Dresden Fellows 2022

Dr. Oleksandr Kolii

Degree: PhD Engineering Sciences| Program: Dresden Junior Fellowship | Timeframe: December 1, 2022 – May 31, 2023| Host Institution in Germany: Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences; Institute of Traffic Telematics | Host: Prof. Dr. Meng Wang

Dr. Oleksandr Kolii is Lecturer at Kharkiv National Automobile and Highway University, Ukraine. He completed a PhD in Engineering Sciences, on specialty Transport Systems at the same university.

During his stay at TU Dresden, he will work in the research project "Jena 5G", which aims to increase road safety and optimize multimodal traffic and energy supply in Jena. For this, he will identify cooperative traffic light control algorithms with transit signal priority. Dr Kolii's participation in the project contributes to the expansion of the international partnership between Kharkiv National Automobile and Highway University and TU Dresden. The Chair of Traffic Process Automation will soon plan and launch a lecture on traffic flow simulation, which will incorporate Dr Kolii's knowledge and experience. He also offers a course on traffic flow simulation and holds two workshops during his stay.

Dr. Oleksandr Kolii has many years of experience in traffic flow modeling. Furthermore, he is an experienced teacher in the field of traffic flow simulation and has designed the Master's course "Modeling of traffic flows" at Kharkiv National Automobile and Highway University. In 2019 he paid a first visit to TU Dresden via Erasmus+ Staff Mobility for Training.

Prof. Dr. Timur Atnashev

Degree: PhD History and Civilization | Program: Dresden Senior Fellowship | Timeframe: October 1, 2022 – December 29, 2022| Host Institution in Germany: Faculty of Linguistics, Literature and Cultural Studies; Institute of Slavic Studies; Chair of Slavic Literatures | Host: Prof. Dr. Klavdia Smola

Professor Dr Timur Atnashev is a historian with a research focus on Soviet, Russian and European political languages and political philosophy. He holds a PhD from the European University Institute Florence.

During his stay in Dresden, Prof. Atnashev worked on a project on the historical semantics of the language of left and right in cooperation with the Institute for Slavic Studies, the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Research (HAIT), the Dresden Mercator Forum for Migration and Democracy (MIDEM) and the Centre for International Studies (ZIS). Prof. Atnashev also held a workshop on the extreme right and the historical semantics of the left-right spectrum.

Timur Atnashev is one of the leading researchers in the history of ideas in his academic generation in Russia. He has written extensively on the late Soviet Union, perestroika and the early 1990s, publishing a number of articles in leading academic journals. Since 2017 and until the start of the war against Ukraine, Prof. Atnashev co-organized and hosted the monthly Shaninka Seminar on Intellectual History with more than 100 distinguished participants. Since 2020, he has been working for NLO (New Literary Observer) as editor of the Intellectual History series, one of Russia's most important and last independent social science and humanities publishers. Professor Atnashev has already collaborated with the Institute for Slavic Studies at the TU Dresden, including on jointly organized international conferences. Due to the current repression against independent academics in Russia, Professor Atnashev had to flee Russia.

Dr. Gabriele Patrizi

Degree: PhD Industrial Engineering and Reliability | Program: Dresden Junior Fellowship | Timeframe: October 1, 2022 – December 31, 2022| Host Institution in Germany: Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering; Institute of Electronic Packaging Technology | Host: Dr. Karsten Meier

Dr. Gabriele Patrizi received a PhD degree in Industrial and Reliability Engineering in 2022 from the University of Florence, Italy, where he is currently a Postdoc Research Fellow in the field of Instrumentation and Measurement and Adjunct Lecturer of Electric Measurements.

At TU Dresden, he conducted a jointly developed research project focusing on the identification of major challenges and sources of uncertainties in measuring direct current (DC) electrical parameters of electronic devices exposed to combined thermal-vibration stress sources. Furthermore, alternative and robust solutions have been developed and tested. Dr. Patrizi participated in teaching by contributing to the Oberseminar and by holding an international workshop at the end of his stay to discuss and spread the research finding.

