Research Database: Projects

Dynamic pricing models are no longer uncommon in some industries, especially for travel and flight bookings. In this context, prices for identical products are adjusted dynamically over time due to changing market conditions and  in real time. In her research, PhD student Lena Recki (née Cassens) is looking at the effects of this pricing policy on consumer behaviour. With her findings, she wants to show to what extent customers perceive and accept dynamic prices and furthermore what potential the model offers in industries such as food retail.   

Online remote training for assembly, operation and maintenance is advantageous in the industry to save time and money, especially when corporations have locations on several continents (e.g. automotive industry, oil companies, etc.) Currently, remote training experience is limited due to limited camera perspectives and the lack of suitable navigation techniques for the camera view depending on the task. In this PhD project, PhD student Saugata Biswas develops an autonomous camera viewpoint management system using a robotic arm in a multi-camera training scenario. This PhD thesis will focus on improving the online training experience of remote trainees. 

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.  

Hydrogen is a promising energy carrier that has received more attention in recent years. Through electrolysis, excess renewable energy can be converted into hydrogen, stored, converted back into electricity at a later time, or used in other energy sectors. Storage systems based on this principle can be implemented at different scales, ranging from self-sufficient energy supply for several houses, to stabilization of energy supply networks. PhD student Michael Bareev-Rudy is working on the meta-modeling of hydrogen-based hybrid storage systems to enable optimal sizing and control for different scenarios.