Nasal breathing and neurons - Excellent research by HDS-LEE PhD students

On 01 March 2019 the international graduate school "Helmholtz School for Data Science in Life, Earth and Energy" (HDS-LEE) was launched. The Graduate School offers an interdisciplinary environment for the education of the next generation of data scientists in close contact with domain-specific knowledge and research. Two of the first doctoral students and especially their research have now been presented on the website of the Helmholtz Association.

HDS-LEE is an international, English-speaking graduate school of the ABCD-J region (Aachen/Bonn/Cologne/Düsseldorf/Jülich) of North Rhine-Westphalia. The RWTH Aachen University, the University of Cologne, the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the Max Planck Institute for Iron Research and the Forschungszentrum Jülich are involved as cooperation partners. In addition, HDS-LEE is part of the JARA Center for Simulation and Data Sciences (JARA-CSD), which was founded at the end of 2018.
The school aims at excellent graduates in mathematics, computer science, natural sciences and engineering and offers them a comprehensive interdisciplinary education.

Christian Gerloff is one of these excellent young scientists. Since mid 2019 he is part of the HDS-LEE with his work for his doctoral thesis. In the article "Where the neurons are firing" his work on unravelling the human brain is reported. The engineer wants to investigate the connection between social experiences and biological systems. Gerloff received his master's degree in electrical power engineering at RWTH Aachen University, where he came into contact with neuroscience in the form of machine and deep learning. Read the full article on the website of the Helmholtz Information & Data Science Academy (HIDA).

Another HDS-LEE doctoral student is Mario Rüttgers. He received his bachelor's degree at the RWTH Aachen University. After his master's degree at the University of Pohang (South Korea), the young scientist returned to the Aerodynamic Institute (AIA) at the RWTH Aachen University. Similar to the Rhinodiagnost project, which is also carried out at Forschungszentrum Jülich and the AIA, among others, Rüttgers is developing a tool for calculating the flow in the nasal cavity as part of his doctoral thesis. The aim is to use artificial intelligence to predict how nasal breathing might change, for example, as a result of an operation. Read the full article "What hurricanes and nasal breathing have in common" on the website of the Helmholtz Information & Data Science Academy (HIDA).

Further information on the graduate school is available on the HDS-LEE website.