RWTH Professor Elected Member of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts
During its annual celebration, the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts welcomed Univ.-Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dr. med. Steffen Leonhardt, holder of the Philips Chair of Medical Information Technology at the Helmholtz Institute for Biomedical Technology at RWTH, as a new member.
Leonhardt studied electrical engineering at TU Darmstadt, computer engineering at the State University of New York, and medicine at the University of Frankfurt am Main. The 53-year-old has been awarded multiple prizes and has been the Liaison Lecturer of the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes at RWTH Aachen since 2004.
Leonhardt has been Director of the Philips Chair of Medical Information Technology, MedIT for short, since 2003. The chair deals with scientific questions in the fields of personal health care, medical metrology, and automatization technology in medicine.
The focus Personal Health Care encompasses portable, medical equipment, that was specifically designed for diagnostic use in homes. In the field of Medical Metrology, methods for the contact-free determination of vital signs are developed in addition to a bioelectrical impedance-based process.
The topic Automatization Technology in Medicine encompasses building models and implementing regenerated therapy processes. Current research projects are focusing on tools and methods for modeling and substituting physiological regulatory circuits, such as sensor-supported artificial breathing, active brain pressure regulation, or the regulation and optimization of dialysis. The chair is also interested biomechatronics.
The North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts
The institution is an assocation of the leading scientists in the state and home to 14 scientific research projects. Its responsibilities include advising the state government in questions regarding research funding, encouraging scientific research, and offer scientifically founded arguments and decision aids for socially relevant questions.
Photo from left:: Prof. Dr. Dr. Dr. Hanns Hatt, President of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts and RWTH Professor Steffen Leonhardt.