AI research meets practice: How we are building up our own AI expertise at Netresearch
Presentation of certificates at ICWE 2026 | Photo: Prof. Dr Andreas Both
Seen in the centre, from left to right: Prof. Dr Andreas Both and Jonas Gwozdz
Our AI PhD student Jonas Gwozdz has reason to celebrate: his research paper on AI-assisted assessment of examination performance was awarded the Best Student Paper Award at the International Conference on Web Engineering (ICWE) 2026.
Congratulations, Jonas!
For us, this is not only a cause for celebration, but also a good opportunity to take a look at why we are investing in AI research together with Jonas and HTWK Leipzig, and how this is now benefiting Netresearch, our products and our customers.
What was the award-winning paper about?
Jonas investigates how AI can support teachers in marking examination papers. The language model is specifically tailored to the teacher’s marking criteria. Using real, anonymised exam data, the system achieved a match of around 91 per cent with the teacher’s marks in the best configuration tested.
You can find out more about the research and the award in the article by HTWK Leipzig.
Research and development with us
Jonas has been our first PhD student in the field of artificial intelligence since early 2025. As part of his PhD, he is working at the interface between academic research at HTWK and practical development at Netresearch.
And it is precisely this connection that is crucial for us: Jonas’s research is not detached from our day-to-day work. He develops prototypes, investigates new AI technologies and applies his expertise to specific problems and projects at Netresearch.
At the same time, Netresearch provides him with the technical environment and experience of a software company, enabling him to test and further develop research approaches in practice.
“For me, research is at its most exciting when an idea develops into something that can prove its worth in practice. At Netresearch, I can try out new approaches directly on real technical problems using the very latest tools and develop them further with experienced software developers. That way, I quickly realise what works, where the snags are and which issues we still need to resolve.”
Why are we investing in our own AI expertise?
Because we don’t just want to use AI. We want to understand the technology, develop solutions with it ourselves, and build up our own in-house expertise.
As a result, many departments at Netresearch now benefit from Jonas’s expertise: our product development for TYPO3 and OroCommerce, our software development and internal IT, as well as new ideas and prototypes. This enables us to test new models, tools and approaches at an early stage, evaluate them more thoroughly and share this knowledge throughout the company.
One concrete result of this is ScormIQ. Our AI tutor enhances existing e-learning courses with a chat function through which learners can ask questions about course content, have content explained to them or have it translated. In addition, a company’s own knowledge can be integrated.
And how do our customers benefit from this?
Many companies today are faced with similar questions: Where does AI actually create added value? What is technically feasible? And how does a good idea become a reliable application?
By combining many years of technical expertise, in-house product development and scientific AI know-how, we are now able to provide our customers with more comprehensive support in addressing these questions – within our existing core business, but increasingly beyond it as well.
The Best Student Paper Award is therefore, first and foremost, a fantastic accolade for Jonas and his academic work. At the same time, it reaffirms our approach of not merely purchasing or applying AI expertise, but of building and developing it ourselves.
