Publications and Teaching

This page provides a summary of my contributions to scientific literature and presents a selection of lectures, courses and workshops I have given.

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Courses

Below is a short summary of my ongoing teaching and mentoring endeavors.

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Cluster Introduction Workshops

I am holding an ongoing workshop series for onboarding new users of the ESI HPC cluster that provides an introduction to bash, SLURM, VNC and cluster file-system use.

Software Carpentry Workshops

I give workhops that cover the basics of research data management, version control with git, modern IDEs for programming (speifically VS Code) and best practices for writing research codes.

Advanced SLURM Workshops

I am co-leading a workshop that discusses specifics of writing sbatch files, attaching to running jobs, requesting specific hardware resources and integrating SLURM in Matlab and Python via slurmfun and acme, respectively.

Modeling Week With Mathematics

I was project leader at the 2012 Modeling Week With Mathematics. My group developed artificial neural networks to perform optical character recognition and face detection tasks. Details can be found in their final report (in German). I used this presentation to introduce the problem statement and these slides (both in German) as neural network primer. The implementation was done solely by the students in Python using PyBrain.

Mentorships

  • My mentee, Jacob Yatvitskiy, was announced as semi-finalist for his computational modeling project in the nation-wide Regeneron Science Talent Search, the most prestigious pre-college science competition in the US. He was named one of only 300 Regeneron STS 2017 Scholars.

  • I continued supervising Jacob Yatvitskiy for his computational modeling work which was awarded 1st place at the Junior Monmouth Science Symposium 2016. I continued mentoring Jacob in his senior year as part of the mentorship program of the High Technology High School.

  • I supervised High Technology High School Student Jacob Yatvitskiy during his summer internship within a computational modeling project.

  • I supervised Joel C. Zinn during his time as research associate in the Dystonia and Motor Control Laboratory at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai which culminated in our joint paper A Neural Population Model Incorporating Dopaminergic Neurotransmission During Domplex Voluntary Behaviors published in PLoS Computational Biology.

  • I supervised Hunter College High School senior student Stephen Leong for his project Correlation Networking of Speech Production: Examining the Brain with Comparative Graph Analysis, with which he entered the semi-finals of the nation-wide Siemens competition Math:Science:Technology.

Lectures

Qualification course for university entrance

Presentations

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Below you find a selection of public speaking engagements at professional scientific meetings and research institutions as well as workshops, courses and lectures I gave.

Invited Talks

  • University Bremen, Brain Research Institute, Germany, November 9 2023: neuro-conda: A Python Distribution for Neuroscience

  • 1st Castellum Community Meeting, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany, September 25 2023: Castellum, Cortex and Chronology - First Impressions of Using Castellum in Neuroscience

  • 4th FME Data Scientist Community Meeting 2023, Online, August 7 2023: ACME: Parallelize Code Easily

  • Goethe University Frankfurt, Institute of Psychology, Germany, November 12 2018: Analysis and Modeling of Speech Motor Control

  • MONDO Initiative, Copenhagen, Denmark, May 23 2018: Network Analysis for Medical Applications

  • Goethe University Frankfurt, Department of Neurology, Germany, September 21 2017: Mapping the Functional Atlas of Human Speech Production

  • Goethe University Frankfurt, Institute of Mathematics, Germany, June 21 2017: Probing the Complexity of Brain Networks Controlling Human Speech using Computational Mathematics

  • National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, USA, November 20 2014: Modeling Dopaminergic Neurotransmission during Complex Voluntary Behavior

  • Columbia University, Columbia Neuroscience, New York, USA, April 16 2014: Dopaminergic Neurotransmission in Speech: from Neuroimaging to Neural Modeling

  • Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Department of Neurology, New York, USA, March 13 2013: A Novel Approach to Register Intensity Modulated Images

  • Universität zu Lübeck, Institute of Mathematics and Image Computing, Germany, May 30 2012: An Approach for Computing Binary Edge Maps

Conference Presentations

Poster Presentations

Scientific Publications

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Below you find a list of scientific journal articles, technical reports, book chapters and monographs I have (co)-authored as well as my dissertation and diploma thesis.

Monographs

Book Chapters

Journal Articles

Technical Reports

Theses

  • Dissertation:
    An Approach to Computing Binary Edge Maps for the Purpose of Registering Intensity Modulated Images

    Doctoral advisor: Stephen Keeling
    External advisor: Jan Modersitzki
    Institute for Mathematics and Scientific Computing, Karl-Franzens University Graz, 2012

    Synopsis The initial objective of my doctoral work was to map a Purkinje fiber network in the endocardium of one heart to the endocardium of another heart. The edge sets arising in the process were mapped one to the other by representing these zero area sets as {em diffuse images} with positive measure supports, and could then be registered elastically. The approach proved to be very successful which motivated the development of an extension of the proposed algorithmic strategy to general edge sets. The goal was to design a method capable of registering images that manifest considerable intensity variations, such as dynamic contrast enhanced magnetic resonance images (DCE-MRIs), before, during and after the appearance of contrast agent. If binary edge maps of such images were available these edges could be transformed to diffuse surfaces and the developed approach to register diffuse images could be applied. Thus, the second part of my doctoral work consisted in designing a novel approach for computing binary edge maps. In contrast to existing methods, the algorithm I designed yielded truly binary edges, i.e., it did not require any a-posteriori hysteresis or thresholding. For both the registration and segmentation problems a rigorous theoretical analysis was performed and both methods were validated using academic as well as empirical DCE-MR images.

  • Diploma thesis:
    Comparison of Cardiovascular Control Mechanisms under Orthostatic Stress

    Principal advisor: Franz Kappel
    Secondary advisor: Jerry Batzel
    Institute for Mathematics and Scientific Computing, Karl-Franzens University Graz, 2009

    Synopsis This work analyzed the influence of orthostatic stress on the human cardiovascular system, i.e., the effects of gravitationally induced hypovolemia on the human body were studied. Three control formulations representing popular techniques used in physiological modeling were analyzed: a plain differential equation derived from fundamental biological considerations, a more complex differential set point equation modeling saturation effects and time decays, and finally an optimal control approach based on cybernetics. The first two explicit control formulations required the detailed design of a feedback gain while the third implicit approach attempted to stabilize the system by solving an abstract minimization problem. This work was published as book by VDM in 2010.