Research Database: Projects

In recent years, the collective participation of citizens has increasingly found its way into the German health care system in order to make health policy decisions that better meet the needs of patients. Because of the challenges in the implementation of collective participation as well as the ongoing discussion about the democratic deficit in the German health care system, PhD student SANDRA WRZEZIONO examined the understanding of democracy of citizens by means of qualitative interviews. The project aims to shed more light on the implications for the future design of institutionalized citizen participation.

In recent years, 3D cameras based on the time-of-flight method - also driven by the use in smartphones - have increasingly found their way into our everyday lives. The possible applications of this technology are immense, be it for automatic environment detection in the automotive sector, security and automation functions in robotics, tasks of automatic area monitoring, biometric problems or even the contactless control of technical devices. The aim of the research work of PhD candidate MARKUS ROHDE is to expand the application areas of such 3D cameras. For example, the range for outdoor applications, which is currently limited to about 10 meters, is to be extended to more than 20 meters. For this purpose, innovative infrared laser illuminations are being developed and approaches to signal processing close to the sensor are being researched.

The ongoing digitalisation and introduction of new information systems in everyday working life means that ever larger amounts of personal data of employees are processed by their employers. This development is particularly problematic with regard to employee data protection when employees have neither sufficient knowledge nor control over the processing and thus the right to informational self-determination as a fundamental element of human dignity is threatened. To compensate for the lack of knowledge and skills in exercising the right to privacy at the workplace, PhD candidate JAN TOLSDORF is designing and testing an assistance system in the form of a "privacy dashboard" for everyday work. For its prototypical implementation, design guidelines are to be derived from the mental models and privacy perceptions of employees, with the help of which data processing and data flows in the work environment can be prepared in an understandable way, sensitised to possible infringements of privacy and options for intervention can be shown, so that employees become capable of acting.

AHMAD DRAK develops a flying robot system that is capable of efficiently exploring the ever-changing environment in which it moves. The result is a wealth of useful information that the system is designed to learn from and optimize. Firstly, it decreases the time the robot takes to explore its environment, and secondly, it reduces the energy consumption of the robot system. 

In our society, technology is still rather associated with masculinity. There have hardly been any studies on the relationship between visual technology communication and gender in Germany so far. In the first phase of her research, doctoral student Juliane Orth is therefore planning an inventory analysis (image content analysis) of current media images that depict people (in action) with technology. In addition to daily newspapers such as the FAZ, trade journals such as the Technology Review will also be examined. In a second step, the impact of existing and alternative media images will be evaluated by interviews.  

Architectural journalism is considered to be a comparably unexplored subject in academic journalism. While there are plenty of empirical studies on journalistic genres such as politics, science and technology journalism, there are few findings on architecture journalism. Yet architecture plays no less important a role in the overall social context than politics and economics. This becomes clear in urban planning and development, new housing concepts and public building projects. Doctoral student Patrycja Muc is therefore conducting a content analysis of how German daily newspaper editorial offices report on architecture. In addition, guided expert interviews with architects and journalists will shed light on the assessment of the relevance of architectural topics by both actors.  

Advanced technology makes it possible to display digital information distributed in space and even to create artificial, purely virtual realities. These kinds of augmented and virtual reality user interfaces pose new challenges to designers and users from design to use, as they differ fundamentally from conventional applications in many ways. In the context of her dissertation, doctoral student Veronika Krauß is researching the requirements that designers and users place on design tools and processes and how the design of such systems can be made more accessible. Her special focus is on the investigation of prototypes.

When thinking about a more sustainable world, it is enormously important to obtain chemical resources primarily from renewable raw materials. One possible candidate that can also be used in the long term in a wide variety of preliminary stages in the chemical industry is lignin. To this end, doctoral student Jonas Bergrath is looking at various biogenic wastes (including waste wood and pomace from winegrowing) in order to isolate lignin in as "green" a way as possible. Since lignin is extremely difficult to reproduce, he uses a wide range of analytical and computational chemistry methods to reveal possible structure-property correlations. The overall goal is to relate the physico-chemical properties (including adsorption and behaviour in solvents) to structural elements of lignin and to use it as an adsorbent for organic small molecules (e.g. pharmaceuticals) in wastewater treatment.

Cryptography, i.e. encryption technology, is used everywhere today. In online banking as well as when opening the car by remote control. However, a new type of computer, the quantum computer, threatens the current generation of encryption systems. In order to remain on the safe side, new cryptographic procedures must be conceived, developed and tested. This branch of research is called Post-Quantum Cryptography. PhD student Ruben Gonzalez is researching how post-quantum cryptography can work on the smallest devices, the constraint embedded devices (e.g. fine dust sensors, credit cards). Supervision: Prof. Dr. Karl Jonas

The Japan-EU Free Trade Agreement (JEFTA for short), the unknown foreign deployments of the German Armed Forces or the "Europe 2020" strategy to fight poverty - hardly anyone is likely to have heard much about these topics, mentioned here as examples, in the media in recent years. And this despite the fact that they have a high news value for society. This hitherto little-researched phenomenon is also called agenda cutting in communication science. But why are so many important news items deliberately or involuntarily neglected, while other, less relevant news items are discussed in a continuous loop? Doctoral student Filiz Kalmuk is investigating this question in her dissertation project. Using a mixed-methods approach, the different mechanisms and reasons for agenda cutting will be investigated with the aim of finding out what influences there are on the micro, meso and macro levels in the dethematisation of events and news. The influence of public relations and the tools it uses for agenda cutting will also be examined.