GRK 1505:  Analysis and Simulation of Electric Interactions between Implants and Biosystems - welisa

• Subject Area: Electrical Engineering and Information Technology
• Term: from 2008 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 55641801

Technical implant systems are the central topic of the Research Training Group. Implants are of increasing importance in the medical therapy. This is caused by the steadily increasing expectation of life span together with coinstantaneous desire to improve the health-related quality of life of the patient, may it be of the elderly or the handicapped. Thus, implants support or replace certain bodily functions, which are restricted by high age, accident, heavy medical disorder or disability.
Scientists from various disciplines (material science, engineering, computer science, medicine, biology and mathematics) will address themselves cooperatively to this research task. Their common goal lies in developing implants with improved functionality, higher compatibility and longer lifetime. In that, the processes at the interface between implant and surrounding tissue will be specially taken into account. The broad interdisciplinary constitution of the Research Training Group allows including diverse methods for analysis. Thus, an appropriate modelling and simulation of the processes within the biosystem (with and without implant) will be realisable, finally leading to innovative implants. In the first place, the interrelations between causes (characteristics of the implants like surface topography, electrochemistry of the phase boundary, electrical stimuli) and effects (cell behaviour) have to be found.
The PhD students of this Research Training Group will have the chance to gain their doctorate at the interface of medicine, biology, engineering and scientific computing. Likewise, excellent career opportunities in research and industry will open up in the field of medical engineering for the young scientists because of the high interdisciplinarity of the 17 research projects, which are granted.

• DFG Programme: Research Training Groups
• Applicant Institution: Universität Rostock
• Business and Industry: DOT GmbH
• Spokesperson: Professorin Dr. Ursula van Rienen
• Participating Researchers: Professor Dr. Eberhard Burkel; Professor Dr. Patrick Elter; Professor Dr. Konrad Engel; Professor Dr. Jan Gimsa; Professor Dr. Wolfram Mittelmeier; Professorin Dr. J. Barbara Nebe; Professor Dr. Hans-Wilhelm Pau; Professor Dr.-Ing. Ralf Salomon; Professor Dr. Olaf Wolkenhauer