Applied Sciences), Samira Nazemi (Ostfalia – University of Applied Sciences), Mia Sörensen (Ostfalia – University of Applied Sciences), Maurice-Christian Ziesmann (Ostfalia – University of Applied Sciences)
PDF

11:50 am – 12:10 pm

15 Years of IoT Education: a Shift from Theory to Practice

Antonio Boiano (Politecnico di Milano), Fabio Palmese (Politecnico di Milano), Alessandro Redondi (Politecnico di Milano), Matteo Cesana (Politecnico di Milano)
PDF

12:10 pm – 12:30 pm

Panel 1: Challenges, opportunities and next steps

Authors of session 1

Lunch break

1:30 pm – 1:50 pm

Bringing Networked Sensing to High School

Devin Jean (Vanderbilt University), Saman Kittani (Vanderbilt University), Gordon Stein (Vanderbilt University), Akos Ledeczi (Vanderbilt University)
PDF

1:50 pm – 2:10 pm

MoleNet: A Wireless Sensing Platform for Teaching and Research in the Internet of Things

Jens Dede (University of Bremen, Germany), Faruk Kollar (University of Bremen, Germany), Daniel Helms (University of Bremen, Germany), Asanga Udugama (University of Bremen, Germany), Andreas Könsgen (University of Bremen, Germany), Saurabh Band (University of Bremen, Germany), Shadi Attarha (University of Bremen, Germany), Jennifer Horstmann (University of Bremen, Germany), Luis Hagemann (University of Bremen, Germany), Anna Förster (University of Bremen, Germany)
PDF

2:10 pm – 2:30 pm

Enabling Industry 4.0 Applications

Koojana Kuladinithi (Hamburg University of Technology), Yevhenii Shudrenko (Hamburg University of Technology), Dorothea Ellinger (Hamburg University of Technology)
PDF

2:30 pm – 2:50 pm

Teaching the Internet of Things with BLE and Zephyr

Laura Harms (Kiel University, Germany and Hamburg University of Technology, Germany), Olaf Landsiedel (Hamburg University of Technology, Germany and Kiel University, Germany)
PDF

2:50 pm – 3:10 pm

Addressing the five challenges in Teaching IOT

Shrutkirthi Godkhindi (Indian Institute of Science), TV Prabhakar (Indian Institute of Science), Jamadagni H S (Indian Institute of Science)
PDF

Coffee break

3:30 pm – 3:50 pm

Panel 2: Challenges, opportunities and next steps

Authors of session 2

3:50 pm – 4:50 pm

Demo: Turning Mobile Phones into Educational IoT Devices

Devin Jean (Vanderbilt University), Saman Kittani (Vanderbilt University), Gordon Stein (Vanderbilt University), Akos Ledeczi (Vanderbilt University)
PDF

Demo: Teaching IoT with a Capture-the-Flag Challenge

Antonio Boiano (Politecnico di Milano), Fabio Palmese (Politecnico di Milano), Alessandro Redondi (Politecnico di Milano), Matteo Cesana (Politecnico di Milano)
PDF

Demo: Teaching How to Enable Industry 4.0 Applications using TSCH in Cooja Simulator

Koojana Kuladinithi (Hamburg University of Technology), Yevhenii Shudrenko (Hamburg University of Technology)
PDF

Demo MoleNet: A Wireless Sensing Platform for Teaching and Research in the Internet of Things

Jens Dede (University of Bremen, Germany), Faruk Kollar (University of Bremen, Germany), Daniel Helms (University of Bremen, Germany), Asanga Udugama (University of Bremen, Germany), Andreas Könsgen (University of Bremen, Germany), Saurabh Band (University of Bremen, Germany), Shadi Attarha (University of Bremen, Germany), Jennifer Horstmann (University of Bremen, Germany), Luis Hagemann (University of Bremen, Germany), Anna Förster (University of Bremen, Germany)

Authors

Koojana Kuladinithi, TUHH Germany

Koojana is a lecturer and senior researcher at the Hamburg University of Technology. She has extensive teaching experience in Computer and Communication Networks as well as Internet of Things (IoT) courses and seminars. In her teaching practice, she integrates innovative pedagogical approaches such as flipped classroom models, and project-, problem-, and challenge-based learning. In 2024, she was awarded the Hamburg Teaching Award in recognition of her outstanding teaching performance, pioneering methodologies, and the development of novel mediation concepts.

