The BayWISS Prize for outstanding or future-oriented research in individual scientific fields, which was open to all doctoral candidates of the Joint Academic Partnerships, was awarded at the Annual Colloquium by the Chairman of the BayWISS Steering Board and President of the University of Bamberg Prof. Fischbach.
We'd like to thank the two associations Universität Bayern e.V. and Hochschule Bayern for providing the prize money.
We'd also like to thank our jury, made up of six spokespersons of our Joint Academic Partnerships, for the extra work they were prepared to take on for examining the documents. It had to decide on the three best of all submitted applications and was spoilt for choice.
Thomas Kellerer, born in Munich on 22 July 1994 and member in the Joint Academic Partnership Health, was awarded third place. His doctoral thesis is titled: "SEMPA-Track: Spectrally Encoded Multiphoton Particle Tracking Microscopy".
Thomas Kellerer works with mRNA technology, well known at the latest since Covid, which could also be used for cancer vaccines. It was found that the release of mRNA is only 2%, for reasons not yet fully understood. Thomas Kellerer's research group is using special microscopes to try and capture these processes and to thus contribute to developing vector-based vaccines.
Thomas Kellerer successfully completed his photonics degree at the HM in September 2019 and began his doctorate right after, supervised by the HM and the LMU in Munich. He also collaborated on other projects supported by BayWISS and is additionally involved in supervising students. He has already supervised a total of 14 final theses both at the HM University of Applied Sciences and the LMU.
Second place was awarded to Ann-Catrin Uhr-Müller, born in Bamberg on 7 July 1991, who is doing her doctorate in the Joint Academic Partnership Energy on "Entwicklung und Applikation eines Systems zur künstlich-beschleunigten Alterung und diagnostischen Analyse von Mittelspannungskabel" (development and application of a system for an artificial acceleration of the ageing and diagnostic analysis of medium voltage cables).
Her dissertation focusses on the challenges for the existing power supply system in Germany set by the energy transition . It deals with the increasing decentralization of energy production, the changed needs of consumers and their influence on the old power system and cables. She is examining test cables installed in an ageing test site.
Ann-Catrin Müller received her Master of Engineering (M.Eng.) in 2016 in the field of energy technology at the Hochschule für angewandte Wissenschaften Würzburg-Schweinfurt. In 2015 already, she successfully completed her Diplom in Wirtschaftsingenieurwesen, after having completed a training as a mechatronics engineer including the Fachhochschulreife. Ann-Catrin Uhr-Müller is currently employed as research assistant at the Hochschule für angewandte Wissenschaften Coburg. Her doctorate is supported by the "Promotions-Stipendium" of the LaKoF-Bayern (Landeskonferenz der Frauen- und Gleichstellungsbeauftragten an bayerischen Hochschulen).
The jury awarded first place to Jonathan Ganz from the Joint Academic Partnership Health. His doctoral thesis is titled: "Computer-gestützte Tumordiagnose mit Deep Learning" (computer-aided tumour diagnosis with deep learning).
Jonathan Ganz describes his work as follows: "One part of artificial intelligence is deep learning, which I am applying in my doctoral research for automated examination of tissue samples in histopathology. It's not about replacing pathologists by AI but about making tools available to them which assist them in successfully carrying out their job."
Jonathan Ganz, born in Hermeskeil near Trier on 24 August 1993, initially studied law at the Universität Trier, before changing to medical engineering at the Hochschule Trier. After a semester abroad at the University of Salerno, a university steeped in tradition, Jonathan Ganz started work on his cooperative doctorate in collaboration with the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen- Nürnberg and the Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt. He is also employed as research assistant at the THI.
His doctorate is supervised by the professors Marc Aubreville and Katharina Breininger from the THI and the FAU.
