DRESDEN Fellows 2017
Table of contents
Get together of DRESDEN Fellows and Trefftz Professors on June 29, 2017, at TUD's Altana Gallery
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
DRESDEN Senior Fellow
October 2017
Prof. Alexej Bulgakov has been Rector of the South-West State University Kursk in Russia since 2012, where he has held the Chair of Automation, Robotics and Mechatronics since 1992.
Prof. Bulgakov has already been to TU Dresden on several occasions, the first of which was in 1989 at the Institute of Construction Management. After this, he was here from 1992 to 1994 as the holder of a Humboldt scholarship, and as a visiting professor from 1994 to 1997, 2008 to 2009, and again from 2011 to 2013.
He was also a visiting professor at the Technical University of Munich from 2000 to 2002.
Prof. Bulgakov has received numerous awards, including the "Umweltstiftung Deutschland” prize in 2010.
DRESDEN Senior Fellow
July 2017
Dr. Hamsa Balakrishnan has been an Associate Professor at the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT in Boston (Massachusetts, USA) since 2012.
For many years, she has been researching the mathematical exact quantification of increasing the capacity of terminal manoeuvring areas of European and American airports by means of various optimisation algorithms. She has succeeded in enabling these optimisation processes to take into account in a valid manner numerous secondary conditions, such as the network structure and peculiarities specific to individual aircraft and airports.
She completed her Bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras (India) and then continued her studies at the renowned Stanford University in the USA, where she earned her Master’s degree in 2001 and her PhD in 2006.
During her stay at the TUD Chair of Air Transport Technology and Logistics, Dr. Balakrishnan and the Dresden researchers affiliated to Professor Fricke worked together on competing approaches for the highly accurate prediction of flight progress, which is important for smooth take-off and landing procedures at airports. In doing so, the researchers link analytical models – developed in Dresden – relating to flight behaviour with big data/machine-learning algorithms without context knowledge that are currently being drawn up at MIT.
The approaches to be developed during her stay are to be published jointly in 2018. Further collaboration projects financed by MIT are to follow.
Finally, Dr. Balakrishnan also introduced herself to the students of transport engineering in her courses on airport operations and terminal processes, during which she lectured on current approaches in the optimisation of traffic flows.
DRESDEN Senior Fellow
May - June 2017
Thomas F. Rutherford has been Professor of Agricultural Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA) since 2012. Prior to this, he was a professor of Energy Economics at ETH Zurich and at the University of Colorado. He studied at Yale University and wrote his doctorate at Stanford University.
Professor Rutherford is one of the world's leading specialists in formulating, solving and applying computable general equilibrium (CGE) models in the analysis of problems in the economics of the environment and of growth, and in international trade.
To date, the Chair of Spatial Economics has used this model for analyses in urban and transport economics as well as for studies of political measures in the context of climate change, and now used Prof. Rutherford’s expertise at the regional level. The American scientist also conveyed this method to students and junior scientists.
DRESDEN Senior Fellow
May - June 2017
Prof. John M. Gathenya is a full professor at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) in Nairobi (Kenya). For many years, he has been teaching and researching there at the School of Biosystems and Environmental Engineering, in the fields of agricultural hydrology, water and soil protection and integrated water resources management.
His research area is highly topical in the face of changes in climate and demographics and the associated problems of food security, water supply, health care and poverty alleviation. He is one of the leading experts in this field in East Africa and has strong international networks. He is, for example, co-operating closely with the British University of Reading in a project on climate change.
From 1985 to 1992, John Gathenya completed a course of study in agriculture at the University of Nairobi. He then worked as a research assistant at JKUAT and established contacts with Germany. From 1995 to 1999, he wrote his doctoral thesis on water management at TU Kaiserslautern. Later, in 2010, he was appointed Associate Professor of Agricultural Engineering at JKUAT, where he has been a full professor since 2016.