The research interests of Dr. Patrizi include life cycle reliability of complex systems, condition monitoring for fault diagnosis of electronics, data-driven prognostic and health management. Since 2019 he has been Member of the Italian Group of Electric and Electronic Measurement and since 2023 he has been Associate Editor of the journal “IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement” as well as reviewer for many international journal and conferences in the field of Instrumentation and Measurements.

Dr. Mayra Peralta

Degree: PhD Physics | Program: Dresden Junior Fellowship | Timeframe: October 1, 2022 – March 31, 2023| Host Institution in Germany: Faculty of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Institute of Materials Science | Host: Prof. Dr. Gianaurelio Cuniberti

Dr. Mayra Peralta obtained her PhD in Physics in the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research. Since 2017 she has been working as a lecturer in the School of Physical Sciences and Nanotechnology at YachayTech University in Ecuador.

During her stay in Dresden as a Junior Fellow, Dr. Peralta works on spintronic effects in helical molecules (CISS effect), a topic which has gained a huge momentum over the past 10 years due the discovery of high spin-filtering effects in a variety of organic (e.g. helicene) and biological systems (e.g. DNA) displaying helical symmetry. Regarding teaching activities, she holds a lecture series covering applications of low-dimensional materials and the CISS effect in different fields such as Spintronics, non-covalent interactions in Chemistry, and frontier topics as in Quantum Information sciences and quantum biology. The Institute of Materials Science at TU Dresden aims to intensify collaboration with Dr. Peralta, among others by jointly applying for funding either at the national (DFG) or EU (e.g. starting ERC grants) levels.

Dr. Peralta received the Paola Carpi award, granted by the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research, for her outstanding career grades and trajectory. She develops her research in the line of electronic and transport properties of low dimensional materials. In particular, she is interested in spin-orbit effects in Van der Waals heterostructures and in the CISS effect in chiral molecules.

Dr. Marinda Avenant

Degree: PhD Environmental Management| Program: Dresden Junior Fellowship | Timeframe: August 1, 2022 – August 31, 2022| Host Institution in Germany: Faculty of Environmental Sciences; Department of Hydro Sciences; Institute of Water Chemistry | Host: Prof. Dr. Stefan Stolte

Dr. Marinda Avenant is Senior Lecturer and Programme Director at the Centre for Environmental Management at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa.

During her one-month stay at TU Dresden, foundations were laid for the expansion of research and teaching cooperation with the Department of Environmental Management at the University of the Free State. A focus is to be on the joint investigation of the effects of climate change on water supply and water quality. In addition, a joint scientific publication for an international journal was completed. Dr. Avenant was also involved in teaching by giving seminars and colloquia. In future, reciprocal teaching events are planned. Dr. Avenant will give online lectures and seminars on biomonitoring and aquatic ecology in the “Hydro Science & Engineering” course at the TU Dresden and TU Dresden staff will organize courses at the University of the Free State.

Dr. Avenant is an internationally recognized scientist in the field of environmental research. She has outstanding expertise in the fields of ecology, hydrology and biomonitoring. For example, she has been working for many years on climate-related effects on the ecology of surface waters, e.g., on the species composition of seasonally drying streams. In 2019 and 2022, she organized the "Germany - Southern Africa Summer School" on topics in the field of water management together with TU Dresden.

Prof. Dr. Lance Bennett

Degree: PhD Political Science | Program: Dresden Senior Fellowship | Timeframe: June 13, 2022 – July 1, 2022 | December 12, 2022 – December 22, 2022 | June 6, 2023 – June 15, 2023| Host Institution in Germany: Faculty of Philosophy; Chair of Political Systems and Comparative Politics | Host: Prof. Dr. Marianne Kneuer

Prof. Dr. Lance Bennett is a professor emeritus of political science and communication at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA. His research stay within the framework of the Dresden Fellowship Program is divided into four parts. He is hostet at the Chair of Political Systems and Comparative Politics. His research focus is closely linked to the interdisciplinary research network "Disruption and Societal Change" (TUDiSC).