Resources
Teaching materials and assignments on Cooja simulations used for ECIU micro module of “Enabling Industry 4.0”

https://github.com/ComNetsHH/teaching-industry-4.0

Other relevant publications:

• Koojana Kuladinithi, Aliyu Makama, Yevhenii Shudrenko, Siska Simon, Musab Ahmed, Teresa Algarra, Shashini Wanniarachchi, and Andreas Timm-Giel, “Designing problem-based learning cases to foster student engagement in STEM” Tagungsband zum 6. Symposium zur Hochschullehre in den MINT-Fächern, September, 2025
• Kuladinithi, K., Shudrenko, Y., Makama, A., Fisser, L. and Timm-Giel, A., 2025, March. Unforeseen SILLY Errors in Network Simulations and Visualizations. In 2025 IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops and other Affiliated Events (PerCom Workshops) (pp. 325-330). IEEE Computer Society.
• Kuladinithi, Koojana, Leonard Fisser, Konrad Fuger, Daniel Stolpmann, Zeynep Vatandas, Andreas Timm-Giel, and Axel Dürkop. „Online teaching of project-based learning courses: issues, challenges and outcomes.“ In ACM SIGCOMM 2020. ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communication (SIGCOMM), 2020.
• Kuladinithi, Koojana, Raphael Elsner, Leo Krüger, Sebastian Lindner, Christoph Petersen, Daniel Plöger, Zeynep Vatandas, and Andreas Timm-Giel. „Teaching Modelling and Analysis of Communication Networks using OMNeT++ Simulator.“ In OMNeT++, pp. 111-123. 2018.

Yevhenii Shudrenko, TUHH Germany

Yevhenii is a research fellow at the Institute of Communication Networks, Hamburg University of Technology, with the focus on IEEE 802.15.4-based Wireless Sensor Networks. His involvement in teaching includes Simulation of Communication Networks as well as project-based IIW Praktikum on various IoT topics, where students learn how to use suitable communication technologies, e.g., LoRa, to solve practical problems through engineering and teamwork. Furthermore, Yevhenii’s supervision of IoT-related student theses and project works is another major contributor to his teaching experience in this field.

Resources

GitHub repo: https://github.com/ComNetsHH/teaching-industry-4.0

Further courses: https://www.tuhh.de/et6/teaching

Other relevant publications:

• Koojana Kuladinithi, Aliyu Makama, Yevhenii Shudrenko, Siska Simon, Musab Ahmed, Teresa Algarra, Shashini Wanniarachchi, and Andreas Timm-Giel, “Designing problem-based learning cases to foster student engagement in STEM” Tagungsband zum 6. Symposium zur Hochschullehre in den MINT-Fächern, September, 2025
• Kuladinithi, K., Shudrenko, Y., Makama, A., Fisser, L. and Timm-Giel, A., 2025, March. Unforeseen SILLY Errors in Network Simulations and Visualizations. In 2025 IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops and other Affiliated Events (PerCom Workshops) (pp. 325-330). IEEE Computer Society.
• Kuladinithi, Koojana, Leonard Fisser, Konrad Fuger, Daniel Stolpmann, Zeynep Vatandas, Andreas Timm-Giel, and Axel Dürkop. „Online teaching of project-based learning courses: issues, challenges and outcomes.“ In ACM SIGCOMM 2020. ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communication (SIGCOMM), 2020.
• Kuladinithi, Koojana, Raphael Elsner, Leo Krüger, Sebastian Lindner, Christoph Petersen, Daniel Plöger, Zeynep Vatandas, and Andreas Timm-Giel. „Teaching Modelling and Analysis of Communication Networks using OMNeT++ Simulator.“ In OMNeT++, pp. 111-123. 2018.

Asanga Udugama

Asanga is a senior lecturer at the Sustainable Communication Networks Group of the University of Bremen, Germany. He obtained his BBA from Colombo University, Sri Lanka, M.Eng. from the Munster Technological University, Cork, Ireland, and PhD from the University of Bremen. Throughout his academic career, he has made numerous contributions to research in computer networks through patents, publications, talks, teaching, and student supervision. He primarily focuses his research efforts on improving and assessing information-centric and opportunistic networking protocols for the Internet of Things, with an emphasis on sustainability, achieved through modeling and practical implementations.

Jens Dede

Jens Dede earned his PhD in electrical engineering and information technology from the University of Bremen, Germany, in 2024. He is currently a senior lecturer with the Sustainable Communication Networks group at the same university.
His research focuses on the Internet of Things, communication networks and protocols, image processing, and machine learning, with an emphasis on sustainability and environmental monitoring.
With over 10 years of teaching experience, he has contributed lectures and projects on various aspects of IoT, including Arduino-based computer science lectures, simulation, and general communication courses at the Bachelor and Master levels.

Resources
https://jdede.de/
github.com/ComNets-Bremen/MoleNet-Labs

Anna Förster, University of Bremen Germany

Anna is a full professor of computer science and electrical engineering, leading the Sustainable Communication Networks group. Her research is focused on Internet of Things, its communication protocols, realiability and fault tolerance and its applications to the Sustainable Development Goals. She is teaching various courses, from scientific practice through introductory courses of computer science for EE students, communication networks, to advanced courses in Internet of Things and Edge Computing. She is very interested in modern teaching methods and gladly experiments with various formats and concepts to motivate the students to look for deeper insights and cross-connections and to let them perform at their best.

