Research on Chronic Kidney Failure and a Digital Twin of the Road System

Researchers from RWTH are contributing to two inter-university collaborative research centers approved for funding by the German Research Foundation DFG.

 

The Transregional Research Center “Mechanisms of Cardiovascular Complications in Chronic Kidney Disease” will continue to receive funding from the German Research Foundation, DFG, for another 4-year period. Professor Joachim Jankowski from the Institute of Molecular Cardiovascular Research (IMCAR) is the new spokesperson for the Center.

Patients with chronic kidney disease exhibit a massively increased risk for cardiovascular events: 50% of patients with CKD stage 4 or higher suffer from cardiovascular disease (CVD), and cardiovascular mortality accounts for over 40 percent of all deaths in patients with CKD stage 4 as well as patients with end-stage renal disease. However, the molecular mechanisms as well as the mediators involved are largely unexplored. The aim of the Center is to gain a better understanding of renal and cardiovascular interactions. This may contribute to the development of novel treatment strategies to decrease cardiovascular risk in CKD patients.

Furthermore, the DFG has approved to establish a new Transregional Collaborative Research Center, titled “Digital Twin of the Rad System – Physical-Informational Representation of the Future Road System.” The Center, which is a joint project by TU Dresden and RWTH Aachen University, will be coordinated by the Dresden researchers. RWTH Professor Markus Oeser, who was appointed president of the Federal Highway Research Institute in November 2021, had contributed to the proposal to the German Research Foundation. Professor Jörg Blankenbach from the Chair of Construction Informatics & Geoinformation Systems will coordinate RWTH’s activities in the Center.

Starting in January 2022, research at the Center will be conducted with the help of a so-called Digital Twin, in this context a spatially and temporally multidimensional, virtual reality model of vehicle, tires, and road surface. The reality model combines all relevant information about the "Road of the Future" from physical investigations and modeling as well as from informational and traffic data such as sensor data and data models.

DFG Collaborative Research Centers

Collaborative Research Centers (CRC) are DFG-funded, university-based research institutions which are established for a period of up to twelve years. By bringing together researchers and resources from different fields and disciplines, they make it possible to address demanding research projects on a long-term basis. Transregional CRCs, TRR for short, are jointly proposed and carried out by two or three universities.