Professor Bennett's research stay serves to strengthen the field of digital politics at TU Dresden. He will contribute his expertise as a lecturer for the interdisciplinary lecture series "Digital Living Environments" of the Chair of Political Systems and Comparatitive Politics . In addition, a joint publication with Professor Kneuer on aspects of digitality and its interaction with democratic structures and processes is planned. There will also be a workshop and a special issue on this topic. Professor Bennett is acting as an advisor for the proposal submission of a new research program to be established in the thematic field of digital politics, which, if successful, will be located at TUDiSC.

Professor Bennett is one of the world's leading communication scholars working on digital communication and interaction and the implications of digitization for social processes. He is particularly known for his work on protest movements in the internet. Due to his interdisciplinary approach, his impact extends far beyond the perspective of communication studies. In addition, Professor Bennett has experience in setting up structured science programs - e.g. he was acting as advisor during the establishment of the Weizenbaum Institute in Berlin.

Dr. Irene Tuzi

Degree: PhD Social Sciences| Program: Dresden Junior Fellowship | Timeframe: June 1, 2022 – November 30, 2022| Host Institution in Germany: Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Science; Institute of Sociology; Chair of Comparative Cultural Studies and Qualitative Research| Host: Prof. Dr. Heike Greschke

Dr. Tuzi works as a postdoctoral researcher at the Berlin Institute for Empirical Integration and Migration Research at Humboldt University of Berlin. She holds a double PhD in Social Sciences from Sapienza University of Rome and Humboldt University.

At TU Dresden she mainly worked on a research project focuses on the impact of separation on integration among refugee families in Europe – a topic, which overlaps with research interests of Prof. Greschke. As part of the Dresden Fellowship Programme, Dr. Tuzi worked on preparing a research proposal for third-party funding. In addition, she was teaching a Bachelor’s course on the sociology of migration and co-organized an international conference titled “Thinking through ‘The Transnational’: A Tumultuous Task?” hosted by the Chair of Comparative Cultural Studies and Qualitative Research and the Center for Integration Studies.

Dr. Tuzis work to date has largely dealt with refugee studies and gender studies and has especially focused on the Middle East, the Mediterranean region, and Europe. Her current project investigates the interplay between transnationalism, mediatization, and integration through the lens of transnational migrant families in Europe. Furthermore, for over a decade, she has performed several voluntary works, e. g. she has been working as a volunteer translator for the translation of medical records and clinical documents for the organization Translators4Children since 2012.

Dr. Luxmi Rajanayagam

Degree: PhD Commercial Law | Program: Dresden Junior Fellowship | Timeframe: May 4, 2022 – August 1, 2022| Host Institution in Germany: Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Science; Institute of International Law, Intellectual Property and Technology Law | Host: Prof. Dr. Anne Lauber-Rönsberg

Dr. Luxmi Rajanayagam has finished her PhD in Commercial Law at Queen Mary University of London and teaches and conducts research in the field of the legal issues of intellectual property protection of fashion products.

During the fellowship, a research project on the protection of branded clothing in the fashion industry was carried out jointly by the research group of Prof. Dr. Lauber-Rönsberg and Dr. Rajanayagam. The results have already been presented at a conference organized in collaboration with colleagues from Charles University in Prague and Queen Mary University of London. The results have also been submitted to a legal journal. Based on the project results, the partners involved in the conference will plan further joint research projects. In addition, the results will be used in the development of a module to be taught as part of the master's program "LL.M. International Studies in Intellectual Property Law".

Dr. Rajanayagams career in International Law and Intellectual Property began at King's College London with an LLM degree. She then successfully completed a Master of Science in Intellectual Property Management at Queen Mary University of London. This degree prompted her to pursue her PhD in Business Law, specifically in the area of Trademark Law.

