The IEEE Brain Initiative presents The Second Place Award to Team University of Kiel at the IEEE Brain Data Bank Challenge, partnering with IEEE Sensors conference 2019. The interdisciplinary team of re-searchers from University of Kiel, formed by Matthias Schneider, Maria Avitha Francis, Hendrik Lehmann, Igor Barg and Andreas Bahr presented an innovative project on epileptic seizure detection with neural net-works for medical implants.

An epileptic seizure is an abnormal activity of the brain caused by a rapid discharge of large groups of neurons. The idea is to treat a seizure promptly by detecting this and supply local medication in time. A medical implant records the biopotential signals, which are then evaluated with the help of a convolutional neural network (CNN), and in the event of a seizure being detected, an electrochemical pump is activated, which ensures local medication. The CNN is trained offline with approximately 40-50 hours of EEG (electroencephalogram) data and is implemented on a low-power micro-controller that fits into the medical implant. A possible implementation of such a network on a RISC-V microprocessor will also be shown.

This work was supported by DFG research projects Materials for Brain and the CRC 1261. The DFG-funded Research Training Group 2154 ”Materials for Brain” investigates nano- and microscale therapeutically active coatings for their suitability as implants to treat three selected diseases of the brain.

On this year's Asia Communications and Photonics Conference, the largest conference in the Asia-Pacific region on optical communications, in Chengdu, China, the Chair of Communications presented four papers as well as an invited workshop contribution.

As one of 10 finalists for the best paper awards Mr. Shi Li, PhD student at the Chair of Communications, has been awarded the Best Student Paper Award for his paper "Photonic Reservoir Computing enabled by Silicon Micro-Rings". In his research work Mr. Li investigated a photonic reservoir computer (optical artifical neural network), which can be realized as a photonic integrated circuit. The results have been achieved in a research collaboration between TU Dresden (Prof. Kambiz Jamshidi) and the Chair of Communications (Prof. Stephan Pachnicke) of CAU Kiel. Such photonic reservoir computers shall enable in the future to realize an artifical neural network with extremly high bandwidth and high energy efficiency in the optical domain.

For the 11th time in a row, the Chair of Power Electronics organized the event "Power Girls & Boys Days" to motivate students in 5th and 6th grade for technical issues. Almost 60 children had applied for the popular event this time, so that the 30 participants had to be drawn. On the 26th and 27th of July it was time for the children to visit the Technical Faculty of the Christian-Albrechts-University in Kiel shortly before the start of the summer vacation.

The first morning the junior scientists spent with a theory unit. It started with an introduction to current, voltage and power. The following explanation about circuits, diodes and LEDs led to a lot of coversations. Subsequently, the children discussed the different types of renewable energy and watched the award-winning film "Solar Energy Special" by Armin Maiwald from the show “Sendung mit der Maus”. This showed the great motivation as well as the interest of the children to understand the facts profoundly. The acquired knowledge was then practically applied to build a small circuit. The "TicTac flashlight" was assembled by each child itself. Previously, there was a introduction to the soldering, in which each child should solder his initials with resistors on a breadboard.

In the next project, it was already much more difficult: a board should be self-contained by the children completely equipped with components and represent a flashing heart in the end. The children had to learn the filigree handling of the soldering iron and also pay attention to the polarization of the components.

The acquired knowledge about the solar cell could be applied on the second day in practice: each child tinkeder a snall windmill, whose engine is driven by a photovoltaic cell.

Surprisingly, the Power Kids were so enthusiastic that the large majority did not make use of the opportunity to play during the break, and instead they continued to work. "Sometimes we had to ask the children several times clearly to take a break for drinking, so that at the high summer temperatures of 33°C degrees no one tips over," smiles organizer Max Lutz of the Chair of Power Electronics.

However, in order not to leave out the playful part completely, an electrical wire game was built in the last project, which the children were allowed to design and shape completely themselves.

All in all, we are pleased about the positive response of the children and their parents, who also reached us by e-mail after the event. Nobody wanted to go back to school after two days. A big thank you goes to the sponsors WEB-Andresen, SH Netz, Nord Electronic Drive Systems, FT Cap, Siemens and the “Förderverein of the TF”, who supported the campaign with financial or material donations. We would like to express this gratitude on behalf of the children and their parents.

As part of a small ceremony, Prime Minister Daniel Günther officially presented the funding documents of the EU.SH project "MAUS - Mobile Autonomous Underwater System" to representatives of all involved project partners on June 5, 2019. The aim of the project is the realization of autonomous underwater vehicles ("made in SH") utilizing different construction methods, which support each other in a swarm. The project partners represent three universities (Kiel University of Applied Sciences, University of Lübeck, University of Kiel) and two local SMEs (SubCtech, emma technologies). The project manager, Prof. Sabah Badri-Höher, emphasized in her speech the importance of artificial intelligence, digitization, and underwater robotics for the state of Schleswig-Holstein - words that the Prime Minister sympathetically took up. The project partners thank the state government of Schleswig-Holstein for the vote of confidence and the motivation boost through the personal participation of the prime minister.