During his stay at TU Dresden, Prof. Gathenya actively contributed to the second international Nexus Conference, organised at the German Hygiene Museum by the Faculty of Environmental Sciences, together with the Dresden affiliate of the UN University UNU-FLORES and the Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development (IÖR).
He also held seminars at the "Centre for International Postgraduate Studies of Environmental Management – CIPSEM". In addition, he intended to further expand the existing research collaboration with his colleagues at the Institute of Soil Science and Site Ecology.
DRESDEN Senior Fellow
May - July 2017
Professor Naixing Liang studied road construction engineering in Xian (China). He gained his doctorate in 1992 at the Clausthal University of Technology. Since 1998, he has been a professor and also Vice- President at Chongqing Jiaotong University (China).
From 2007 to 2008, he was a visiting scholar at the Chair of Road Construction at TU Dresden.
During his stay in 2017, various visits to research facilities and road construction authorities were on the agenda, including to TU Wien and the RWTH Aachen University, as well as to the Central Association of the Construction Industry in Berlin and the Road and Transportation Research Association in Cologne.
DRESDEN Junior Fellow
April - September 2017
Dr. Justyna Jaworek has been a research assistant at the Institute of Landscape Architecture at Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences since 2013, where she also successfully completed her doctorate in 2011.
From 2010 to 2011, she did a postgraduate course in "Protection and Restoration of Historic Gardens" in Warsaw.
She has already worked with TU Dresden on the topic "Das Erbe des preußischen Hofgartendirektors Peter Joseph Lenné (1789-1866)" (The legacy of the director general of the Prussian royal gardens, Peter Joseph Lenné).
Now, the creation of forest parks and the inclusion of forests into the municipal area between 1880 and 1935 will be a subject of discussion.
In addition, a German-Polish course for historic garden conservation is planned for students from Dresden and Wrocław. This is to be held in the shape of workshops and lectures in selected parks in the Hirschberg valley, and as a field trip.
DRESDEN Senior Fellow
April - September 2017
Prof. Lennart Löfdahl, Chair of Thermo and Fluid Dynamics at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg (Sweden), will be returning to the Institute of Automobile Engineering at TU Dresden after his stay in 2015.
In the summer semester, several new large-scale research funding projects will be set up. Among other things, there will be the BMWi research project EKE ÖPNV - "Energie- und kosteneffiziente Elektrifizierung von ÖPNV-Flotten" (Energy-efficient and cost-efficient electrification of public transport fleets).
Thanks to the support Professor Löfdahl provided during his last stay in 2015, a hybrid bus was already successfully equipped with novel approaches to thermal and energy management. Furthermore, it was possible to demonstrate the feasibility of electrifying an entire bus line including high-energy re-chargeability. Both vehicles were able to establish themselves successfully in the DVB’s (Dresden’s public transport company) daily operation of scheduled services in Dresden.
Prof. Löfdahl has already been on frequent research stays abroad, including at the EPFL Lausanne, the ETH Zurich and the MIT in Boston. Prof. Löfdahl was also a guest at TU Dresden between 2010 and 2013.
DRESDEN Senior Fellow
March-September 2017
Prof. Fatina Kourdi was Dean of Aleppo University's Faculty of Architecture and of the private Ebla University in neighbouring Idleb-Saraqeb until 2013, when, due to the war, she had to flee to Turkey with her two children.
Since then, she has worked as a research assistant at the Zirve University in Gaziantep, a Turkish city some 100 kilometers from the Syrian border, where the political situation is also extremely tense.
As an assistant professor for urban planning, she had hugely interesting projects under her belt, such as various plans for the old town and other quarters, and for schools and hospitals in Aleppo and Damascus. She has also gathered extensive teaching experience and has manifold international contacts. For example, at the University of Aleppo, she set up a master's programme, namely "Rehabilitation of Historic Islamic Cities". However, this had to be discontinued due to the war.
The Faculty of Architecture wishes to avail itself of the international expertise of Prof. Kourdi. Various chairs at the Faculty are carrying out research projects for the restoration and development of historical buildings and urban quarters in the Arabic region.
