The research prize honors outstanding research and development work,
- which aim to gain particularly relevant scientific knowledge,
- have a special artistic claim
- have a specific practical application or particular social significance,
- which make a contribution to the sustainable development of technology or society,
- which arise from several years of continuous research work in a special subject area or even relate interdisciplinary questions, methods and findings from different branches of science to each other,
which were worked on at Fachhochschule Dortmund and for which Fachhochschule Dortmund was named in the public presentation or publication.
Award winners
2023
Prof. Dr. Nicole Knuth from the Faculty of Applied Social Studies received the 2023 Research Award. For ten years, she has been continuously researching children and young people in residential care, in particular their opportunities for co-determination and support for families. Her research focuses on the participation of parents with children in residential care. In her projects, Prof. Dr. Knuth investigates how children, young people and their families can be more involved when they receive help in residential care. For example, she has collected findings on how parents experience the mostly involuntary placement of their child in a residential group and what effects this has on the opportunities for participation. Prof. Dr. Knuth is also looking at new media-based forms of participation and examining the requirements for a children's rights app designed to help young people in residential care to better understand and assert their rights. Prof. Dr. Knuth's research has shown that parents in residential care often experience social stigmatization and are forced out of their children's upbringing. She has developed models with and for parents in residential care as to how they can remain involved in their children's lives, for example through "open visiting hours" for parents in the residential group or through networking opportunities for parents among themselves. Her projects have contributed to local authorities now being legally obliged to set up ombudsman offices for parents and children and to strengthen self-representation organizations for those affected.
2022
Prof. Dr. Hendrik Wöhrle from the Faculty of Information Technology received the 2022 Research Award. He is working on making artificial intelligence usable for the benefit of the general public using edge AI. Through his research, artificial intelligence methods can be used in small embedded systems, for example in the areas of the Internet of Things, robotics and medical technology.
Prof. Dr. Wöhrle has been researching the use of AI in embedded systems since 2009. He began his work on this at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) and has been continuing it at Fachhochschule Dortmund since 2019. Here he looks at the latest developments, particularly in the field of deep learning, in which complex neural networks are investigated and optimized for use in embedded systems. A major challenge in the use of neural networks in embedded systems is to provide the necessary computing power, as neural networks are very computationally intensive. To this end, Prof. Dr. Wöhrle is developing specialized hardware that is characterized by high efficiency and low energy consumption.
Prof. Dr. Wöhrle uses the hardware in various applications. In the area of the Internet of Things, for example, the aim is to develop an AI-optimized heating control system in which the AI derives the periods when heating is required and when this is not the case based on the use of a room. Another application is the detection of diseases through the AI-supported analysis of biosignals, for example the detection of atrial fibrillation in the electrocardiogram of patients.
2021
On December 2, 2021, the research prize of the current academic year was awarded during the academic anniversary ceremony. This year, the Fördergesellschaft der Fachhochschule Dortmund honored two professors for their particularly application-oriented research: Prof. Dr. Michael Karagounis from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Prof. Dr. Yves Rosefort from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering.
Since 2003, Prof. Dr. Michael Karagounis has been researching the design of integrated digital and analog/mixed-signal CMOS circuits in radiation-harsh environments, with the exception of a brief interruption from 2010-2013 due to a move to industry.
In his research project, he is investigating in more detail how circuits in conventional CMOS technologies, which can be produced relatively cheaply due to their wide commercial use, can be designed to withstand the harsh environmental conditions that prevail in the Large Hadron Collider. These include an accumulated radiation dose of one degree over the entire lifetime, low temperatures of down to -50°C and magnetic fields with a foot density of two Tesla.
Prof. Karagounis found that electrical systems that are connected in series, like Christmas tree lights, achieve a significantly higher energy efficiency than those supplied in parallel. They can be realized more easily in a radiation-hard design than, for example, with supply approaches in which the electrical energy is distributed at a higher voltage and converted down to a lower voltage in the local vicinity of the consumer. Cascaded core transistors with thin gate oxide enable the handling of high voltages with high radiation resistance at the same time.
Prof. Dr. Yves Rosefort has been conducting research in the field of vehicle drives since 2008. He is investigating how CO2 emissions can be reduced in the overall chain of mobility concepts. This also takes into account the emissions for the entire life cycle, i.e. for the production of the vehicle, its operation and its disposal. The study also examines whether the first step in reducing CO2 emissions should be to focus on the powertrain (engine) or on energy generation and storage.
The main finding of Prof. Rosefort's research so far has been that CO2 emissions can be reduced by more than 70% in all drive concepts. The decisive factor is the generation of energy, which in turn is closely linked to energy storage. It is important for CO2 minimization to find concepts that lead to low costs in the overall chain so that market penetration and thus the effect on CO2 emissions is maximized. Which drive concept is the most favorable in each case depends on the area of application, the energy source and the time of year. This means that hybrid powertrains can play to their strengths.
2020
An extraordinary (university) year ended with an equally extraordinary academic anniversary celebration: the ceremony took place virtually for the first time on December 3, 2020. What was also special was that it was not a research project but an entire working group that was awarded the 2020 Research Prize. Prof. Dr. Jörg Thiem from the Faculty of Information Technology and his Robotic Vision and Control working group were delighted to receive this award.
In his doctorate, Prof. Dr. Jörg Thiem studied how humans process visual information in the eyes and brain. In the field of computer vision, this provides the biological inspiration for technical systems that aim to teach computers to see.
Mathematical concepts and algorithms in the form of computer programs, often artificial neural networks, form the basis for recognizing objects in the scene and determining their spatial position, for example.
Prof. Thiem links image analysis with applications in medical technology for diagnosis and therapy, as well as robotics in all its forms (robot arm, drone, autonomous driving) for the perception of the environment and autonomous navigation.
His working group is thus working on research projects in different application scenarios, which are, however, excellently linked by "computer vision".
However, the employees and doctoral students recognize the synergies in the areas of drones, speech therapy and minimally invasive surgery and support each other profitably in problem solving.