Prof. Dr. Sanaa Ashour

Degree: PhD Development Studies| Program: Dresden Senior Fellowship | Timeframe: May 2, 2022 – June 30, 2022| Host Institution in Germany: Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Science; Institute of Sociology; Chair of Macro-Sociology | Host: Prof. Dr. Antonia Kupfer

Professor Sanaa Ashour is a professor of sociology and currently the director of the Sociology program at the College of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences at the Al Ain University in the United Arab Emirates. She obtained her PhD in “Development Studies” in 2004 from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Bonn, Germany.

During her stay at TU Dresden Prof. Ashour was involved in teaching at the Institute of Sociology, among others she organized several one-day seminar for students. In addition, she presented her research in the colloquium of the institute and attended research seminars conducted by TU Dresden’s faculty members as well as by Dresden-concept partners. Another important aspect of her visit was the exchange on research topics of common interest to investigate future research cooperation between TU Dresden and Emirati universities.

In addition to her teaching and research in sociology, Prof. Ashour has held senior positions with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Volunteers Programme (UNV) in the Middle East and Europe. Her research examines a range of issues including employability, graduate quality and the quality of higher education, with a particular focus on the mismatch between graduate skills and the changing demands of the labor market. In addition, Prof. Ashour has worked on issues related to the quality of higher education, including national and international accreditation and the impact of technology on higher education and student behavior.

Dr. Ioannis Oikonomakos

Degree: PhD Life Sciences and Health| Program: Dresden Junior Fellowship | Timeframe: May 1, 2022 – October 31, 2022| Host Institution in Germany: Medical Faculty, Medical Clinic and Polyclinic III, Molecular Endocrinology | Host: Prof. Dr. Stefan R. Bornstein

Dr. Ioannis Oikonomakos obtained his PhD from University Côte d’Azur in Life sciences and Health in 2021, while working on the embryonic development of adrenocortical steroidogenic cells.

His stay at TU Dresden served three main purposes: the integration of his expertise in the “Adrenal stem cells and their role in stress” lab at the University Clinic, to foster the interaction on projects concerning adrenocortical development with his home institution, the University Côte d’Azur, and to develop a long-term postdoctoral project at the TU Dresden. In addition, Dr. Oikonomakos assisted with the supervision of 2 PhD students and gave lectures in the international Master’s Program “Regenerative Biology and Medicine”.

In his research, Dr. Oikonomakos has a strong interdisciplinary orientation, combining stem cell research and regenerative medicine with machine learning. Following his fellowship, Dr. Oikonomakos is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Medical Faculty of TU Dresden.

Olga Sarygoz

Degree: PhD Turkish Language (in progress) | Program: Dresden Junior Fellowship | Timeframe: April 1, 2022 – June 30, 2022| Host Institution in Germany: Faculty of Linguistics, Literature and Cultural Studies; Institute of Slavic Studies; Chair of Linguistics and History of Slavic Languages | Host: Prof. Dr. Holger Kuße

Olga Sarygoz is currently writing her doctoral thesis entitled "Turkish formulaic language". From 2017 to 2021, she was Senior Professor of Turkish as a Third Foreign Language at the Department of English and Oriental Languages at the Belarus State Economic University.

Olga Sarygoz's research project at TU Dresden focused on contemporary social and cultural dynamics resulting from continuous contacts between societies with different linguistic, religious, economic, political and cultural characteristics. Olga Sarygoz's object of study is appellatives, i.e.verbal and non-verbal communicative means with which ones communication partner is addressed. In the summer semester of 2022, Olga Sarygoz offered a special seminar on "Linguocultural Aspects of Communication in Different Cultural Spaces". She also organized an international and interdisciplinary online workshop on "Interpreting as Cultural Mediation".