Prof. Kourdi already wrote her doctoral thesis on urban planning at the TU Dresden in the 1980s. In the 1990s, she spent time in Stuttgart and Karlsruhe on postdoctoral research stays and therefore speaks fluent German.
DRESDEN Junior Fellow
March-July 2017
In 2014, Dr.-Ing. Johannes Warda was awarded his PhD in Architecture at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, where he has been working as a research assistant since 2009. He spent the period from 2006 to 2007 on a research visit at the University of California in Berkeley.
The main focus of his stay at the TUD Chair of Historic Preservation and Design was on the interdisciplinary integration of historic preservation into architecture and urban planning. In this context, Dr. Warda held a seminar on the theory of the preservation of monuments, with particular regard to new topics in historic preservation (ranging from building culture through resource economics to sustainability in the construction industry). He will also prepeared a joint publication on these topics. Furthermore he hosted a series of colloquia entitled "Werkberichte".
Dr. Fatina Kourdi, DRESDEN Senior Fellow at the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
School of Humanities and Social Sciences
DRESDEN Senior Fellow
June - September 2017
Dr. Petra Schierl is a senior lecturer in classical philology at the University of Basel, and has held interim professorships at the Humboldt University in Berlin and in Berne.
After studying at Tübingen and Oxford, she earned her doctorate at LMU Munich in 2004 with a commentary on the fragments of the Republican tragic poet Pacuvius. She has also published on Cicero and on Roman drama, as well as on the poetry of Late Antiquity. In her habilitation thesis, which she submitted in 2014, she deals with the figure of the divine saviour in Vergil's Eclogues.
As part of her research on the interplay between literature and religion, she has completed research stays at the universities of Princeton in the USA, and St Andrews in Scotland.
In Dresden, Dr. Schierl presented her research on Epicurean polemics in the writings of Cicero as part of Dresden’s Altertumswissenschaftliche Vorträge (Classical studies lectures) and participated in TUD's "antiquity circle".
In addition, she used the collections of the SLUB Dresden and the Central Natural History Library (Senckenberg Natural History Collections Dresden) for a current research project in which she is investigating and translating the treatise on fossils entitled "De rerum fossilium, lapidum et gemmarum maxime, figuris et similitudinibus liber" (1565), written by the Swiss polymath Conrad Gessner.
Dr. Schierl also gave an insight into her work in the field of early modern natural research in a workshop.
DRESDEN Senior Fellow
May - June 2017
Alessandro Palazzo is a professor in the fields of history of mediaeval philosophy and history of philosophy at the University of Trent (Italy).
In 2015, within the scope of the strategic partnership between the University of Trent and TU Dresden, he participated in a colloquium on the crisis of the image at the time of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. In 2017 he took part in the workshop „Quo vadis II“, dedicated to the manuscript collections of the Dresden "Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek" (SLUB).
As a specialist in natural philosophy in the Middle Ages, Alessandro Palazzo is also involved in joint research projects on Albertus the Great, Meister Eckhart and medieval geomancy.
DRESDEN Senior Fellow
April-August 2017
Dr. Pérez Tostado is a lecturer in Modern History at the Pablo de Olavide University in Seville (Spain) and a proven expert on religiously inspired unrest in the early modern period. Since 2013, he has been Deputy Head of the Master’s Programme "History of Europe, the Mediterranean World and its Atlantic Diffusion". In 2004, he acquired his doctorate in history and civilization at the European University Institute in Florence.
He spent a research stay at University College Dublin in 2012, and at New York University in 2014.
At TU Dresden's Institute of History, he organised an international conference. Its focus will be on how people in religiously polarised early-modern societies – such as in Ireland, Hungary, Ukraine, Haiti and Jamaica – dealt in practice with religiously charged expectations of their behaviour.
Furthermore, Dr. Pérez Tostado's research into migratory history complemented the Institute of History’s teaching programme in the field of global history.
