Dresden Fellows 2026
Table of contents
Dr. Aleksandar Jovanovic
Title: PhD Operations Research in Urban Transportation | Program: Dresden Junior Fellowship | Timeframe: August 24, 2026 - September 24, 2026 | Hosting institution in Germany: Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences, Chair of Railway Operations | Host: Prof. Dr. Nikola Bešinović
Dr. Jovanovic’s research focuses on the use of artificial intelligence and optimization techniques in traffic control systems, particularly traffic signal systems, LLM (large language model)-based decision-making systems, and sustainable urban mobility. He earned his Ph.D. in 2017 from the University of Belgrade. He subsequently collaborated with leading researchers at the University of Kragujevac and the University of Pittsburgh and published articles in renowned journals such as "Transportation Research Part C" and "Expert Systems with Applications". Since 2025, Dr. Jovanovic has been a Serra Hunter Assistant Professor at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
During his stay at TU Dresden, he plans to deepen his collaboration with Prof. Bešinović’s group. Dr. Jovanovic’s expertise will also strengthen the chair and the faculty in the field of LLM in transportation science. As part of the research project “Transit Signal Priority at Signalized Intersections Using an Actor-Critic LLM Framework,” preparations are underway for a publication in a peer-reviewed journal. Furthermore, Dr. Jovanovic will offer a seminar on “LLM Applications in Traffic Signal Control” for students in the faculty and will serve as an advisor for current master’s and PhD theses.
In addition, other professorships within the faculty will benefit from collaboration with Dr. Jovanovic, such as the Chair of Traffic Process Automation, to deepen discussions on train and traffic management; the Chair of Mobility System Planning, to examine the joint design and integration of subway systems and other new modes of transportation; and the Chair of Transport Modelling and Simulation, to discuss the availability and potential of publicly accessible data for addressing transportation-related challenges.
To further intensify these joint activities in the future, a joint project proposal for Horizon Europe and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship will be prepared.
Prof. Nilüfer Didiş Körhasan
Degree: PhD Physics Education | Program: Dresden Senior Fellowship | Timeframe: June 01, 2026 – August 31, 2026 | Host Institution in Germany: Faculty of Physics, Chair of Didactics of Physics | Hosts: Prof. Dr. Gesche Pospiech
Prof. Körhasan has been a professor at Zonguldak Bülent Ecevit University since 2023 and conducts research in the field of physics education. In 2012, she earned her Ph.D. with a dissertation titled “Investigation of Undergraduate Students’ Mental Models About the Quantization of Physical Observables.” During her doctoral and postdoctoral studies, she completed several research stays in the United States, including in Edward Redish’s research group at the University of Maryland and in the Mazur Group at Harvard University. She enjoys an excellent international reputation as an expert in the field of mental models and knowledge construction in physics, particularly quantum physics.
Prof. Körhasan’s Senior Fellowship will further intensify and expand the collaboration with the Dresden Physics Education Group initiated in 2024 during her Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship. The planned research topic, which grew out of the results of her previous stay at TU Dresden, will examine in detail the influence of metacognition as a regulatory element in the learning and understanding of quantum physics. In this way, Prof. Körhasan’s research contributes to a deeper understanding of learning processes in quantum physics among high school students, pre-service teachers, and university students. To disseminate and implement the research findings, an internal TUD workshop for instructors in the field of quantum physics will be offered. To enhance external visibility, the results of the joint research will be presented at the annual QuBitEdu conference of the Association of Science Educators.
Looking ahead, the collaboration with Prof. Körhasan’s home university will be strengthened through bilateral exchange programs for students and faculty members via Erasmus agreements. This intensive collaboration will simultaneously open up new opportunities for securing third-party funding, e.g., from the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBITAK) and the German Research Foundation (DFG).
Prof. Dr. Yili (Kelly) Tang
Degree: Prof. | Program: Dresden Junior Fellowship | Timeframe: January 19, 2026 - March 31, 2026 | Host Institution in Germany: “Friedrich List” Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences, Institute of Railway Systems and Public Transport| Host: Prof. Dr. Nikola Bešinović
Professor Yili Tang currently holds a joint appointment as Assistant Professor at the University of Western, Ontario, Canada. She is a leading scientist in in transportation engineering, machine learning, particularly rail systems transport optimisation. Reflecting her international profile, she earned her PhD in Transportation Engineering from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in 2019, subsequently working as a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley in the USA and HKUST.
With more than 50 publications, including award-winning papers in renowned journals, and over $5 million in competitive funding, Prof. Tang is an internationally recognized expert in in the design of sustainable, intelligent, and resilient transport systems.
Building on her expertise, she is conducting the TU Dresden fellowship project “Adaptive Federated Learning for Predictive Railway Infrastructure Maintenance Strategy in Dynamic Heterogeneous Networks”. The project will pioneer network-wide predictive maintenance strategies that integrate federated learning, operational heterogeneity, and resilience to extreme weather impacts. The outcomes should directly improve the performance of railway systems and be incorporated to further development of predictive maintenance strategies in regional, national and international railway networks, particularly in Germany and Canada. This is beneficial for both railway companies and the responsible authorities.
