New Humboldt scholarship holders and award winners at FAU

Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) has an excellent international reputation. This is reflected in the large number of renowned international researchers who choose FAU as their host university in order to work with FAU researchers as part of a scholarship or research award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

Prof. Dr. Vijay Bhargava, Chair of Digital Communications

Prof. Dr. Vijay Bhargava will be carrying out research at the Chair of Digital Communications as a recipient of the Humboldt Research Award, worth 60,000 euros. Together with the head of the chair, Prof. Dr. Robert Schober, Prof. Bhargava will work on developing the latest generation of wireless communication. He will focus on topics including multiple antenna systems and special coding and communication systems. Another area of his research will be energy harvesting, a technology that creates small amounts of energy for mobile devices from sources such as vibrations, meaning they are not dependent on batteries.

Prof. Dr. Vijay Bhargava is a researcher at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, where he was head of the Department from 2003 to 2008. He completed his doctoral degree at Queen’s University in Canada and is one of the most-cited researchers in the world.

Prof. Bhargava is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, the Royal Society of Canada, the Canadian Academy of Engineering and the Engineering Institute of Canada.

Outstanding researchers

The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation awards the Humboldt Research Award to up to 100 international researchers each year in recognition of their overall contributions to fundamental discoveries, findings or new theories that have had a lasting effect on their field and who are expected to continue producing excellent research in the future. The Foundation invites recipients of the award to come to Germany for up to a year to work on a research project of their choosing in collaboration with colleagues from their discipline.

Dr. Thaissa Dantas Pessoa

Dr. Thassia Dantas Pessoa began working on a two-year research project at the Institute of Cellular and Molecular Physiology (chair: Prof. Dr. Christoph Korbmacher) in September 2015 as part of an Alexander von Humboldt scholarship. She is researching how a particular transient receptor potential (TRP) channel, TRPV4, functions and how it is regulated. TRPV4 is found in particularly high concentrations in the kidneys, but its role in kidney function is still largely unknown. It is found in the epithelial cells of the distal nephron and collecting tubule, where it is thought to act as a mechanosensor and/or osmosensor. Dr. Pessoa is using a combination of biochemical and electrophysiological methods for her experiments.

Dr. Thassia Dantas Pessoa completed her doctoral degree between 2009 and 2013 at the Institute of Biomedical Sciences at the University of São Paulo in Brazil, where she later carried out postdoctoral research on renal and transport physiology.

Dr. Hui-Lei Hou

Graphene, one of the most important materials in a new class of materials known as two-dimensional crystals, consists of a single layer of carbon atoms. Its unique properties make it one of the most promising candidates for use in future technologies.

Dr. Hui-Lei Hou will spend the next two semesters at the Chair of Organic Chemistry II (chair: Prof. Andreas Hirsch) developing new graphene-based hybrid materials as part of his Humboldt scholarship. He aims to start by finding a simple yet efficient way of producing hybrid materials that combine the properties of graphene with those of porphyrins. He will then combine other compounds with graphene to create materials with the unique optical, electrical and chemical properties of individual components.

Dr. Hui-Lei Hou has been at FAU since June 2015. He completed his Master’s degree in chemistry at the Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he worked on the carbon modification C60 and subsequently completed his doctoral degree in analytical chemistry.

Dr. José Manuel González Álvarez

Around twenty years, many modern narrative texts began blurring the line between autobiography and fiction. This led to the creation of a new genre, known as autofiction, that has been attracting more and more attention from literary researchers and critics ever since. What literary devices and narrative processes do authors use to hide and reveal the self in works of autofiction? How do humour and parody affect the fictional depiction of the self? Dr. José Manuel González Álvarez is studying these questions on the basis of contemporary Argentine autofiction. The main focus of his research in this area is on the use of fantastical, metafictional and playful elements in the creation of autofiction.

Dr. José Manuel González Álvarez began researching at the Institute of Romance Studies under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Andrea Pagni (professor of Latin American studies with a special focus on literary and cultural studies) in September 2015. After studying Spanish philology at the University of Salamanca, he completed his doctoral degree in Latin American literary studies there in 2005. He then taught Latin American literature at the University of Salamanca and held a position as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina from 2008 to 2010. The focus of his research is 20th and 21st century Argentine literature.

Further information:

FAU Press Office
Phone: +49 9131 8570229
presse@fau.de