This year's Wolfgang Gentner Young Investigator Award goes to Dr. Maria Kalweit, Department of Computer Science

At the ceremonial opening of the Academic Year 2023/24 of the University of Freiburg on October 18, 2023, Rector Prof. Dr. Kerstin Krieglstein awarded Dr. Maria Kalweit for her dissertation.

Dr. Maria Kalweit was awarded the Wolfgang-Gentner-Nachwuchsförderpreis for her dissertation in computer science. She completed her dissertation on the topic of "Deep Representations of Sets" at the Neurorobotics Lab (Prof. Dr. Joschka Bödecker) with summa cum laude. The thesis deals with artificial learning systems, which increasingly take a leading role in diverse areas of life. However, the dynamic properties of the real world confront conventional systems of this kind with significant hurdles. To meet these challenges, Dr. Kalweit has developed a novel class of deep neural networks specifically designed to process set-structured data.

The work was done in cooperation with BrainLinks-BrainTools (https://www.brainlinks-braintools.uni-freiburg.de/), BMW Group (https://www.bmwgroup.com/en.html), IMTEK Freiburg (https://www.imtek.de/home-en?set_language=en), the Epilepsy Center of the University Hospital Freiburg (https://www.uniklinik-freiburg.de/epilepsy.html) and CHUV Lausanne (https://www.chuv.ch/fr/chuv-home) and was presented at Stanford University, in New York, Macao, Lausanne and Rio de Janeiro. For her scientific paper "Early Seizure Detection with an Energy-Efficient Convolutional Neural Network on an Implantable Microcontroller", Dr. Kalweit was awarded the Best Paper Award at IJCNN 2018. Parts of her work resulted in four patents.

The Wolfgang-Gentner-Nachwuchsförderpreis is awarded annually by the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Freiburg for a dissertation in the field of microsystems technology and computer science. It is donated by Volksbank Freiburg and endowed with 1250 €. This year's prize for microsystems engineering went to Dr. Jasmin-Clara Bürger (http://news.vm.uni-freiburg.de/en/newsarchive/wolfgang-gentner-award-goes-to-scientist-of-the-institute-for-microsystems-engineering-imtek).

About the awardee: Maria Kalweit did her work in the Neurorobotics Lab under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Bödecker as part of BrainLinks-BrainTools (https://nr.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/welcome).

Image description: Presentation of the Wolfgang Gentner Young Scientist Award. From left to right: Volker Spietenborg, Member of the Board of Volksbank Freiburg eG, the award winner Dr. Maria Kalweit and Prof. Dr. Kerstin Krieglstein, Rector of the University of Freiburg.

Contact:

Dr. Maria Kalweit
University of Freiburg
Department of Computer Science - IMBIT
Neurorobotics Lab
Georges-Köhler-Allee 201
79110 Freiburg
E-mail: kalweitm@cs.uni-freiburg.de

Prof. Joschka Bödecker
University of Freiburg
Department of Computer Science - IMBIT
Neurorobotics Lab
Georges-Köhler-Allee 201
79110 Freiburg
E-mail: jboedeck@cs.uni-freiburg.de

Kerstin Steiger-Merx
Representative PR/Marketing
Faculty of Engineering
University of Freiburg
Tel.: 0761/203-8056
E-Mail: steiger-merx@tf.uni-freiburg.de