School of Engineering Sciences
DRESDEN Senior Fellow
August/September 2017
Fernando Corinto received the master's degree in electrical engineering in 2001 and the Ph.D. in Electrical and Communication Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Turin (Italy) in 2005. In 2004, Prof. Corino was Marie Curie Fellow. He is also August-Wilhelm Scheer visiting professor at TU München and member of the Institute for Advanced Study at TU München.
Currently he is Associate Professor for Nonlinear Circuits at the Department of Electronics and Telecommunications of the Polytechnic University of Turin. His research activities focus mainly on nonlinear circuits and systems as well as memristor technology.
Prof. Corinto was already a DRESDEN Senior Fellow at the TU Dresden in 2013.
DRESDEN Senior Fellow
August/September 2017
Dr. Vladimiro Mujica has been a professor at the Faculty of Molecular Sciences at Arizona State University (USA) since 2009, and is considered the world's leading scientist in the field of molecular electronics. He has previously been on extended research stays at Northwestern University in Chicago (USA) as well as in Sao Paulo (Brazil) and San Sebastian (Spain).
After studying in his home country of Venezuela, he gained his doctorate in the field of quantum chemistry in Uppsala (Sweden) in 1985. He subsequently worked as a postdoc in Tel Aviv (Israel).
During his stay at TU Dresden, Prof. Mujica was a guest of the Chair of Materials Science and Nanotechnology (Prof. G. Cuniberti), and has been in contact with numerous colleagues from Dresden. The intention was to explore further collaborations, especially in the field of spin transport in helical molecules, and to co-operate closely with the scientists of the Excellence Cluster Center for Advancing Electronics Dresden (cfaed). In addition, Prof. Mujica offered a seminar for doctoral candidates.
Prof. Mujica was also the spokesman for the 14th European Conference on Molecular Electronics (ECME 2017), which was held in Dresden this year. The conference is the leading European event in this field and was co-organised by his host Professor Cuniberti.
School of Science
DRESDEN Senior Fellow
August - November 2017
Prof. Steven Wise is an applied mathematician working in the field of numerical mathematics, in particular on the development of stable time-discretisation methods and fast solvers for equation systems arising from the discretisation of partial differential equations. Areas of application include the coarsening of faceted thin-film structures, spinodal demixing of alloys and necrotic tumour growth.
He is the author of over 60 publications in well-known journals that cover topics related to mathematics, physics and materials sciences. Together with the Institute of Scientific Computing at TUD, he is researching into efficient solvers for the phase-field crystal equation and geometric multi-grid methods for a discrete exterior calculus as discretisation method for differential equations on surfaces.
During his research stay, Steven Wise will be offering a series of lectures at the Department of Mathematics on adaptive multi-grid processes.
DRESDEN Senior Fellow
June 2017
Professor George S. Nolas from the University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa (USA) is one of the world's leading scientists in the field of thermoelectric materials.
Thermoelectric materials permit, among other things, the direct conversion of heat and electricity, and are regarded as an important element of sustainable energy use.
In his research and teaching, Prof. Nolas combines his experience both from his time in industry (Marlow Technologies) and from years of academic studies (Clemson University, University of South Florida).
During his stay at TU Dresden, he focused on the investigation of spark plasma synthesis (SPS) and the associated processes, as well as the influence of various SPS parameters on material preparation and crystal growth. "Spark plasma sintering" enables new fields of application in materials and energy technology.
In addition, Prof. Nolas held a new seminar entitled "Materials of the 21st Century".
His appointment as DRESDEN Senior Fellow was also intended to establish a strategic partnership between TU Dresden and the USF.
DRESDEN Junior Fellow
March-August 2017
Dr. Hafez Mahfoud is Head of the Institute of Biotechnology at the Research Center Latakia, and is working there for the General Commission for Scientific Agricultural Research in Syria.
From 2005 to 2010, he was a PhD candidate at the Institute of Botany at TU Dresden (Prof. Christoph Neinhuis) and wrote his doctoral thesis on botany in the eastern Mediterranean region.
