Südwestmetall Award for IMTEK Scientist

For his dissertation entitled "Energy-efficient and Miniaturised Radio Frequency Systems for Biomedical Implants", Dr. Sebastian Stöcklin from the Department of Microsystems Engineering receives the Südwestmetall Award 2023.

Modern biomedical systems such as neural implants require powerful interfaces for wireless power and data transfer. The transmission coils and circuits needed for this should be as small as possible, energy-efficient as well as reliable and achieve high speeds in the transmission of sensor data. As part of his doctoral thesis, Sebastian Stöcklin has investigated technologies that make this possible:

"With novel coil structures, we achieve an energy transmission with relatively high efficiency and little heating of the tissue, even with small coil dimensions and large distances between the transfer structures," says Stöcklin. A further research focus of his work is an adaptable electrical control circuitry that ensures that the implant is supplied with sufficient energy at all times. In the domain of near-field communication, new circuit concepts have made it possible to achieve higher data rates with simultaneously reduced power consumption, which enables the read-out of neural implants with a high number of sensor channels.

For more than 30 years, the employers' association Südwestmetall has been awarding the Südwestmetall Prize to young academics from the state universities. Prizes are awarded for particularly outstanding dissertations that are relevant to the industrial working world or its socio-political framework conditions.

The prize, endowed with 5,000 Euros, was presented by Dr. Joachim Schulz, Chairman of the Board of Südwestmetall, at an academic ceremony in Stuttgart on Wednesday, April 19, 2023, at which the Baden-Württemberg Minister of Science, Petra Olschowski, also spoke a greeting. In addition to the award winner and the supervisor of his doctoral thesis, Prof. Dr. Leonhard Reindl from the Chair of Electrical Measurement and Testing Technology, the University of Freiburg was also represented by Julia Deimel from the Central University Administration, Department of Science Communication and Strategy.

Contact:

Prof. Dr. Stefan J. Rupitsch
Laboratory for Electrical Instrumentation and Embedded Systems
Department of Microsystems Engineering
University of Freiburg
E-Mail: stefan.rupitsch@imtek.uni-freiburg.de

Kerstin Steiger-Merx
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Faculty of Enginering
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