Ms. Karoline Seidel is now a Mrs. Karoline Gussow. We are very happy that our Hiwi and Bachelor thesis student is married now. At the beginning of this week lectures on adaptive filtering, in the middle of the week SONAR measurements on the Förde (see small picture) and at the end of the week a marriage - wow, what a week! We are curious what the weekend will bring up ...

Congratulations to this very nice step in life from the whole DSS team!

Jannek Winter and Tim Rocholl designed and facricated a new DSS sign for us. A very nice one - see the picture. After some discussion we decided to put it on the wall in Gerhard Schmidt's office. This shows the DSS logo now in every online meeting he participates in the background. Tim Rocholl is still doing his Master courese, but Jannek Winter has finsihed his study period now and continues in idustry.

Thanks to both of you from the whole DSS team!

Patricia Piepjohn received the second place of the Prof. Petersen prize (Prof. Petersen Preis der Technik) for her master thesis. The Prof. Petersen prize is the highest endowed award for Bachelor/Master theses in the field of technical studies.

Patricias thesis was about real-time classification of movement patterns of tremor patients, which she is continuing now as part of her PhD. Congratulations for this award from the whole DSS team!

On Wednesday, 2nd of September, Liv Preßer, interviewed us about or research on Parkinson speech analysis and corresponding therapy. The story appeared in Liv's podcast called "Was steckt dahinter". If you would like to hear it, please have a look on this website. Beside this website there are a couple of further possibilities: e.g. search for "Was steckt dahinter" on spotify.

Beside Liv Presser and Gerhard Schmidt, also Corina Maetzler (from the geriatrics department of the university hospital here in Kiel (UKHS) and Heidi Nebel from the neurologic department (also UKSH) participated in the podcast recording. Together, we reported on our research results, the probelms that we faced when conduction our experiments and patient recordings, and on our future plans.

More details on Liv's podcast can be found here.

Since July we have a new member in the DSS team. Even if the name sounds male at first glace, Toni is a "lady". She will help all of us, but in particular Patricia, to stay calm in critical situations. If you would like to make friends with her - small "Wieners" will help a lot.

Toni is a real shaker - she does about a hundred times a day and also Patricia starts doing that now. Soon all of us will shake in special occasions. Toni, a very warm welcome in the DSS team.

On Wednesday the 11.03.2020 the three-day workshop “Innovative Processing of Bioelectrical and Biomagnetical Signals” started at Kiel University. This workshop is a collaboration of the two expert committees “Biosignals” and “Magnetic Methods in Medicine” of the German Society for Biomedical Engineering in the VDE. Researchers working at the interface between medicine and technology were able to present their research during poster sessions and short scientific talks. The subjects included cardiological examinations, possible applications for biomagnetism, methods to analyse movement as well as neurological biosignals. Despite the broad field of discussions, a lively scientific exchange was achieved.

The dean of Kiel University’s Faculty of Medicine, Prof. Dr. Ulrich Stephani, praised the work of the researchers, stating that no progress of medical diagnosis would be possible without technological research. This was also underlined by four keynotes given by Prof. Dr. Eckhard Quandt (Kiel University), PD Dr. Helmut Laufs (University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein), Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Schulte-Mattler (University Medical Center Regensburg) und PD Dr. Philipp Hüllemann (University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein, MediClin Klinikum Soltau). They provided insight in sensor systems, signal processing and diagnostic procedures within different medical contexts.

In the course of the workshop six junior scientists were honoured by the Young Investigator Award for excellent talks or posters. The best talk was given by Michael Kircher (KIT) about “Nonlinear and Piecewise Fitting of Indicator-Enhanced EIT-Signals: Comparison of Methods“. The talk about “Colour Spaces and Facial Regions for a Camera-Based Heart Rate Estimation” by Hannes Ernst (TU Dresden) was voted second best. Patricia Piepjohn (Kiel University) was awarded the third place for her talk concerning “Real-Time Classification of Tremor Patients’ Movement Patterns”. The price for the best poster was awarded to Nicolas Pilia (KIT) for his contribution about “Reconstruction of Potassium Concentrations with the ECG on Imbalanced Datasets“. The poster on the subject of “Active Shielding of Optically Pumped Magnetometer by Means of Helmholtz Coils” by Christin Bald (Kiel University) was honoured with the second place. Richard Hohmuth’s poster (TU Dresden) concerning “Applicability of Spectroscopy in Multispectral Photoplethysmography” was voted third best. The award winners will be supported in publishing their contributions to the workshop in the journal “Biomedical Engineering/ Biomedizinische Technik”.

Owing to the precautionary measures which were taken due to the corona virus, several participants could not be part of the workshop. The organisers of the event, Prof. Dr. Gerhard Schmidt (Kiel University), Prof. Dr. Andreas Bahr (Kiel University) and Eric Elzenheimer (Kiel University) concluded that they are glad to have held the workshop in spite of the corona virus and they hope that the participants could draw on the exchange with colleagues they have had during those three days for a while.

Cara Broß, IPN - Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education, Kiel, Germany

Due to the work of Owe Wisch and Alexej Namenas (and of the rest of the SONAR team, of course) our SONAR simulator supports now a real-time mode for testing underwater speech communication. A multitude of "subscribers" can connect to our virtual ocean and send and receive signals. The simulator consists of large (time-variant) convolution engine as well as a realistic noise simulation that takes parameters such as wind speed, etc. into account. In addition, linear and non-linear behaviour of the sending and receiving hardware can be simulated. However, no simuator is of course as beautiful as the real sea.

Alexej extended the real-time simulation of our "digital ocean". Until now we are able to put objects in our simulator and specify time points on which they should be at specific locations. In between these time-poins a linear movement was interpolated. This leads to not really realistic movements as long as we did not use really a lot of interpolation points.

Now, it is possible to use also a spline interpolation between the time points, which allows for more realistic movements.