Prior to this, he studied horticulture at the University of Tishreen in Latakia, where he was also a lecturer.
DRESDEN Senior Fellow
March 2017
Prof. Yoshitaka Kuno has been Professor of Physics at Osaka University in Japan since 2000. He studied physics at the University of Tokyo and worked for many years at the TRIUMF, a research centre for particle physics in Vancouver, Canada.
During his stay at TU Dresden, he was a DRESDEN Senior Fellow at the Institute for Nuclear and Particle Physics.
Dr. Osvaldo Chara (right) receives his Fellow Certificate from Vice-Rector for Research Prof. Gerhard Rödel (left)
School of Medicine
DRESDEN Senior Fellow
June - August 2017
Prof. Uta Sailer has been a professor at the Department of Behavioural Sciences in Medicine at the Medical Faculty of the University of Oslo in Norway since 2016. From 2013 to 2016, she was a professor of psychology in Gothenburg (Sweden). She earned her doctorate in psychology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich in 2003, and gained her habilitation at the University of Vienna in 2009.
Prof. Sailer is an expert in the field of reward processing, her focus being on the rewarding properties of, for example, money, touch, smells or food, and their contribution to the motivation of behaviour. She was involved in an extensive research project at the Dresden Clinic of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatic Medicine, which involves the investigation of individual differences in the reaction to odours and touch.
DRESDEN Junior Fellow
May - October 2017
Luca Parisato received his Master's degree in clinical psychology in 2015 from the Department of Philosophy, Sociology and Applied Psychology at the University of Padova (Italy) and subsequently worked for 12 months at the Brent Centre for Young People in London in the UK.
Since January 2017, Mr. Parisato has been enrolled in a post-graduate programme in developmental psychopathology at the University of Padova. His special scientific interest in developmental psychology is the investigation of character traits in adolescents. Mr. Parisato has validated a questionnaire on this subject for application in Italy.
Under the Dresden Junior Fellowship Programme, he will be integrated into the working group of Dr. med. Schriever at the Department of Neuropaediatrics. Here, in collaboration with the Interdisciplinary Centre “Smell & Taste” at the ear, nose and throat clinic of the University Hospital, he will be dealing with the development and disruption of olfactory perception in childhood and adolescence, with a focus on developmental psychology. Furthermore, he will be investigating the relationship between olfactory perception and character traits of children and adolescents.
DRESDEN Junior Fellow
May - July 2017
Dr. Knaapila received his Master's degree in food chemistry from the University of Helsinki (Finland) in 2004, and his doctorate in food technology from the same university in 2008. From 2009 to 2011, he worked at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia (USA). In 2014, he received the title of "Adjunct Professor in Sensory Food Science" from the University of Helsinki, where he is currently working as a university lecturer.
During his stay at TU Dresden, Dr. Knaapila conducted research at the University Hospital’s Interdisciplinary Centre Smell and Taste. He also held seminars on the sensory perception of food, in particular on human perception of food smells.
DRESDEN Senior Fellow
May - October 2017
Dr. Osvaldo Chara is Principal Investigator and Group Leader at SysBio, the Systems Biology group at the Institute of Physics of Liquids and Biological Systems in La Plata (Argentina) and Assistant Professor of Physiology and Biophysics at the School of Medicine, University of Buenos Aires (Argentina).
His interdisciplinary research group addresses medical and biological problems at molecular, cellular and tissue level by means of data-driven mathematical modelling and computational methods.
In collaboration with Prof. Elly Tanaka, former Director of the Excellence Cluster and DFG-Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden (CRTD) and now at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna, Prof. Andreas Deutsch and Dr. Lutz Brusch of the TUD Center for Information Services and High Performance Computing (ZIH) he contributed to the identification of fundamental cellular mechanisms that underlie tissue regenerative processes in axolotls.
