Humboldt research fellowships and awards
Funding for international research collaborations
With its Humboldt research fellowships and awards, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation provides funding for research collaborations between German and international researchers. Fellowship holders and award winners look for project partners and hosts in Germany with whom they can collaborate in places they believe are the most suitable for implementing their projects. FAU welcomes a large number of excellent researchers as a host university every year.
In June 2023, Prof. Andreas Hirsch, Chair of Organic Chemistry II, and Prof. Dr. Bernhard Egger, Professorship of Cognitive Computer Vision, have also been selected as scouts for the Henriette Herz Scouting Program. They can now recruit up to three junior researchers from abroad for their research group with a Humboldt Research Fellowship.
The most recent award winners and research fellowship holders
Dr. Yubiao Zhang
Chair of Dynamics, Control, Machine Learning and Numerics, October 2023
With a Humboldt Fellowship for experienced researchers, Dr. Yubiao Zhang will conduct research at the Chair of Dynamics, Control, Machine Learning and Numerics under the direction of Prof. Dr. Enrique Zuazua from October 2023 to March 2025. During his stay, Dr. Zhang will mainly focus on control theory, which not only has a broad range of applications in engineering, business, machine learning and other areas, but also involves several mathematical problems of its own. In particular, his research will be investigating the following three topics: Neural control for deep learning, controlled PDEs with memory, and output stabilization.
Prof. Dr. George Karagiannidis
Department of Electrical Engineering, September 2023
Prof. Dr. George Karagiannidis from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, is researching with a Humboldt Fellowship from September 2023 until March 2025 at the Department of Electrical Engineering led by Prof. Dr. Robert Schober. His research interests focus on the theory of wireless communication, optical wireless communication, the convergence of communication and data processing, and mathematics and statistics with applications in communication theory.
During his stay, Professor Karagiannidis will be performing research into improving the connectivity and reliability of the next generation of wireless networks. This involves proposing communication paradigms that are based on optical wireless communication (OWC), reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS), distributed artificial intelligence (AI), over the air computing (AirComp) and the joint optimization of communication and computing resources.
Prof. Dr. Tomas Torres Cebada
Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy, September 2023
Prof. Dr. Tomas Torres Cebada from the Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain, who has received a Humboldt Research Award, started researching in September 2023 in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Dirk Guldi at the Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy. His research focuses on organic materials and the photophysical properties of porphyrinoids with applications in molecular photovoltaic systems and singlet fission. Prof. Torres Cebada will be be visiting FAU sporadically between September 2023 and July 2024 with the aim of strengthening the collaboration already set up with Prof. Guldi in the above areas.
Dr. Gabriel Encinas
Professorship for Legal Theory and Legal Philosophy, August 2023
Starting in August 2023, Dr. Gabriel Encinas will be researching with a Humboldt Fellowship for postdoctoral researchers at the Professorship for Legal Theory and Legal Philosophy led by Prof. Dr. Jan Sieckmann. The aim of his project “Interlegal Reasoning and Interlegal Balancing” is to identify the special features of the justification of legal decisions that take norms and standards from more than one legal system into account. His research combines the theory of legal reasoning with reflections on law beyond the state, including international human rights and transnational law. Dr. Encinas gained his doctoral degree in Human Rights and Global Politics at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa, Italy. He also gained an LLM in Legal Theory at Johann-Wolfgang-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and a law degree at the Autonomous University of Baja California, Ensenada, Mexico, where he also taught Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programs.
Prof. Dr. Sebastian Zamorano
Chair of Dynamics, Control, Machine Learning and Numerics, August 2023
With a Humboldt Fellowship, Prof. Dr. Sebastian Zamorano will conduct research at the Chair of Dynamics, Control, Machine Learning and Numerics under the direction of Prof. Dr. Enrique Zuazua from August 2023. During his stay, Professor Zamorano will be researching control problems and optimum control problems for a variety of systems that can be modeled using differential equations. He will focus in particular on the concept of agile control.
Prof. Xiaoming Chen
Chair of Digital Communications, August 2023
Prof. Xiaoming Chen from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China will be carrying out research with a Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel research award at the Chair of Digital Communications led by Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Gerstacker. His research interests include wireless communication and networks, in particular the communication of satellite constellations in the lower Earth orbit (LEO). At FAU, Prof. Chen will be conducting research into LEO satellite constellation communication which is an important component of 6G mobile networks. The LEO satellite constellation can provide seamless global coverage, in order to achieve the goal of the Internet of Everything.
Prof. Dr. Veronica Krapovickas
Department of Artificial Intelligence in Biomedical Engineering, June 2023
With a Humboldt Research Fellowship, Prof. Dr. Veronica Krapovickas will be conducting research every year from June to August until 2025 at the Department of Artificial Intelligence in Biomedical Engineering under the direction of Prof. Dr. Björn Eskofier. Her research interests are in the coevolution of animals and their environment, in particular how the composition of ecosystems changes over time and as a reaction to important events in the Earth’s history. Her focus lies on reconstructions of the posture and gait of extinct mammals and dinosaurs. At FAU, Prof. Dr. Krapovickas will use experimental studies, models, simulations and fossil footprints to reconstruct the posture and gait. The project is one of the first multi-proxy approaches that uses experimental movement analysis, deep neural networks and simulations.
Dr. Vasilis K. Papanikolaou
Chair of Digital Communications, June 2023
Dr. Vasilis K. Papanikolaou from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, is researching with a Humboldt Research Fellowship for postdoctoral researchers from June 2023 to June 2025 at the Chair of Digital Communications led by Prof. Dr. Robert Schober. Papanikolaou’s research interests are in the field of wireless communication, in particular optical wireless communication, which means the use of modulated light to transmit information. At FAU, Dr. Papanikolaou will conduct research into the development and simulation of novel optical wireless communication systems for ultra high-speed data transfer rates and communication networks with high energy efficiency. Furthermore, he is interested in conducting research in wireless energy transfer methods and their application in order to facilitate zero energy devices or “Internet of Things” devices that do not require charging with cables or by changing their batteries. Making programmable wireless environments available through the use of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces that facilitate the manipulation of the propagation of electromagnetic waves is another of his areas of research.
Dr. Ilias Ftouhi
Chair of Dynamics, Control, Machine Learning and Numerics, July 2023
With a Humboldt Fellowship, Dr. Ilias Ftouhi will conduct research at the Chair of Dynamics, Control, Machine Learning and Numerics under the direction of Prof. Dr. Enrique Zuazua from July 2023 to June 2025. During his stay, Ftouhi will carry out research into the theoretical and numerical study of shape optimization problems and the use of deep learning techniques in solving inverse problems. His research focuses on proving isoperimetric inequalities that refer to geometric and spectral form functions.
