'Hall of Fame' - HFU doctoral graduates

Graduates 2020

In the past year, ten young researchers at HFU successfully defended their theses. This is the highest number since the option of a cooperative doctorate has been available. With their qualification, which is also internationally recognized, they show that project work in research at HFU can be combined well with the further development of one's own career.

Most of them received their doctorate in engineering from the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Freiburg. Degrees from the Université de Haute-Alsace in Mulhouse, the Université et École Nationale Supérieure d'Arts et Métiers Paris, the University of Budapest or Napier University in Edinburgh impressively demonstrate the internationality of research at HFU.

Currently, 67 doctoral students are working on a cooperative doctorate at HFU. Most of them are employed at the university as part of a third-party funded research project. Their dissertation is submitted to a university in Germany or abroad and is reviewed together with their supervisors at HFU. After the successful oral examination and subsequent publication of their dissertation, the cooperating university awards the doctorate.

Doctoral theses

Dr. Abdul Rahman Abdel Razek was a staff member in the dimenSion project and the Smart Services Competence Center at the WING faculty. Under the scientific supervision of Prof. Dr. Christian van Husen, his PhD thesis focused on the impact of immersive technologies on service prototyping and analyzed the performance, experience and acceptance of different service prototype forms. He received his PhD from the Université et École Nationale Supérieure d'Arts et Métiers in Paris on October 8, 2020.

Dr. Nasim Bosh was a scholarship holder of the Cooperative Doctoral Program "Generation Mechanisms for Microstructures" (GenMik II), jointly run by the University of Freiburg and HFU. Under Prof. Dr. Hadi-Mozaffari of the ITE faculty and Prof. Dr. Claas Müller (IMTEK), she conducted research on the crystal plasticity and fatigue behavior of titanium and demonstrated in her thesis how the mechanical properties of titanium can be optimized by modifying surfaces with innovative coating systems. She successfully defended her thesis on October 6, 2020.

Dr. Andreas Heid, supervised by Prof. Dr. Volker Bucher, worked on how an array of uncased sand grain-sized chips can be embedded and contacted in a foil system. The long-term goal was to thereby develop a flexible implant that meets high requirements for biostability and biocompatibility. He received his PhD in physics from the University of Tübingen on June 22, 2020.

Dr. Judith Jakob has researched how camera-based recognition algorithms from driver assistance, such as traffic lights, crosswalks or lane markings, can be used for blind and visually impaired people. She received her PhD on July 15, 2020, after successfully completing the PhD program at the Doctoral School of Applied Informatics and Applied Mathematics at Óbuda University in Budapest. At HFU, she was supervised by Prof. Dr. Peter Fleischer and Prof. Dr. Elmar Cochlovius at the Faculty of Computer Science.

Dr. Philipp Jauch was supervised by Prof. Dr. Christoph Mergard at the Faculty of Business and Economics and successfully obtained a PhD degree in July 2020 with a study on the empirical survey and evaluation of the influence of role models on the entrepreneurial process and the development of leadership cultures in German digital start-ups in the Napier DBA program.

Dr. Shervin Keshavarzi, as a scholarship holder of the GenMik Cooperative Doctoral Program, focused his PhD on the electrochemical fabrication of acicular silicon surfaces (nanoneedles) at room temperature. The focus of his research was the investigation and modeling of the formation mechanism of the nanoneedles as well as their bonding behavior. The work was supervised by Prof. Dr. Ulrich Mescheder at HFU. The cooperative doctoral program was successfully completed on December 5, 2020, with the defense of the dissertation at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Freiburg. The thesis was published under the title "Silicon needle-like surfaces for room temperature si-si bonding applications".

Dr. Frederico Lima was also a scholarship holder of the Cooperative Doctoral Program GenMik and defended his thesis in front of the doctoral committee at the Faculty of Technology of the University of Freiburg on February 10, 2020. In his thesis Seedless Electroplating: Adhesion and Charge Transfer in Galvanic Processes, Frederico Lima dealt with electrochemical additive deposition processes. In contrast to the standard process, which is also used industrially, in which a so-called 'platinum base' and adhesive layer is used as a starting layer for a defined growth, the scientific question was whether and how good growth conditions and good layer adhesion can also be achieved without such a starting layer, i.e. '"seedless". The results extend the knowledge of the associated electrochemical processes and enable new structuring processes on the micro- and nanoscale in which a seed layer can be dispensed with.

Dr. Mostafa Mahmoud has been working on small molecule diagnostics based on aptamer assays to develop point-of-care assays for clinical applications. The work was scientifically supervised at HFU by Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Deigner, dean of the MLS faculty. On November 19, 2020, Mostafa Mahmoud received his PhD in pharmaceutical chemistry from the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the University of Tübingen.

For his PhD, Dr. Alaa Saleh worked on the development and implementation of pattern recognition methods for simple and complex electrical devices in the context of non-intrusive load monitoring. The thesis, supervised by Prof. Dr. Dirk Benyoucef at the MME faculty, was accepted for doctoral studies at the Université de Haute-Alsace and awarded on 18 December.

Dr. Ali Zahedi examined in his thesis the innovative application of ultra-short pulse lasers for the micromachining of super-abrasive grinding tools. The work was scientifically supervised at HFU by Prof. Dr. Taghi Tawakoli and Prof. Dr. Bahman Azarhoushang. Ali Zahedi sucessfully defended his thesis at the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Freiburg on 23 September 2020. The thesis has been published and is also available online under the title, "Development and Applications of Laser Generated Microstructures on CBN Grinding Wheels". (Düren: Shaker 2020).