Olga Sarygoz is a turkologist, but also competent in Slavic-Turkish linguistic comparison. For political reasons, she was unable to defend her doctoral thesis in Belarus. An attempt in St. Petersburg also failed for the same reasons. Finally, Ms Sarygoz had to move to Poland, where new formal conditions are attached to a dissertation. In the context of her doctoral thesis, Olga Sarygoz is investigating the semantic, functional and morphological features of appellatives in Turkish. With her publication "Turkish Grammar", published in 2022, Olga Sarigoz acts as a pioneer for the establishment of a normative Turkish grammar in Belarus. She also works as a state-certified translator.

Prof. Dr. Hossein Ali Khonakdar

Degree: PhD Polymer Engineering | Program: Dresden Senior Fellowship | Timeframe: April 1, 2022 – September 30, 2022| Host Institution in Germany: Faculty of Mechanical Science and Engineering; Institute of Materials Science; Chair of Biomaterials | Host: Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Wiesmann

Ali Khonakdar has been Professor of Polymer Engineering at the Iran Polymer and Petrochemical Institute in Tehran since 2014. He studied toward PhD also at the same institute; however, part of his doctoral research was carried out at the Leibniz-Institut für Polymerforschung (IPF) Dresden in Germany.

During his stay at TU Dresden, Prof. Khonakdar conducted research to identify novel material concepts for bone regeneration. For this, degradable synthetic polymers were identified and synthesized that show controllable in vivo degradability over time. Subsequently, these materials were evaluated for biocompatibility using cell culture studies. In addition, modification of the materials was performed to obtain stimulation of bone regeneration.

On the teaching side an online seminar format in which doctoral students of Prof. Khonakdar and Prof. Wiesmann presented their research to each other and extented their network to collaborate in future. As a result of his stay, a proposal for joint publications and preliminary work funded by European grants as well as the DFG's grant programs was planned.

Prof. Khonakdar has been working on polymer processing and advanced polymeric materials at Iran Polymer and Petrochemical Institute where he has been Lecturer as of 2002. Upon completing his PhD, he has been continuing his collaboration with the IPF Dresden thus far. The outcome of his mutual collaboration goes beyond 280 research articles. Prof. Khonakdar was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship from Germany, where he joined IPF Dresden as a guest researcher from 2011 till 2014. Afterwards he has been a Fellow at the IPF Dresden from 2016 till 2022.

Prof. Dr. Teresa J. Bandosz

Degree: PhD Chemical Engineering | Program: Dresden Senior Fellowship| Timeframe: March 1, 2022 – June 15, 2022 | Host Institution: Faculty of Chemistry and Food Chemistry; Inorganic Chemistry; Chair of Inorganic Chemistry I |Host: Prof. Dr. Stefan Kaskel

Teresa J. Bandosz holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the Technical University of Krakow, Poland and has been a Distinguished Professor at the Chemistry Department of City College of New York since 2005.

Her stay at TU Dresden served to expand the cooperation between her research group and Prof. Kaskel's research group on the use of porous materials for energy applications, such as batteries, fuel cells and air pollution control through adsorption. Prof. Bandosz's expertise in the functionalisation of carbon surfaces for the development of lithium-ion batteries, electrochemical sensor technology and the catalytic degradation of air pollutants was particularly relevant. The Fellowship also investigated the capabilities of new test instruments developed by TU Dresden for the reactive and catalytic degradation of pollutants and toxins.

Prof. Bandosz is a renowned expert in the field of porous carbon materials for applications in energy storage and electrochemistry. In particular, the topic of clean air and water treatment by porous materials has also been actively addressed by her on an industrial scale. Her work over the last 30 years has resulted in 6 US patents and over 400 publications in peer-reviewed journals. Since 2014, Prof. Bandosz has been an associate editor of the Journal of Colloid and Interface Science. Furthermore, she is a Fellow of the American Carbon Society and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

Dr. Melissa Sanabria Rosas

Degree PhD Multimodal Machine Learning | Program: Dresden Junior Fellowship| Timeframe: March 1, 2022 – August 31 2022 | Host Institution in Germany: Biotechnology Center TU Dresden (BIOTEC), Center for Molecular and Cellular Bioengineering (CMCB) | Host: Dr. Anna Poetsch

Dr. Melissa Sanabria Rosas completed her PhD in Multimodal Machine Learning at the University of Côte d'Azur in France in 2021. At TU Dresden, she applied these skills to genomics. For this, she transferred algorithms normally used in natural language processing to the biomedical context. She has been involved in ongoing collaborations, such as projects on cancer genomics in collaboration with the National Centre for Tumour Diseases (NCT) Dresden. Dr. Sanabria Rosas was also involved in teaching activities at the Center for Molecular and Cellular Bioengineering (CMCB) and took over the planning and organization of a symposium on "AI in Genomics".

