UKE - Institute for Applied Medical Informatics

Prof. Dr. med. Frank Ückert
Director IAM
Initially, Professor Ückert taught in Münster as a junior professor and then in Mainz as a university professor and head of medical informatics. Supporting and often initializing collaborative medical research in complex networks became a major focus for him. One example of such a network is the German Consortium for Translational Cancer Research (DKTK), one of the German Centers for Health Research funded by the BMBF. He was responsible for developing its IT platform, which connects all eleven DKTK sites and enables joint research using data and biomaterials. As a component of a "Spitzencluster" (high-tech strategy of the BMBF), Professor Ückert also developed an internet-based portal to allow for the biometric evaluation of various omics data combined with clinical data in a semi-automated way. From January 2016, as a university professor at the University of Heidelberg, he headed Medical Informatics in Translational Oncology at the German Cancer Research Center. Here, highly complex data was transformed into knowledge that can be used for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes in partnership with experts from various disciplines. The data collected in the data warehouse developed together with SAP is automatically combined with information from publications and from various databases. Clinical decision support was provided via knowledge models, but also by means of machine learning algorithms, and research hypotheses were generated to contribute to a deeper understanding of disease.
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Sylvia Nürnberg PhD
Junior Research Group Leader - Secondary Use of Healthcare Data
Team Leader IAM-AI
Dr. Nürnberg has a research background in cardiovascular molecular genetics and bioinformatics data analysis in R. She did her PhD in hematology at the University of Cambridge, followed by several years of research in cardiovascular genomics at Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania. Most recently, she worked on the application of artificial intelligence in medical research at a diagnostic gene sequencing company and then at the German Cancer Research Center.
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Christopher Gundler
Research Associate IAM-AI
Mr. Gundler is a cognitive scientist by training and has many years of experience in the design, implementation, and integration of complex artificial intelligence approaches and machine learning models into practice. Methodologically, he focuses on the modeling of complex spatially and temporally dependent data. Utilizing Bayesian statistics and complex generative models, he works on making these data sources transparent and explainable.
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Jasmin Carus
Research Associate IAM-AI
Ms. Jasmin Carus has many years of experience in the field of cancer registration and cancer research. Already during her master studies she worked in clinical cancer registration at UKE. Her research focuses on common data models as a possible approach to overcome semantic heterogeneity in the context of cancer research, and AI-based analyses of cancer data.
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Sofija Engelson
Research Associate IAM-AI
After completing a dual degree program, Ms. Engelson worked in actuarial science, where she was responsible for exploratory data analysis of biometrics products. As part of her master's degree in Data Science, she worked on the interpretability of a deep learning algorithm for image sequences. Her research focus at the IAM is on the application of machine learning methods to image data.
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Anna Chechulina
Research Assistant IAM-AI
Anna is a young data scientist currently studying in the Master's program in Computer Science with a focus on Intelligent Systems. She has successfully completed several ML projects that are in different modeling domains (time series, computer vision, etc.). At the Institute of Applied Medical Informatics she is conducting AI science pilot projects and feasibility studies.

Maximilian Ataian
Team Leader IAM-ASD
Mr. Ataian has many years of experience in agile software development, both as a frontend and backend developer and as a product owner. He is responsible for all software developers and their projects, supports all other work groups in establishing structures such as code standards, working methods such as SCRUM and KANBAN, standardized tools, planning of server infrastructures, and acts as a system administrator looking after all systems operated by IAM. With regard to medical applications, he has developed metadata repositories, research databases, organizational tools, and registries for studies, and most recently served as IT development manager at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg.
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Omar Fulla

Research Associate IAM-ASD

John Ollhorn

Software Developer IAM-ASD

Karl Gottfried
Team Leader IAM-RCA
After his license to practice medicine, Mr. Gottfried worked for several years at the University Hospital in Heidelberg and at the Central Institute for Mental Health in Mannheim. Subsequently, he worked at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg on the establishment of innovative data visualization concepts for clinical routine.
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Nils Schönbeck

Research Associate IAM-RCA

Sören Spiegel
Research Assistant IAM-RCA
Already during his studies, Mr. Spiegel specialized in complex artificial intelligence models. During the following two years as a Data Scientist, he developed and implemented different prediction models for numerous projects. He also worked extensively on the provision and visualization of big data for research.
At the IAM, Mr. Spiegel supports the development of data visualization concepts as well as their implementation while completing his Master's degree in Business Informatics.

Katharina Lauk
Team Leader Knowledge Management in Precision Medicine (IAM-KMP)
Ms. Lauk has a research background in Molecular Biology. She completed her master’s thesis at the Bernhardt Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine at the Center for Systems and Structural Biology in Hamburg. Most recently, she was involved in an industrial development of a microfluidic PCR test system for the detection of SarsCov-2. At the IAM, she is responsible for finding IT solutions to support physicians with new challenges in personalized medicine.
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Imke Brouer
Assistant to the Director
As an executive assistant in an IT company for many years, Ms. Brouer has gained extensive experience in the digital environment. In addition, as a human resources specialist, she is also familiar with a wide range of human resources tasks. At the IAM she combines both focal points as the institute's first point of contact in the area of administration.
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