AI in medicine, smartwatches and hydrogen: Freudenberg Award for digital solutions of the future
Nils Rollshausen, Antonia Bähr and Niklas Ihm receive the Freudenberg Award - Digital Science ** How can I use and protect sensitive data when using a smartwatch? How will it be possible to evaluate X-ray images of tumors on inexpensive and readily available hardware? Which models can I use to simulate the combustion of hydrogen-ammonia mixtures? Talented scientists Nils Rollshausen, Antonia Bähr and Niklas Ihm researched these questions. For their scientific work, they received the Freudenberg Award - Digital Science for outstanding Bachelor's and Master's theses in the field of digitalization.
The global technology company Freudenberg Group is presenting the award for the first time this year. It is aimed at students and graduates of TU Darmstadt and was created to mark the 175th anniversary of the Freudenberg Group. “With this new award, Freudenberg is honoring talented people with a focus on the future topic of digitalization, which is also one of Freudenberg's strategic topics,” said Dr. Frank Heislitz, CTO of the Freudenberg Group and initiator of the award at the award ceremony during the mechanical engineering graduation ceremony at TU Darmstadt. The Freudenberg Award - Digital Science was awarded to Antonia Bähr's and Niklas Ihm's Bachelor's theses, each with prize money of 5,000 euros, and Nils Rollshausen's Master's thesis with 10,000 euros.
“A lot of sensitive health data is collected when using smartwatches such as the Apple Watch,” says Nils Rollshausen. “How well are they protected and where are the weak points? How does such a complex commercial product work? I have developed improvements to ensure privacy and protect the data from attackers.” — “WatchWitch: Investigating Apple Watch Interoperability and Security” is the title of their master's thesis. The scientific work is like a puzzle; by deciphering binary numerical codes and the software protocols, an increasingly accurate picture of the entire ecosystem emerges, says Rollshausen. “I'm enthusiastic about scientific work, I enjoy discussing results and I'm also involved in teaching by supervising Master's theses and seminar papers. ”The aim is to continue researching the topic of smartwatches and data security and to write a dissertation on the same subject. “I'm delighted to receive this award in recognition of my scientific work.” Particularly exciting: presenting the results themselves at a conference in Washington in the coming year. In their free time, they enjoy photography, creative tailoring and role-playing games with friends.
“Combustion research and working with simulation models is very exciting and application-oriented. I also see myself working in research in the future and would like to do a doctorate,” says Antonia Bähr, who is studying mechanical engineering at TU Darmstadt. “My work is an important step towards making the transition from fossil fuels to sustainable energy sources and getting to an industrial level in the process. It was important to me to work on a topic of the future and to advance it. Under the title “Analysis of Ammonia-Hydrogen Combustion using Large-Eddy Simulation and detailed chemistry”, she is investigating suitable models to simulate the combustion of hydrogen-ammonia mixtures as accurately as possible and thus obtain even more detailed knowledge. “I was incredibly happy about the prize. Even during the presentation of the work, the jury asked a lot of questions and showed interest. The fact that the topic is considered relevant is recognition,” says the young scientist, who enjoys going climbing in her free time.
“A doctor uses a smartphone to take a picture of a patient's birthmark. The Image is quickly evaluated directly on the smartphone and provides information as to whether it could be medically harmless or dangerous,” says computer scientist Niklas Ihm, describing the possible future applications of his research topic ‘Towards Localized Data Representation: NCA-Based Autoencoders’. “There have only been a few studies on neural cellular automata, or NCAs, so far,” says Ihm. “In connection with image classification, this technology presents an interesting approach to make image classification more lightweight and robust, which is quite relevant for many applications, but especially in the medical field.” NCAs can be imagined as a chessboard on which each cell communicates with its neighbor. By working together, the cells can gather information about the underlying image, without any form of top-down organization. “AI in medicine is a future topic with great potential,” says Ihm. “In my work, I had a lot of freedom to rethink and try things out. I wanted to explore a novel approach, to make image classification more resilient to the challenges posed by medical applications.” The twenty-four-year-old is delighted with the award as an appreciation of his first major research project and would like to continue working on it. In his spare time, he plays bass and is creative with a Singer sewing machine.
“We are very pleased that we had a high number of nominations for the Freudenberg Award - Digital Science, all of which were of very high quality,” says Dr. Niko Reuß, Head of RTI and member of the jury. “In particular, the breadth of the work submitted from a total of 7 out of 8 departments at TU Darmstadt convinced us that we are addressing an important cross-sectional technology with the new award, from which the entire research and development landscape as well as companies and society can benefit,” added Dr. Julia Kubasch, Head of Public Funding, FTI.