Resources

The main GitHub repo for the MoleNet boards: ComNets-Bremen/WUSN: MoleNet: A Wireless Underground Sensor Network platform

GitHub repo for MoleNet-based labs: https://github.com/ComNets-Bremen/MoleNet-Labs

Other relevant publications:

• Teaching the Internet of Things, Mobile Computing and Communications, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1145/3036699.3036707
• Exciting students for systems programming through the use of mobile robots, 2017. https://elib.suub.uni-bremen.de/edocs/00105965-1.pdf
• Rethinking Conference Formats, Communications of the ACM, 2023, https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3583679
• A blended learning approach for an introductory computer science course, Education Sciences, 2021, https://www.mdpi.com/1197768

Philipp Sommer

Philipp Sommer holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from ETH Zurich and was a post-doc at the CSIRO in Australia. At ABB Research Switzerland, he leads a research team in industrial software systems. He has been involved in teaching classes on wireless sensor networks at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. For the last few years, he has been teaching a lecture on industrial automation at EPFL. Furthermore, he has been involved in several TecDay events at high schools throughout Switzerland.

Marco Beck

Marco Beck completed his teaching qualification and authorization studies in Germany in 2025 and is currently completing his probationary training. He specialised in computer science education and was involved in multiple teaching projects during his studies. He completed his thesis work in collaboration with ABB.

Philipp Scholl

Philipp Scholl completed his PhD in 2018 at the University of Freiburg, following a post-doc period before joining ABB Research in 2022. He taught eight lectures on Embedded Systems, Hardware Architecture and Wearable Systems, and taught a total of twenty-five laboratory and seminar courses on Ubiquitous Computing, Wearable Computing, as well as Psychology and Computing. He is currently researching Embedded, Real-Time and Ubiquitous Computing at ABB Research.

Balz Maag

Balz Maag holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from ETH Zurich, where his research focused on air quality monitoring using sensor networks. At ABB, he works on applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to industrial challenges, with a particular emphasis on embedded systems. He also enjoys teaching and has led university courses in computer engineering, as well as seminars on developing sensor-centric smartphone applications. Beyond his professional and academic work, since roughly three years he supports TecDay, a STEM outreach initiative that encourages high school students to explore science and technology.

Sandro Schönborn

Sandro Schönborn has an academic background in physics and computer science at the University of Basel. While he performed PhD and post-doc research in probabilistic methods to interpret and manipulate images of human faces, he was also teaching seminars and courses around this topic. At ABB, he researches the application of AI and ML in industrial software systems, and their combination with knowledge-based methods. He has rich teaching experience with years of teaching a practical robotics course at a high school, including participation in RoboCup Junior. He regularly visits high schools at TecDays, a STEM focus day initiative, and practically introduces students to the topic of automation with robots and IoT devices.

Felix Büsching

Felix Büsching is a professor of embedded systems at Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences. Since 2020 he leads the „Data Technology Laboratory“, where students learn to program microcontrollers from scratch, the “Digital Systems Design” lab, where students learn the basics of FPGA programming, and the “Embedded Systems” course, where students build and program their own distributed embedded systems.
From 2013 to 2020 was postdoctoral research assistant at the Institute of Operating Systems and Computer Networks (IBR) at Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany. In this position, he headed the microcontroller laboratory there and the practical course on “programming distributed embedded systems,” which he significantly influenced.
During his doctoral studies, which he completed in 2013, he worked with students to develop various distributed and embedded systems for different research and development projects.

https://www.ostfalia.de/buesching

Fabio Palmese

Fabio is a research fellow at Politecnico di Milano, where he received his PhD on March 2025. His research activities focus on network traffic analysis and Internet of Things topics. His Ph.D. thesis focused on the IoT forensics, with specific attention to IoT network traffic collection and analysis for forensic investigations.
From 2021 he has been a teaching assistant for the „Internet of Things“ and „Foundations of Networks and Internet“ Courses at Politecnico di Milano, covering exercises and laboratory lectures.

Antonio Boiano

Bernd-Christian Renner

Bernd-Christian Renner is a full professor and head of the Institute for Autonomous Cyber-Physical Systems (ACPS) at the Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH). From 2020 to 2022, he was associate professor at the University of Koblenz-Landau und from 2016 to 2020, he was assistant professor at TUHH. He received his Diploma degree in 2008 and his Ph.D. in 2013 from TUHH. From 2012 to 2016 he was postdoc at the University of Lübeck.
He has published articles in several International journals and conferences, and reviewed for and served on several TPCs. He has served the ENSsys workshop at ACM SenSys in several roles since 2014 and is member of its steering committee. His research interests include applications of networked low-power sensing and cyber-physical systems running on energy harvested from the environment. He is also active in networking protocols for networks of embedded sensors, active and passive backscatter acoustic communication, localization, and navigation in mobile, low-power underwater networks.

He is currently teaching master-level courses on software for embedded systems (since 2020), autonomous cyber-physical systems (since 2015), design and implementation of software systems (since 2016), and an undergraduate course on procedural programming (since 2022). He is also running seminars on IoT-related topics with particular focus on underwater, and he has run courses on electrical engineering, hardware/software co-design, and data structures and algorithms.

Resources
Website: https://www.tuhh.de/acps
Git (only research at the moment): https://collaborating.tuhh.de/e-24/public/

Saman Kittani, Vanderbilt University, USA