New Research at the St. Pölten UAS
Great Success in Lower Austrian Science Call
In the latest Science Call of the Gesellschaft für Forschungsförderung NÖ (Lower Austrian society for the promotion of research, GFF), the St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences was awarded an endowed professorship and several new research projects and funds for dissertation projects.
The professorship, the two research projects and six dissertations are dedicated to the fields of digital healthcare, health research, gait analysis, communication and climate research, data science, and financial communication.
Science for Society
“Science and research are an important basis for solving societal problems and answering questions. The fact that so many of our projects and dissertation plans received funding – on top of being awarded a prominent endowed professorship – speaks both for the quality of our science activities and for the commitment of our researchers”, emphasises Hannes Raffaseder, Chief Research and Innovation Officer of the St. Pölten UAS.
“Over the past few years, excellent framework conditions for the further development of our research and knowledge transfer activities have been created in Lower Austria, for example with the foundation of the GFF. Of course, this spurs us on even more”, Raffaseder adds.
Endowed Professorship for Biomechanics
The St. Pölten UAS has been awarded an endowed professorship for applied biomechanics in rehabilitation research. It will be dedicated to the question of what innovative technologies such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence can contribute to the active shaping of rehabilitation in future.
For several years now, the St. Pölten UAS has been bundling its know-how at the interfaces of rehabilitation and digitalisation. For this purpose, a focus area has been set up at the Center for Digital Health and Social Innovation (CDHSI) and a Digital Health Lab is in the making. The new endowed professorship is another important element in this specialisation.
Research Projects in Healthcare and Climate Research
In her project „ Nutrition and Movement to Improve Quality of Life with Knee Osteoarthritis”, Barbara Wondrasch will explore the effects of the combination of nutrition and exercise therapy on people suffering from knee arthrosis, and how their quality of life can be improved.
In the project “CliMeF – Climate Media Frames”, Franziska Bruckner examines communication strategies on climate change based on two examples from Lower Austria: the soybean as an alternative crop, and the installation of wind turbines.
Six Funded Dissertations
In the current call, a number of dissertations by St. Pölten UAS researchers are funded as well:
- In her dissertation on the topic of Financial (Media) Literacy and Financial Behaviour, Tatjana Aubram researches the connections between the financial and media behaviours of Austrians aged 18 to 30.
- Magdalena Boucher’s project “VisToon“ creates guidelines for the design and implementation of data comics that are supposed to make data visualisation more easily understandable.
- Bernhard Dumphart examines how artificial intelligence can be used to reduce mistakes in three-dimensional clinical gait analysis.
- The work of Kajetan Enge explores how methods of the visualisation and sonification of data can be combined to assist people in better understanding highly complex data.
- Hubert Schölnast is developing a procedure in the field of artificial intelligence to measure similarities between files in order to allow for classifications and anomaly detection. The system makes use of a side effect that occurs during the compression of files.
- Caterine Schwab has dedicated her work to the topic of patient-specific 3D gait analysis.