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In this issue

• – New and still familiar: change in the leadership of the Central Alumni Relations
• – More precise diagnosis: AI against breast cancer
• – Watchdog Nero to protect 5G networks
• – Strategic cooperation for the railroad network of the future
• – Digitally to the moon
• – In a Nutshell
• – Calls & Prizes
• – Dates & Events

Most of you will still know the name: For eleven years, from 2008 to 2019, Christine Haller was already Head of the Alumni & Central Event Department at Hochschule Darmstadt, before she went on to new professional grounds. After four and a half years at TU Darmstadt, she has now returned to h_da, and as of October, she has taken over the Central Alumni & Relationship Management at our university – as usual with lots of energy and bringing a whole lot of innovative ideas to the table.

As already reported in an earlier newsletter issue, the Alumni Management has as of 1 April 2023 been assigned to the department of Continuing Education and Dual Study Centre (WBDS). The reasons for this are of a strategic nature, and you as h_da alumni benefit from the fact that the department for lifelong education and the Alumni Management are located next door to each other. "As alumni, you will certainly be able to benefit from various offers, as lifelong learning is becoming more and more important in view of ever shorter innovation cycles," Christine Haller emphasizes. The alumni team will keep you posted about further education offers.

What Haller loves about her "new old" role is the creative leeway associated with it. "It’s all about creating an emotional bond with one’s former university," she characterizes her task, and she loves to quote Wilhelm von Humboldt who held the interconnections of human beings to be the most important thing in life. For Haller, a native from the Odenwald region southeast of Darmstadt, alumni work starts as early as at one’s first day of studies, "not as late as the graduation ceremony."

Haller herself studied at h_da. She graduated with a diploma in Information and Knowledge Management; she then worked at the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research (IGD) in Darmstadt, and later as a research assistant at the Zentrum für Graphische Datenverarbeitung (ZGDV).

Internal and external networking, a hallmark of alumni work, is very important to her. She is active in cross-university alumni networks, was a Member of the Board (2021–2023) of the umbrella association of German-speaking alumni organisations alumni-clubs.net and has – since 2009 with only short interruptions – been speaker for the regional group of the Federal State of Hesse in the umbrella association of German-speaking alumni organisations.

Your new contact person is ready to answer your questions and deal with your causes on all things alumni at any time. And you will continue to find everything that’s important on our alumni website.

Well-practised team: Yaqeen Ali and Prof. Dr. Johannes Gregori in the optotechnology lab at the University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt. (Photo: h_da/Samira Schulz)

Breast cancer is still one of the most common causes of death in women. There are more than 70,000 cases each year in Germany alone, globally the number reached more than two million in 2020. How can the diagnosis be improved, how can therapies be made more effective? These are questions that Professor Johannes Gregori and his doctoral student Yaqeen Ali want to answer at h_da. The two scientists belong to a European consortium doing research in the large-scale project "BosomShield". They want to combine diagnostic methods like ultrasound, mammography, and biopsy and analyse them with the help of Artificial Intelligence.

More about this in the scientific magazine impact of h_da: "Using AI in the fight against breast cancer".

More and more companies are attacked by cybercriminals. Hacker attacks, data theft, blackmail, and data encryption have seen a massive increase lately. According to the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), the threat situation is currently higher than ever before. Scientists at h_da are doing research in order to protect companies and the critical infrastructure such as security authorities, firefighters, and hospitals against such threats. A case in point is the team that has grouped themselves around Computer Science professors Stefan Valentin and Martin Stiemerling as the research group Networking Technologies and who are conducting research on how to secure 5G networks. Watchdog NERO is supposed to sniff out jamming transmitters installed by hackers and make them inoperable. Read more: "Don't trust any appliance that is more complex than a toaster".

In order to get the railroad network fit for the future, it takes ever more complex project management, an interdisciplinary work approach, and highly qualified professionals. In order to strengthen the mutual transfer of knowledge and experience, to increase the practical relevance for students and at the same time make them fit for the job market of the future, h_da and DB Netz AG have entered into a strategic cooperation. Read more about how things are planned to proceed in the press release (DE).

For the first time in a while, the Alumni Management is offering a competition for alumni. You can win a Monopoly board game featuring Hochschule Darmstadt and its high-rise building printed on the board. You now have the chance to win by giving the correct answer to the following question:
"Which department has the Alumni & Relationship Management been assigned to as of 1 April?"

Please send you answer by email to: alumni@h-da.de The winners will be drawn by lot. We wish you lots of luck! Please remember to include your postal address (in order to receive your prize in case you win).

Prof. Stephan Jacob and his student team presented their ideas for a computer game at ESA. "Finally we are able to show that video games are so much more than just a dissipation." (Photo: Stephan Jacob)

Top-modern space probes are to reconnoitre the best landing spot on the moon, helped by Artificial Intelligence, but unfortunately technology is not yet really up to that task. Recently, India managed a smooth landing, but a Russian probe and a Japanese unmanned probe both crashed onto the ragged surface of the moon. ESA and NASA are planning their own lunar base, which still requires a lot of intense preliminary research. Computers have to be trained using many gigabytes of visual data, and this is where gamers at h_da come into play. In a thrilling game, they are tagging lunar craters – as it were in passing – thus feeding the AI with vital information. Read more: „Digital Astronauts“.

Find out more about your former university as well as about current research, development, and transformation projects or events on the h_da website and the scientific magazine impact. Feel free to follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram.