Computer Errors: New Platform Aims to Prevent Total Outages
Prof. Laura Kovacs has been awarded an ERC Proof of Concept (PoC) Grant for the development of LEARN in January 2025. The aim of the grant is to validate the innovation and market potential of ERC-funded research results.
Prof. Laura Kovács outlines in an interview with Die Presse her ERC PoC project LEARN, a web platform that brings advanced bug-finding and formal methods to a broader audience. Building on her team’s automated reasoning research, LEARN is designed to help non-experts and developers detect software errors early — before “small bugs” cascade into full-scale outages.
Referencing the 19 July 2024 incident — when a faulty security-software update triggered global disruptions across hospitals and airports — Kovács explains that LEARN aims not only to prevent failures but also to triage incidents quickly, distinguishing cyberattacks from internal software faults so organisations can respond faster. She also highlights plans to embed these approaches in TU Wien’s curriculum, arguing that early, practical understanding of how computers work is vital for digital resilience.