During her fellowship, Prof. Tang will collaborate with MSc students and PhD researchers at TU Dresden on publications for journals and conferences. She will also deliver seminars and guest lectures in her research areas of AI-driven transport optimization and predictive maintenance, and will jointly supervise master’s and doctoral students. To strengthen long-term cooperation with the University of Western Ontario, joint applications for third-party funding are also planned, including submissions to the DFG, EU Horizon Europe, and Canada’s New Frontiers in Research Fund.
Prof. Hao Wang
Degree: Prof. | Program: Dresden Senior Fellowship | Timeframe: November 7 – November 21, 2025 and May 15 - May 28, 2026 | Host Institution in Germany: Faculty of Civil Engineering, Institute for Structural Analysis| Host: Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Michael Kaliske
Prof. Wang’s research focuses on developing sustainable, resilient, and smart roadway infrastructure through the integration of innovative materials, advanced modeling, and data analytics. He received his Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2011 and began serving as a professor and graduate director in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, in 2017.
Professor Wang has been the Principal Investigator or Co-PI of over 60 projects and has published over 300 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers. His publications are well cited by the research community around the world, with Google Scholar citations of 15,031 and an h-index of 67. He has conducted pioneering research in multi-scale and multi-physics modeling of infrastructure materials and vehicle-tire-pavement interaction.
In 2023, he was elected a Fellow of the Engineering Mechanics Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). He also received numerous awards, including the Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize from ASCE (2022) and the AASHTO High-Value Research Award (2014 & 2024).
Supported by the Fellowship Program, Prof. Wang will visit TU Dresden for two weeks in November 2025 and four weeks in the summer of 2026. His area of research fits perfectly within the thematic context of the SFB/TRR 339 (Digital twin of the road system) project, for which an international network is being built with partners including Rutgers University, Marche Polytechnic University and the University of Cambridge. An international degree programme on the subject area of SFB/TRR 339 is currently being introduced, involving IIT Madras and the University of Brasilia. Research activities on the topic of 'Digital Twin of the road system’ are based on an internationally networked, holistic approach to digitising road and transport infrastructure, in which Prof. Wang's fellowship plays an integral and active role.
Dr. Evgeny Bondarenko
Degree: PhD Physical Chemistry | Program: Dresden Junior Fellowship | Timeframe: October 1, 2025 – January 29, 2026 & July 26 - October 23, 2026 | Host Institution in Germany: Faculty of Chemistry and Food Chemistry, Institute of Electrochemistry | Host: Prof. Inez Weidinger
Dr. Evgeny Bondarenko currently works both as a systems software development engineer and researcher at the Silesian University of Technology. He received his PhD in Physical Chemistry from the Belarusian State University in 2020.
As part of the Fellowship, Dr. Bondarenko will carry out a short-term project on the synthesis and characterization of semiconducting bismuth oxysulfide (BOS) films together with Prof. Weidinger's research group. The results of the project will subsequently serve as the basis for funding applications. In addition, Dr. Bondarenko will pass on his expertise in the form of lectures at seminars and group meetings and share his practical skills with research group members and students.
Dr. Bondarenko is one of the outstanding young researchers in the field of semiconductor film growth and its photoelectrochemical characterization. In 2018, his research was awarded the fourth prize of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus and the Foundation for the Promotion of Education and Science for Young Scientists. To date, Dr. Bondarenko has co-authored 13 research papers and is the author of 2 patents.
Prof. Dr. Ipsita Mandal
Degree: PhD Physics| Program: Dresden Senior Fellowship | Timeframe: June 30 – August 03, 2025, November 27 - December 23, 2025, July 03 - August 16, 2026 | Host Institution in Germany: Faculty of Physics, Institute of Theoretical Physics | Host: Prof. Dr. Carsten Timm
Prof. Dr. Ipsita Mandal is an internationally renowned expert in theoretical solid state physics. After receiving her doctorate from the Harish-Chandra Research Institute in 2011, she conducted research at several prestigious institutions, including the University of California Los Angeles, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Basel, IIT Kharagpur, Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems (MPI-PKS) and Cornell University. In 2019, she was appointed as a professor at the University of Stavanger (Norway). She moved to the Polish Academy of Sciences in 2020, receiving the Polish Prime Minister's Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement in 2022 based on her Polish habilitation. Since 2023, she has worked at the Shiv Nadar Institute of Eminence (India), where she was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie FRIAS COFUND Fellowship at W3 professorial level in the same year. According to Stanford/Elsevier, Prof. Mandal was among the top 2% most cited scientists in 2024.
Her research focuses on strongly correlated quantum materials in theoretical solid state physics, which fits in perfectly with the scientific profile in Dresden. She is also a specialist in high-energy physics and quantum field theory. This combination of disciplines has not yet been represented at professorial level in Dresden, implying a broad spectrum of methods.
The aim of her visit is to explore potential future collaborations with various research groups in Dresden, including the Institute of Theoretical Physics and the Institute for Solid State and Materials Physics at TU Dresden, the Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research Dresden (IFW), and the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems (MPI-PKS). Common interests include the theory of strongly correlated and topological solids, and the theory of non-Hermitian systems. Further points of contact exist in experimental physics and chemistry.
Prof. Mandal and Prof. Dr. Carsten Timm (Chair of Condensed Matter Theory at TU Dresden) are planning a long-term collaboration on the topic of transport in semimetals. Joint scientific publications and the supervision of doctoral theses will be included in this cooperation. Prof. Mandal will also supervise students preparing their final theses. A block lecture on semimetals and transport is also planned during the lecture-free period.