German Research Foundation recommends funding for the second funding period of Felix Fritzen's Heisenberg Professorship

October 27, 2022 / sä

In its letter of October 18, the German Research Foundation officially approves Heisenberg funding for Felix Fritzen's professorship in Data Analytics in Engineering for another 24 months.

"The funding of my Heisenberg Professorship by the DFG for two more years gives me the chance to continue my interdisciplinary research and teaching in the unique Stuttgart environment, especially the EXC and SC SimTech and the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering. I look forward to continuing on the Stuttgart path", says Felix Fritzen.

The goal of the professorship, which started in January 2020 and was jointly established by the Stuttgart Center for Simulation Science (SC SimTech) and Faculty 2, is to improve various aspects of simulations through the targeted and focused use of available or computable data. The application area focuses on computational continuum mechanics of deformable solids and numerical mechanics of materials. The focus is on five research topics:

  1. Model reduction via data compression
    How can reduced models be systematically assembled and solved faster? Can data analysis improve methods like hyperreduction?
  2. Data-assisted simulation
    Can targeted data use enable non-classical, robust solution methods?
  3. In silico data-provisioning
    How can simulations efficiently provide data for machine-learned models? Can dedicated sampling improve data-based models?
  4. Data-guided validation and model adaptation
    How can data support hierarchical modeling and thus adaptivity? How can data analysis provide validation of models?
  5. Data-integrated multiscale simulations
    Can the goal of efficient and robust multiscale simulation be achieved by synthesizing different hierarchical models? What future research questions arise from the demonstrators?

The professorship thus takes on a bridging function between mathematics, engineering sciences and computer science. The reviewers also attribute to the application and thus to Felix Fritzen and his work a "highly relevant, interdisciplinary and specialist orientation that is consistently developed further". Furthermore, he and his work are attested an "outstanding quality", which is not only integrated on a high level into the research of the University of Stuttgart, Faculty 2 and the Cluster of Excellence, but also recognizable through the activities and visibility in the community - among others through the involvement in the NFDI consortium MatWerk to whose steering committee Prof. Fritzen belongs. The future expansion of research to include the new topics "Knowledge infusion in machine learning" and "Benchmark datasets for machine learned materials modeling" are also found to be "unquestionably important and timely." At the same time, the University of Stuttgart, the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Cluster of Excellence SimTech offer a "very good disciplinary home" and an excellent interdisciplinary environment, in which Felix Fritzen is already very well integrated.

The fact that the Heisenberg Professorship for "Data Analytics in Engineering" will continue to be funded by the DFG and that both reviewers have spoken out so clearly in favor of this continuation is not only a very personal success for Felix Fritzen, but also an important contribution to continuing the excellent research and teaching at the Stuttgart Center for Simulation Science, the Cluster of Excellence SimTech and the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the coming years.

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