Dr Sanabria Rosas has published four journal articles and three conference papers to date. In addition to her research for her excellently evaluated Ph.D thesis, she has supervised seven Master's students and contributed to teaching with six courses. Following the Junior Fellowship, Dr Sanabria Rosas is currently working as a Maria Reiche Postdoctoral Fellow in Anna Poetsch's group at BIOTEC.

Dr. Solmar Varela

Degree: PhD Physics | Program: Dresden Junior Fellowship | Timeframe: March 1, 2022 – August 31, 2022 | Host Institution in Germany: Faculty of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Institute of Materials Science | Host: Prof. Dr. Gianaurelio Cuniberti

Dr. Solmar Varela obtained her PhD degree in Physics at the Universidad Central de Venezuela. Since 2017, she has been a Lecturer at Yachay Tech University at the School of Chemical Sciences and Engineering in Ecuador.

During her fellowship she was involved in several research projects conducted with the Institute of Materials Science. The main focus of this activities was on spintronic effects in helical molecules, more precisely on chirality-induced spin selectivity (CISS). Among other things, Dr. Varela modelled electron-vibration interactions in electron transfer reactions and investigated their interplay with the CISS effect. She also offered several introductory lectures and seminars on this topic. In addition, she has provided the basis for a series of educational videos on CISS physics and its applications, which are published on a YouTube channel of the Institute.

Dr. Varela conducts research in molecular spintronics, an interdisciplinary area where she develops analytical models for electronic and spin transport in low-dimensional structures. Besides the regular courses that she is teaching at Yachay Tech University, she has a video series on the social media platform TikTok with more than 12,700 followers, where she popularizes complex topics in the fields of physics and material science. More recently, she has started to organize a YouTube channel and a Twitter account having the same scope.

Véronique Faucheur

Degree: Urbanist & Landscape Architect | Program: Dresden Senior Fellowship | Timeframe: March 1, 2022 – August 31, 2022 | Host Institution in Germany: Faculty of Architecture; Institute of Landscape Architecture | Host: Prof. Arq. Ana Viader Soler

Véronique Faucheur studied urban planning as well as garden design and landscape architecture. Since 2011, she has been co-owner of the internationally renowned atelier le balto for landscape architecture and garden art in Berlin.

During her stay at TU Dresden, Véronique Faucheur set new impulses in teaching and research. Climate adaptation strategies, formats of participation and concepts in vegetation maintenance after the completion of green spaces are examples of research topics at the Institute of Landscape Architecture to which , Véronique Faucheur contributed her expertise. The students at the institute benefited from her teaching formats. Among other things, she offered them the opportunity to carry out designs for an open space in Dresden as their main project during their studies. She also conducted excursions to realised works by atelier le balto with impromptu exercises and offered a workshop on practice-oriented research topics.

Véronique Faucheur and atelier le balto are a reference for contemporary, outstanding and sustainable landscape architecture throughout Europe and far beyond. Their work ranges from small interventions such as temporary garden designs in the Kunst-Werke Berlin or the hidden Jardin Sauvage in the Palais de Tokyo in Paris to parks such as the Jubilee Park in the harbour area of Gothenburg. In addition to her training as an urban planner and garden and landscape architect, she is also a trained dancer, choreographer, which informs her performative approach to space. She wants to transform places with plants, artistically design spatial processes and develop innovative care concepts for vegetation.

Welcome to TU Dresden