Together with Prof. Min Ae Lee-Kirsch at TUD's Medical Faculty he works on the functional characterization of the molecular defects underlying inherited disorders of the innate immune system, known as type I interferonopathies.
DRESDEN Junior Fellow
April-September 2017
Dr. Katherine Whitcroft is an ear, nose and throat specialist, currently working as a research assistant at the Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital and at the University College London Ear Institute. She also works at the Centre for the Study of the Senses of the University of London. Additionally, she is a trained ear, nose and throat surgeon and a member of the Royal College of Surgeons.
She is currently setting up the first specialist clinic in London for smell and taste disorders. This involves her doing interdisciplinary work with neuroscientists and psychologists.
During her stay at TUD in the summer semester of 2017, she was engaged in a research project on the loss of the sense of smell in chronic nasal sinusitis.
DRESDEN Senior Fellow
April-September 2017
Prof. Delogu is the current Head of the Biochemistry and Bionanotechnology Laboratory at Sassari University in Sardinia, and has been assistant professor of biochemistry there since 2012. She worked for two years as a postdoc at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles (2007-2009), and wrote her PhD in biology and biochemistry in 2008.
Her research focus is on bionanotechnology for medical applications, e.g. in tumour detection and combatting breast cancer. In addition, she concerns herself with gender studies, particularly in the field of nanotechnology.
She already came to TU Dresden in 2016 as a visiting professor on the Eleonore Trefftz Programme.
DRESDEN Junior Fellow
April-September 2017
Dr. Cagdas Guducu is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the Dokuz Eylül University in Izmir. He is engaged in research on the five senses in various aspects of health. In doing so, he benefits from the world's only "five-senses laboratory" which is located at Dokuz Eylül University.
It was in Izmir in 2009 that Dr. Guducu completed his Master's degree in biophysics with distinction. In 2016, in his doctoral thesis, he dealt with brain responses to chemosensory stimulation in Parkinson's disease, using new methods of analysis, e.g. entropic analyses. Other patient groups, he examined by means of electrophysiological and haemodynamic methods.
At TU Dresden, he offered a seminar on smell and taste for medical students. In addition, his stay was intended to intensify the collaboration between the Interdisciplinary Center for Smell and Taste at the University Hospital Dresden and the Dokuz Eylül University.
DRESDEN Junior Fellow
März-August 2017
Dr. Artur César Fassoni has been Assistant Professor at the Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science at the Federal University of Itajubá in the south-east of Brazil since 2013.
He was awarded his doctorate in the field of mathematical analysis of early-stage cancers and their treatments at the State University of Campinas in 2016. His current research focuses on the optimisation of tumour therapies using mathematical models.
At TU Dresden, he was involved in carrying out research into the defence mechanisms of the immune system in leukaemic diseases.
DRESDEN Junior Fellow
February - July 2017
Dr. Dmitry A. Tanianskii has been Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Saint Petersburg State University since 2012, where he works in the field of biochemistry. His main research interests are atherosclerosis, the metabolic syndrome and vascular biology.
He gained doctorates in medicine (2005) and in biochemistry (2009) at the Saint Petersburg State University. He has been a researcher in the field of biochemistry since 2008.
During his visit to Dresden, Dr. Tanianskii was working on elucidating the role of the endogenous non-proteinogenic amino acid homoarginine in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. An elevated concentration of homoarginine in blood plasma is associated with an improved prognosis in patients with atherosclerosis. However, it is not known as yet whether homoarginine possesses direct anti-atherogenic properties or whether a low homoarginine concentration is merely a marker of atherosclerosis and its complications. This is the main focus of research of the laboratory group Dr. Tanianaskii joined during his stay at TUD.
Dr. Tanianskii’s visit from February to July 2017 was part of the continuing efforts to establish a long-term collaboration in the field of biochemistry between TU Dresden and its official partner, Saint Petersburg State University.
Previous visits of researchers from St. Petersburg at the TUD have already resulted in a number of joint publications.
Get together at Altana Gallery's ART CAFÉ
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