Funding for 14 PhD students in the field of optimization in FWF doc.funds project

The approval of this project represents a milestone in the success story of the Departments of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Klagenfurt. It’s also a great achievement on the part of the participating professors and particularly for the 32-year-old coordinator, Michaela Szölgyenyi. Starting in October 2020, the project will employ ten young scientists (including eight women), with four more positions yet to be filled. The launch of the doc.funds doctoral school entitled “Modeling – Analysis – Optimization of discrete, continuous, and stochastic systems” will be celebrated on 27 October 2020 with an opening colloquium.

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“ There is a desire to ‘improve’ something in the interest of others, without actually knowing what those interests are.”

In the Western world we are very quick to demand specific ethical criteria relating to working conditions. However, the Pakistani sociologist Farah Naz, who earned her doctorate at the University of Klagenfurt and now researches and teaches at the University of Sargodha, raises the following issue: Before judging child labour and home-based work, we should understand the living and working conditions of the families concerned. Together with sociology professor Dieter Bögenhold, she has published a book with the title “Unheard Voices”. The publication forges links between the work of Pakistani football stitchers and the great global inequalities. The two authors discuss the main ideas of their book in this interview.

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Robots set to learn how to provide better assistance during surgery

Minimally invasive surgery has many advantages for patients and surgical teams, such as shorter recovery times, lower post-operative complication rates, higher patient acceptance rates and increased cost efficiency. One key area here is interventional radiology, where external imaging equipment is used to guide the surgical instruments through the body. Robots can support in this task. However, those who believe that robots “operate” independently are (as yet) mistaken: The robot systems available today are pure tele-operators or mere assistants for holding and targeting tools; that’s all they can do. Now, a research project led by the University of Klagenfurt wants to explore additional advantages of “operating robots” and increase their autonomy when it comes to supporting surgeons. Read more →

Autonomous robots to inspect and maintain ship hulls and storage tanks

Some 56,000 ships weighing in excess of 500 tons are currently sailing the world’s oceans. For now, their maintenance is carried out by a high number of personnel: The cleaning of a ship’s hull currently takes about eight days and costs between 100,000 and 200,000 euros. The project “BugWright2 Autonomous Robotic Inspection and Maintenance on Ship Hulls and Storage Tanks” financed by EU-HORIZON2020 aims at developing autonomous technical solutions.

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