Teaching
Teaching and supervision
I prefer project-based teaching that connects mathematical and technical foundations with practical implementation. Since 2025 I have given guest lectures at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology; during my doctorate I taught at Technische Universität Ilmenau. Most of my supervision has been of theses and student projects, at universities and in industry.
Approach
I teach engineering from the physical principle to the working system. A student should understand an algorithm, a sensor or a device not only on its own, but as part of a chain in which signal generation, sensing, noise, computation, hardware limits and clinical use affect one another.
In practice this means that mathematical models become code, that methods are tested on real signals, and that a system concept is judged against quantitative requirements. Open and reproducible material lets students inspect a result, change an assumption and find out where a method fails. In advanced courses I prefer projects on a question that is actually open to exercises with a known answer.
Work on medical devices adds a second perspective. Performance is not enough: a method also has to be robust, validated and safe to introduce into clinical practice, and students should meet these constraints early.
- 01PrincipleThe physics and physiology that produce the signal
- 02ModelIts mathematical description, with the assumptions stated
- 03CodeAn implementation students can run and change
- 04DataReal measurements, where the method meets noise
- 05SystemRequirements, validation and safe use
Courses
2025, 2026
Optical Systems in Medicine and Life Science
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute of Biomedical Engineering
Part of the lectures in the course of Prof. Werner Nahm, in the summer semesters 2025 and 2026.
Guest lectures
2018
Estimation of neuronal sources
International Summer School in Biomedical Engineering, Chengdu
Lecture
2011–2015
Neural mass and neural field models
Technische Universität Ilmenau
Within the seminar series Fundamentals of Biomedical Engineering. In the same years: lecture units in Technical Safety and Quality Assurance in Medical Engineering, and a laboratory course on patient monitoring.
Seminar
2006–2015
Undergraduate and graduate tutorials
Technische Universität Ilmenau
Electrical Engineering I, Algorithms and Programming, Computer Engineering, and Neural Source Estimation. Preceded by a certified training for tutors in 2006.
Tutorials
Supervision
I currently supervise two doctoral researchers and a group of master’s students and interns. Before that I supervised or mentored more than twenty students in theses, design projects and internships at Technische Universität Ilmenau, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Neoscan Solutions and ZEISS.
Students are given a part of a research problem that is theirs. Where the contribution warrants it, they become co-authors: several of the publications and much of the open-source code linked on this site began as student work.
Ongoing
Two doctoral researchers in my group at the ZEISS Innovation Hub @ KIT, on neural decoding and on electrophysiological modelling, co-supervised with university partners.
Doctoral projects
Ongoing
Student projects on brain–computer interfaces, neural decoding and physical AI at the ZEISS Innovation Hub @ KIT.
Master’s theses, internships
2020–2021
Development and reconstruction of MRI sequences with MR# (David Schote, later first author of the ScanHub abstracts).
Master’s thesis
2020–2021
Inverse quadrature demodulation and decimation of the MR signal on a graphics card (Annalena Erbrecht; ISMRM 2021).
Bachelor’s thesis
2019–2020
A user interface for operating an MR system.
Bachelor’s thesis
2014
A real-time brain–computer interface on EEG source estimates (Lorenz Esch, who went on to lead the development of MNE-CPP).
Master’s thesis
2014
Parameter variance in dynamic causal modelling; real-time estimation of regularisation parameters.
Bachelor’s theses
2013
Real-time filtering strategies to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of MEG and EEG.
Master’s thesis
2012
An enhanced dual-core beamformer; two theses on surgical devices.
Bachelor’s theses
2011–2015
Accuracy of distributed source localisation; characterisation of evoked fields; visualisation, continuous integration and GPU code for MNE-CPP.
Internships, student assistants
Topics are listed without names, except where a student is an author of a publication linked on this site.