Research Group Leader

Prof Dr Beatrix Weber lives the mission “Making innovative technologies legally possible” as head of the research group “Law in Sustainability, Compliance and IT”. Her home is the Institute for Information Systems at Hof University of Applied Sciences. She and her team conduct research in interdisciplinary projects at the interface between law and IT on legal issues relating to digitalisation, Industry 4.0, the Internet of Things, data protection, privacy by design, legal factual research using IT methods and compliance.

The aim of the research group is to find solutions suitable for application in harmony with law and compliance. Law in innovative fields of technology is always also risk management. The research group works together with users to develop alternative legal solutions, e.g. model processes for privacy by design. Prof. Weber and her research group are members of the legal research accompanying the BMWi’s “Innovations from Smart Data” framework programme under the overall management of KIT’s Legal Department, where she heads the “Data as an Economic Good” working group. Other ongoing industry projects include “Smart Data for Smart Meters” and “Web Defacement detector – IT tools as proof of IT compliance”.

In addition to studying law in Germany and Switzerland, Prof Weber obtained a Master’s degree in European law and conducted research into the “misuse of electronic cash” during her studies. She received her doctorate at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster under Prof Dr Thomas Hoeren with her dissertation “Zahlungsverkehr im Internet”. Prof Dr Weber then worked for many years as an in-house lawyer in the automotive industry, both nationally and internationally, particularly in the USA and South East Asia.

Prof. Dr Weber is a long-standing part-time lecturer at Steinbeis University Berlin in the subject “Intellectual Property and Compliance” for the MBA programme Governance, Risk, Compliance & Fraud Management. In 2012, she was voted “Best Lecturer of the Year 2010” by the students there. Prof Weber developed the “Compliance Officer Mittelstand” training programme for the Bitkom Academy. She advises and supports SMEs in the introduction of compliance management systems and is frequently active as an expert in the areas of research, teaching and application of the law.