Projects

Magnetic Drug Targeting unter Einsatz von superparamagnetischen Eisenoxid-Nanopartikeln (SPIONs) ist eine wirksame Methode, um in der Krebstherapie die Wirkstoffapplikation im Tumorgewebe zu steigern, bei gleichzeitiger Reduktion der Gesamtwirkstoffmenge und der mit der Therapie einhergehenden Nebenwirkungen. Während die Wirksamkeit des Ansatzes bereits in Studien nachgewiesen werden konnte, fehlen allerdings bislang Ansätze, um diese Methode an den jeweiligen Behandlungsfall anzupassen und zu optimieren. Ziel dieses Antrags ist es daher, die Grundlagen für eine derartige patientenindividuelle Optimierung zu legen: Vergleichbar dem bereits erfolgreich praktizierten Procedere in der Strahlentherapie sollen perspektivisch vor der Anwendung der Therapie auf Basis des lokalen Gefäßsystems des Patienten und der Eigenschaften des Tumors die verwendeten Magnetfelder derart angepasst werden, dass der Anteil des Wirkstoffs, der in das Tumorgewebe gelangt, maximiert wird. Zu diesem Zweck soll im beantragten Projekt ein physiologisch-physikalisches Modell der Bewegung und Magnetfeld-basierten Steuerung von SPIONs entwickelt, als Finite-Elemente-Modell implementiert und experimentell validiert werden. Dieses soll es erlauben, die zeitlich variable Feldstärke und Position eines oder mehrerer Elektromagnete in Hinblick auf die Partikelkonzentration in einem Zielgebiet zu optimieren. Im Projekt sollen dabei die Steuerung bei einfach und mehrfach verzweigten Kanalsystemen ebenso wie beim Übertritt aus dem Gefäß in das umliegende Gewebe betrachtet werden. Damit soll die Basis für eine spätere Übertragung des Optimierungsansatzes auf gegebene Gefäß- und Tumormodelle in der klinischen Anwendung gelegt werden. Die mathematisch-algorithmische Entwicklung des Simulations- und Optimierungstools obliegt dabei dem Lehrstuhl für Angewandte Mathematik III (AM3) der Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU). Im gesamten Projektverlauf soll dieses Modell experimentell validiert und auf Basis von Versuchen erweitert werden. Die zugehörigen Versuchsaufbauten werden gemeinsam vom Lehrstuhl für Technische Elektronik (LTE) der FAU und der Sektion für Experimentelle Onkologie und Nanomedizin (SEON) des Universitätsklinikums Erlangen entwickelt und betreut. Dabei ist der LTE für die Mess- und Steueraufbauten verantwortlich, die SEON für die Nanopartikel und die Gefäßmodelle inkl. Untersuchungen an menschlichen Nabelschnurarterien.

Mountain glaciers and ice caps outside the large ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica contribute about 41% to the global sea level rise between 1901 to 2018 (IPCC 2021). While the Arctic ice masses are and will remain the main contributors to sea level rise, glacier ice in other mountain regions can be critical for water supply (e.g. irrigation, energy generation, drinking water, but also river transport during dry periods). Furthermore, retreating glaciers also can cause risks and hazards by floods, landslides and rock falls in recently ice-free areas. As a consequence, the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) dedicates special attention to the cryosphere (IPCC 2019; IPCC 2021). WMO and UN have defined Essential Climate Variables (ECV) for assessing the status of the cryosphere and its changes. These ECVs should be measured regularly on large scale and are essential to constrain subsequent modelling efforts and predictions.
The proposed International Doctorate Program (IDP) “Measuring and Modelling Mountain glaciers and ice caps in a Changing ClimAte (M3OCCA)” will substantially contribute to improving our observation and measurement capabilities by creating a unique inter- and transdisciplinary research platform. We will address main uncertainties of current measurements of the cryosphere by developing new instruments and future analysis techniques as well as by considerably advancing geophysical models in glaciology and natural hazard research. The IDP will have a strong component of evolving techniques in the field of deep learning and artificial intelligence (AI) as the data flow from Earth Observation (EO) into modelling increases exponentially. IDP M3OCCA will become the primary focal point for mountain glacier research in Germany and educate emerging
talents with an interdisciplinary vision as well as excellent technical and soft skills. Within the IDP we combine cutting edge technologies with climate research. We will develop future technologies and transfer knowledge from other disciplines into climate and glacier research to place Bavaria at the forefront in the field of mountain cryosphere research. IDP M3OCCA fully fits into FAU strategic goals and it will leverage on Bavaria’s existing long-term commitment via the super test site Vernagtferner in the Ötztal Alps run by Bavarian Academy of Sciences (BAdW). In addition, we cooperate with the University of Innsbruck and its long-term observatory at Hintereisferner. At those super test sites, we will perform joint measurements, equipment tests, flight campaigns and cross-disciplinary trainings and exercises for our doctoral researchers. We leverage on existing
instrumentation, measurements and time series. Each of the nine doctoral candidates will be guided by interdisciplinary, international teams comprising university professors, senior scientists and emerging talents from the participating universities and external research organisations.

The Message Passing Interface\cite{mpi-standard} (MPI) is the de facto
standard for distributed programming on all modern compute clusters and
supercomputers. It features a large number of communication patterns with
virtually no overhead. Our work on bringing MPI functionality to Common
Lisp resulted in vast improvements to the message passing library CL-MPI
and the development of severaly new approaches to distributed computing.
 

We optimized and parallelized a framework which compiles stencil operations defined by abstract operators into code, which performs the corresponding stencil update. Therefore, we are now able to formulate solvers for a large number of application problems (flow simulation, image analysis, ...) in an abstract way, and then solve efficiently on structured meshes.

The fundamental problems in the numerical approximation of multiphase systems, or more generally speaking, in the treatment of flows with capillary free boundaries are the representation of the free surface, evaluating the curvature, handling of discontinuities, most importantly the pressure jump, and time discretization strategies for the decoupling of flow computation and geometry. While for the first three items there exists a vast literature and many techniques developed over the last two decades, the last problem of how to efficiently treat the time discretization has been widely ignored. The majority of the existing approaches just decouple the flow field from the geometry by a simple segregated approach, i.e. evaluating the geometric quantities from the previous time step. These strategy leads to a) a severe capillary CFL condition and b) is of first order in time at most. Existing semi-implicit discretizations exist that overcome problem a), but are still first order only and rather dissipative in certain situations. Thus this project aims at developing, implementing, and analysing time discretizations of higher order that are unconditionally stable and minimally dissipative, thus allowing for rather large time steps. To solve the arising systems, which will necessarily comprise a coupling between flow field and geometry, efficient solution techniques will be developed.