Research

The German Heart Research Foundation (Deutsche Stiftung für Herzforschung) is providing 58,000 euros of funding to Universitätsklinikum Erlangen for a study started in 2015 for research on adolescents who underwent heart surgery for a ventrical septal defect (VSD) at a very young age. This hole in the wall between the ventricles of the heart is the most common congenital heart defect.

Good news for FAU and partners from science and industry: up to 3.5 million euros in funding from the Bavarian Research Foundation for three collaborative projects and one research network. FAU is the project coordinator in each instance.

There are serious shortfalls in the day-to-day care available for people with dementia. Studies conducted by FAU and Universitätsklinikum Erlangen identified the late diagnosis, the high burden of care of relatives and the lack of care provided at the end of patients’ lives.

At least two different groups of Neanderthals lived in Southern Siberia and an international team of researchers including scientists from FAU have now proven that one of these groups migrated from Eastern Europe.

Evidence for crimes is increasingly to be found in the digital world. Normal police work often runs up against its limits when investigating digital crimes. The research training group ‘Cybercrime and forensic computing’ at FAU brings together experts from the areas of computer science and of law to systematically explore and research the topic of criminal investigation of cybercrime.

Everyone is talking about global warming. A team of palaeontologists at GeoZentrum Nordbayern at FAU has recently investigated how prehistoric organisms reacted to climate change, basing their research on belemnites. These shrunk significantly when the water temperature rose as a result of volcanic activity approximately 183 million years ago, during the period known as the Toarcian. The FAU research team published their results in the online publication Royal Society Open Science.

Magnets are usually produced using rare earths and conventional manufacturing methods. A team of researchers at FAU has worked together with other researchers from the Graz University of Technology, the University of Vienna and the research institution Joanneum Research to produce specially designed magnets using a 3D printer.

Can phagocytes act like a Trojan horse, transporting tumour cells within themselves and thereby causing metastases in cancer patients? PD Dr. Heiko Bruns at Universitätsklinikum Erlangen, FAU, has been accepted to the funding programme ‘Experiment! In search of bold research ideas’ on the basis of this unusual question.

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Dr. Helen Kaufmann's research interests include late Latin poetry, intertextuality, poetic genres, local identities and reception. In 2020, Dr. Kaufmann will further her research on Latin poetry of late antiquity at the Chair of Classical Philology (Latin) at FAU. Her stay is supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.