This was the ZESS PhD Research Forum 2025

Like in the previous years, the house was packed and the atmosphere was fantastic. We had the traditional lightning talks (14 in total) and poster format (21 in total) presented over the course of the afternoon of the 7 May but supplemented these with three novelties:

The first novelty was the opening by VDI’s prof. Jörg Himmel followed by a Keynote by Dr Marina Evers’ on Visual Analytics for Uncertain Data.

The second novelty was the visit of Dr Sebastian Mohr, the programme officer at the German Research Foundation (DFG) responsible for our DFG research unit Learning to Sense. Dr Mohr met with the PIs, took part in the poster session and did a tour of University of Siegen’s new INCYTE building that is in the final phase of construction.

The third and final novelty was the VDI sponsored prizes for best poster and best lightning talks, presented by ZESS spokesman Prof Kristof Van Laerhoven and VDI’s Prof Dr Jörg Himmel.

Gallery

List of Lightning Talks

1. Erqi Huang (Group Ihrke/L2S): BSNeRF: Broadband Spectral Neural Radiance Fields for Snapshot Multispectral Light-field Imaging
2. Marius Bock (Group Möller/L2S): Temporal Action Localization for Inertial-based Human Activity Recognition – First Prize
3. Henry Kipsang Misoi (Group Seeger): Temperature-Dependent Raman Linewidths of CO₂: Insights from Pure Rotational CARS
4. Syed Muhammad Kazim (Group Ihrke/L2S): Refractive Index Tomography of Biological Cells with Coded Phase Camera – Third Prize
5. Mohamed Saleh (Group Kolb/L2S): Detecting Object Parameters in MIMO THz Measurements through Inverse Simulation
6. Jonas Powell (Group Nelles): Data-Driven State-Space Modeling of an Excavator
7. Yannik Loth (Group Haring): A Waveguide-Driven Resonator for THz-Biosensing
8. Felix Thiel (Group Haring): Direct Confocal Absorption Microscopy (dCAM)
9. Syed Muhammad Raza (Group Manns): Human Assistance System with Eye-Tracking and Smartwatch Integration
10. Zeyneddin Oz (Group Van Laerhoven): A Federated Learning Study in Human Activity Recognition
11. Emrah Dursun (Group Haring): Scalable Transfer of Graphene (2D Material)
12. Dr Patrick Müller (Group Ihrke/L2S): Sensing the Essential – Robust Vision Camera with Hardware Prepended Layer
13. Dr John Meshreki (Group Ihrke/L2S): Entangled Vision: Pushing Boundaries in Quantum Imaging
14. Alireza Yazdani (Group Van Laerhoven): From Simulation to Visualization: Confirming Tube Bending Predictions with 3D Geometry – Second Prize

List of Posters

1. Jonas Pöhler (Group Van Laerhoven): Simulators in HCI: Evaluating Cognitive Load, Interaction Design, and Physiological Responses from Control Rooms to Cycling
2. Pratik Bisht (Group Kolb): Quad-Quartic Gaussian Surfel Splatting with updated Color basis
3. Hao Qian (Group Choubey): Neuromemristive circuits as hardware accelerators for edge computing towards ultra-secure bio-sensors (DE-TW-NeuroMemSens)
4. Zeyneddin Oz (Group Van Laerhoven): FedFitTech: A Baseline for Federated Learning in Fitness Tracking
5. Mishal Fatima (Group Keuper/L2S): Learning to Quantize – Towards Low-bit RAW Imaging in Computer Vision
6. Aryaman Sharma (Group Kolb): Mesh Aware Gaussian Splatting
7. Michael Brilka (Group Van Laerhoven): Tracking progress with a proactive video recording system
8. Hendrik Sommerhoff (Group Kolb/L2S)/Qiushuang Zhang (Group Chouubey/L2S): Task driven sensor layouts – joint optimization of pixel layout and network parameters – Shared First Prize
9. Emrah Dursun (Group Haring): Scalable Transfer of Graphene (2D Material)
10. Henry Kipsang Misoi (Group Seeger): Temperature-Dependent Raman Linewidths of CO₂: Insights from Pure Rotational CARS
11. Jannis Maron (Group Ihrke), “Pose Optimization of Transparent Objects for Microscopic Cell Tracking” – Third Prize
12. Nahshon Obiri (Group Van Laerhoven): Indoor Localization: Improving LoRaWAN-based Distance Estimation via Environmental-Aware Path Loss Modeling
13. Atikkhan Faridkhan Nilgar (Group Van Laerhoven): Privacy Perceptions in Robot-Assisted Well-Being Coaching
14. Alexander Auras (Group Möller): Learned Representations of Discontinuous Functions
15. Zhaoyu Xiong (Group Kolb): Real-Time Multi-Material Material Method Point Simulation in Virtual Reality Applications
16. Michael Brilka (Group Van Laerhoven): Capturing Commuter Life: Recording Passenger Attention
17. Amir Peiraviminaei (Group Ihrke): Modelling and Recovering Differential Motion from Wavefield Transformations for Transparent Microscopic Objects
18. Dr Andrii Nehrich (Group Ihrke/L2S): Ultrasound 3D manipulations and phase imaging of biological microobjects
19. Johann Schmitt (Group Van Laerhoven): Development of a fast, robust and cost-effective system for nanoparticle analysis
20. Dr John Meshreki (Group Ihrke/L2S): Leveraging Vignetting in Fourier Ptychographic Microscopy
21. Fabian Rösner (Group Seeger): Studies on ammonia injection with Schlieren technique and Laser-Induced Grating spectroscopy