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Darmstadt, January 31, 2023. Triple success for TU Darmstadt in the current funding round of the European Research Council (ERC): three professors have been awarded renowned ERC Consolidator Grants for their projects on visual perception, artificial intelligence and scanning electron microscopy. The European Union is funding the research projects to the tune of some two million euros each over a period of five years.
The ERC has selected three researchers from TU Darmstadt for the current funding round. Professor Eva Kaßens-Noor (Department of Construction and Environment) and her project "scAInce"; Professor Leopoldo Molina-Luna (Department of Materials and Geosciences) with "ELECTRON", and Professor Thomas Wallis (Department of Human Sciences) for "SEGMENT". The Consolidator Grant is aimed at researchers from all disciplines who have already achieved excellent work and are now to be supported in groundbreaking research projects in order to achieve scientific consolidation.
Professor Tanja Brühl, President of TU Darmstadt: "My congratulations to the three winners on receiving this prestigious award, all of whom are conducting research in interdisciplinary contexts! The ERC funds will enable them to implement innovative projects and make an important contribution to TU Darmstadt's research profile."
Project "scAInce"
More than half the world's population lives in cities, and they are where ecological, economic and social challenges are concentrated. So what's the best way to address them? Does using technology help, or does it lead to new, possibly even bigger, problems? One approach lies in so-called smart cities, i.e. "intelligent" cities where modern technology, such as artificial intelligence (AI), is applied so resources can be used most efficiently and sustainably. But are smart cities really more sustainable? There are lots of questions, and the aim of project "scAInce" is to find answers.
The researchers, led by Professor Eva Kassens-Noor, want to explore how artificial intelligence and its associated technologies have already changed urban systems; if they even can change urban systems; how they will change urban systems in the future, and whether technological change actually does lead to a more sustainable life in cities. The aim is to create a theory that explains why and how artificial intelligence and its associated technologies change cities. Based on their sustainability goals, cities could then use the developed concepts to decide which technology should be used to enable a more sustainable life.
Project "ELECTRON"
In project "ELECTRON", Professor Leopoldo Molina-Luna is to develop a measuring technique that will make it possible to directly map "brain-like" electrical activity, for instance in functional memristive components. Memristive components are a special kind of non-volatile data storage devices that work with electrical resistances and are suitable, for instance, for constructing neuronal networks. The aim of the project is to image, for the first time, electron-beam induced currents (EBIC) in a scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) during operation. This happens in a similar way to functional magnetic resonance imaging in neuroscience, which tracks blood flow in the brain: the parts that are being used light up in the image. The technique that Molina-Luna and his team are researching will provide a new and unique way to visualise electrical activity in functional devices at atomic level, and enable them to draw conclusions with regard to the electrical potential, the electric field, work function, conductivity, and temperature. It allows the direct observation of thermal and electronic changes in materials or electronic devices under realistic conditions. The new method will help with the development, examination and integration of high-performance components and new materials – a key to industrial innovations in the 21st century.
Project "SEGMENT"
In project "SEGMENT", Professor Thomas Wallis and his team are investigating what is known as visual segmentation. This is when the human brain attempts to recognise which parts of a scene shown, for instance, in a photo belong to which objects. The researchers want to find out how people combine information from active 3D vision, and how they can learn this combination from visual experiences. To this end, they want to develop a new display device and experimental methods, and to simulate inputs into the visual system from early development to adulthood. The plan is to use groundbreaking new technologies based on advanced computer graphics and machine learning.
Computer experiments with artificial neural networks are also planned to help in understanding segmentation learning. The scientists at Darmstadt want to systematically restrict or manipulate various factors such as optics or eye movements. At the end, the learned behaviour of the artificial networks will be compared with the behaviour of adults during segmentation in the active exploration of 3D scenes. "We want to use similarities and differences to better understand a fundamental mystery in perception: how the mind recognises the meaning of scenes," explained Professor Wallis.
The recipients of the ERC Consolidator Grants
Eva Kassens-Noor has been a professor at TU Darmstadt since 2022, and heads the Institute of Transport Planning and Traffic Engineering. Her research is focused on sustainable and emission-free transport systems, extreme weather events, and artificial intelligence.
She studied at the University of Karlsruhe and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA. This was followed by research stays in Barcelona (Spain), at University College London (UK) and in Sydney (Australia). After completing her PhD at MIT, she worked as a professor at Michigan State University (USA).
Leopoldo Molina-Luna has been a professor at TU Darmstadt since March 2020, and heads the Advanced Electron Microscopy Division (AEM) at the Institute of Materials Science (Department of Materials and Geosciences) and the In Situ Microstructural Analytics Lab at the Center for Reliability Analytics (CRA). He received his PhD in physics from the Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen, and was subsequently a postdoc at one of the world's leading centres for electron microscopy, EMAT in Antwerp. His postdoctoral fellowship there was funded by an ERC Advanced Grant. In 2018, he received an ERC Starting Grant (project FOXON) and in 2020 an ERC Proof-of-Concept Grant (project STARE), as well as an MIT-Germany Global Seed Fund. His current research focuses on the understanding of structural property correlations in functional materials for energy technology and on the development of in situ/operando transmission electron microscopy. Leopoldo Molina-Luna works closely with scientists all over the world, and has several cooperation partners in industry.
Thomas Wallis has been a Professor of Perception at the Institute of Psychology and Center for Cognitive Science at TU Darmstadt since 2021. His research focuses on visual perception in humans and machines, machine learning and cognitive modelling, and applications in visual perception.
Australian-born Wallis received his doctorate from the University of Queensland in Australia in 2010. He then conducted research at Schepens Eye Research Institute and Harvard Medical School in the USA as well as at the Centre for Integrative Neurosciences and the Department of Computer Science at the Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen. Thomas Wallis was a researcher at Amazon Deutschland from 2019 until 2021.
Background
ERC Consolidator Grants are awarded by the European Research Council to researchers from all disciplines between seven and twelve years after completing their doctorates. The European Union does so to promote promising research: the Consolidator Grant is aimed at researchers who have already achieved excellent work and are now to be supported in groundbreaking research projects in order to achieve scientific consolidation. In the current round, 321 grants have been awarded and 2.222 applications submitted.
About TU Darmstadt
TU Darmstadt is one of Germany’s leading technical universities and a synonym for excellent, relevant research. We are crucially shaping global transformations – from the energy transition via Industry 4.0 to artificial intelligence – with outstanding insights and forward-looking study opportunities.
TU Darmstadt pools its cutting-edge research in three fields: Energy and Environment, Information and Intelligence, Matter and Materials. Our problem-based interdisciplinarity as well as our productive interaction with society, business and politics generate progress towards sustainable development worldwide.
Since we were founded in 1877, we have been one of Germany’s most international universities; as a European technical university, we are developing a trans-European campus in the network, Unite! With our partners in the alliance of Rhine-Main universities – Goethe University Frankfurt and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz – we further the development of the metropolitan region Frankfurt-Rhine-Main as a globally attractive science location.
MI-No. 05e/2023, mih
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